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SAP Business Warehouse vs Snowflake comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

SAP Business Warehouse
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Snowflake
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 1.2%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 20.5%, down from 22.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

JavedKhan1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers powerful analytics and integration capabilities but requires improved upgrade processes
SAP Business Warehouse could have been better. There is room for improvement from a technical perspective. So, from a technical perspective, when we are upgrading a Business Warehouse server or we are migrating from one place to another, the capability required for this upgradation has many manual activities. It took us around a month to streamline our server. Let’s say there are some transaction codes. Transaction code is a set of programs, and when you want to run a program from the backend, you need to hit the transaction code. It is called a T-code. So during the upgrade, many transaction codes get affected, and as a security consultant, it is my responsibility to recheck those transaction codes which are affected. Sometimes more than 100 codes may get affected, sometimes 500, and sometimes more as well. So, it takes a hell lot of time to integrate them again. That is a limitation or defect within the SAP Business Warehouse. SAP Business Warehouse should come up with proper solutions. Upgradation is an automatic activity. It should happen by itself. We just need to initiate it, and the backend SAP server is automatically upgraded. But it should handle the transactional code as well. They should not get absolutely, and any authorization object should not get deleted from the transaction codes. So, that functionality SAP Business Warehouse should come up with.
Snehasish Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Transformation in data querying speed with good migration capabilities
Snowflake is a data lake on the cloud where all processing happens in memory, resulting in very fast query responses. One key feature is the separation of compute and storage, which eliminates storage limitations. It also has tools for migrating data from legacy databases like Oracle. Its stability and efficiency enhance performance greatly. Tools in the AI/ML marketplace are readily available without needing development.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the integration with SAP ERP."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the advanced structuring of data capabilities. You can get different structures of data to suit your needs."
"We are currently in a basic stage of analytics and the first goal we have is to make sure the numbers are correct. BW has some features that help you to build factors and ETL in such a way that it's easy to get to correct responses. That's the number one condition that you have to have in an analytic solution."
"In terms of stability, comparatively, the solution is quite stable."
"The most valuable feature of SAP Business Warehouse is transformation, where I extract data from different sources, particularly the raw data. Then I do some transformations and store that in a format that allows me to do reporting easily."
"The key element in this solution is its rapid response. If you have a question about prices, buyers, customers, providers, or services, you need the answer in a minute or two. That's the key benefit for us that a solution like BW gives us."
"The most valuable feature of SAP Business Warehouse is its hybrid functionality, allowing users to leverage both SQL-based data warehouse capabilities from HANA and feature-based data warehousing from BW."
"Having the integration with the reporting tool which is provided by SAP is great."
"I like Snowflake's data exchange capabilities. It can exchange data with downstream systems and other vendor partners as well."
"All the people who are working with Snowflake are extremely happy with it because it is designed from a data-warehousing point of view, not the other way around. You have a database and then you tweak it and then it becomes a data warehouse."
"The ETL and data ingestion capabilities are better in this solution as compared to SQL Server. SQL Server doesn't do much data ingestion, but Snowflake can do it quite conveniently."
"The most valuable feature has been the Snowflake data sharing and dynamic data masking."
"Its speed and performance were the most valuable. Easy configuration of Snowflake in any cloud was also a benefit."
"Snowflake is faster than on-premise systems and allows for variable compute power based on need."
"The ability to share the data and the ability to scale up and down easily are the most valuable features. The concept of data sharing and data plumbing made it very easy to provide and share data. The ability to refresh your Dev or QA just by doing a clone is also valuable. It has the dynamic scale up and scale down feature. Development and deployment are much easier as compared to other platforms where you have to go through a lot of stuff. With a tool like DBT, you can do modeling and transformation within a single tool and deploy to Snowflake. It provides continuous deployment and continuous integration abilities. There is a separation of storage and compute, so you only get charged for your usage. You only pay for what you use. When we share the data downstream with business partners, we can specifically create compute for them, and we can charge back the business."
"Once you have finished your designs they can be easily imported to Snowflake and the information can be readily accessed without an IT expert."
 

Cons

"The advanced structuring can be complicated and the interface is not very intuitive."
"The way the data is stored is kind of rigid in SAP BW as a product. It could be more flexible so that when we are designing a solution, we can design our own data structures and try to improve performance."
"Areas for improvement in SAP Business Warehouse include enhancing scheduling and monitoring tools, as well as improving communication about hidden features to make them more accessible to users."
"You can start quickly but, when you have to get a little more detailed, when you have to change something, when you have to solve problems, it's not that easy. It's easy to start but evolving is not that easy."
"There is room for improvement from a technical perspective."
"I get all the information quickly, but it is one day old."
"We are very unhappy with technical support. First of all, they send their sales agents or pre-sales agents and most of them who don't know the solution as a properly trained tech would. We have an on-site SAP representative who is supposed to help us with our high priority and production issues, and they're not satisfactory to say the least."
"SAP Business Warehouse could improve by having more out-of-the-box use cases to cover more business types or operations."
"The solution could improve by allowing non-structured data, such as PDFs, images, or videos. We cannot see the data."
"The solution should offer an on-premises version also. We have some requirements where we would prefer to use it as a template."
"They should improve the reporting tools."
"It doesn't enforce typical relational database constraints. Quite expensive."
"The product's performance could be improved."
"For the Snowflake database, there should be some third-party features for the ETL. It would also be good to be able to use some kind of controls to get the data either from another database or a flat file. Its price should be improved. It should be cheaper than Microsoft."
"Product activation queries can't be changed while executing."
"There are some stored procedures that we've had trouble with. The solution also needs to fine-tune the connectors to be able to connect into the system source."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"It's quite pricey. SAP changed its pricing policy, so they give you one engine and then you have to buy everything next to it, like MSS, the BPC licenses, and everything else."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The licensing cost for SAP Business Warehouse depends on your revenue. Its licensing structure is a little bit complicated. The more your revenue is, the higher the price, but SAP does have different pricing structures for various companies. For small businesses, licensing isn't based on revenue, but for big companies, it's revenue-based. There's some agreement regarding pricing for huge companies, so it's different, and SAP Business Warehouse pricing isn't fixed. On a scale of one to ten, I'm rating the licensing cost for SAP Business Warehouse as five because it's very high. As your revenue grows, your licensing cost also increases, so you have to factor that in when calculating your cost."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"The tool's pricing is based on the number of queries you want on your database. The cost is small. To get the tool's pricing, you can do the math based on the cost per query, which is $0.002. If you're running your queries frequently, your charges will be higher than running fewer queries."
"I am not much aware of the price, but based on what I have analyzed so far, its cost is reasonable as compared to on-prem data warehouse solutions. It provides a great deal for production."
"The pricing part is based on the computing and storage. The costs are different and then there are services costs as well."
"It is pay-as-you-go. Its cost is in the medium range."
"You pay based on the data that you are storing in the data warehouse and there are no maintenance costs."
"They give a different price for every single company. I don't know if I negotiated that well, but we got the enterprise tier for $3 a credit, and the other two were a dollar-ninety a credit. I suspect we don't have almost zero compute usage, but I know that our annual contract packages are below all of their minimums."
"It is on a monthly basis. It is based on your usage. There are no additional costs from the point of the licensing fee. We do give some kind of evaluation to the customers about how much it is going to be. You can decide in Snowflake the virtual machine that you are using for customers. There are several kinds of virtual machines that you can use. It is similar to the clothing sizes: small to extra large. If you need more power in the coming month, you can decide in advance and take a more powerful machine. You can just select it from the platform. You can also decide which machine you want to take for extracting data."
"Currently, we have a trial account, so we don't need a license. After our project starts, we would need a permanent license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Educational Organization
37%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Business Warehouse?
The solution is quite expensive. We paid a yearly subscription fee.
What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?
Over a period, we realized that the license and maintenance costs were quite expensive. Every day, we had to run the background job ODS. Eventually, we moved away from SAP Business Warehouse and bo...
What do you like most about Snowflake?
The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake?
Snowflake's pricing is on the higher side, rated as eight out of ten. If there were ways to reduce costs, it would be a positive improvement.
What needs improvement with Snowflake?
Cost reduction is one area I would like Snowflake to improve. The product is not very cheap, and a reduction in costs would be appreciated.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Snowflake Computing
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP Business Warehouse vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.