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SAP Business Warehouse vs Snowflake Analytics 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 Analytics
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Web Analytics (1st)
 

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 Analytics is 0.5%, down from 0.6% 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.
KamleshPant - PeerSpot reviewer
Data ecosystem thrives with advanced governance and streaming capabilities
It is a data offering where I can see data lineage, data governance, and data security. Snowflake has a streaming capability to work with real-time streaming data and delta tables. Additionally, task management, job scheduling, and connecting multiple data sources unify my data across internal and external sources. The system ecosystem for analytics is enhanced, and AI capabilities are incorporated.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is that it's a seamless integration platform. A valuable feature in the tool is the monitoring alert that makes you aware of what process chain has failed. There's no manual monitoring required if you have configured an alert system, so the process chain can run in the background, and you can get alerts about it. The functionalities I find good in SAP Business Warehouse are alerting and monitoring. If you have configured the tool and have integrated it with SAP Solution Manager, then it's a good product to use."
"The most useful feature has been he ability to feed data into multiple systems in various formats."
"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."
"The solution has functionality that makes it easy for end-users to readily extract data directly from Business Warehouse into Excel and carry on their analysis on their own."
"In terms of stability, comparatively, the solution is quite stable."
"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."
"With the technical support, the response has been pretty good from the SAP side."
"Predominantly, our company uses SAP Business Warehouse for reporting purposes across various departments, especially for managers to gain a quick understanding of their current standing and make informed decisions."
"The most valuable feature of Snowflake Analytics is its performance."
"The platform not only provides ease of use but also stands out for its speedy execution, conveying a sense of robustness and reliability that I find appealing."
"Snowflake Analytics is pretty easy to use with the connectors for integration with the tools and systems in my company."
"Its structure aids in storing, managing, and analyzing large datasets in the cloud, using various relationships like one-to-one and many-to-one, ensuring consistency in the data structure."
"One of the distinctive features of Snowflake is its ability to handle large datasets efficiently."
"It is an all-in-one platform that provides the capabilities needed for various analytics tasks, including data warehousing for machine learning."
"It is quite a convenient tool."
"The most valuable features of Snowflake for our data analytics are its time travel capability, allowing easy data recovery, and its automatic optimization of partitioning and clustering."
 

Cons

"The advanced structuring can be complicated and the interface is not very intuitive."
"The solution should be more open to the cloud."
"The problem with BW, and the factor that differentiated it from the original BW, is that you only get limited functionality with your runtime license. So, you have to pay extra for extracting data."
"What I'd like to improve in SAP Business Warehouse is its data structure, that's a little bit rigid. It could be a bit more flexible, so you can design your data structure and improve performance when creating a solution. Currently, the way data is stored in SAP Business Warehouse is rigid."
"More integration with Microsoft Office products (not just Excel) would be helpful."
"What I'd like improved in SAP Business Warehouse is its setup. It could be more flexible, and it could be a configuration-based setup."
"I would like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users."
"A few things which are missing include the visualization of reports. That's where your costs and licensing become heavy. When it comes to this database compared Microsoft Warehouse, it's an expensive solution."
"Improvements are needed in importing and exporting large datasets to and from reporting tools."
"End-to-end execution of jobs isn't possible with Snowflake, which means we have to do some customization."
"The technical support is not very good."
"Snowflake's Snowpark is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The pricing visibility is complex. If you understand pricing, you can estimate costs, but if not, it can be challenging."
"A room for improvement in Snowflake Analytics is Spark, particularly its connector for Spark. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is built-in analytics."
"Snowflake Analytics can improve the integration with machine learning tools and AI and it will make the solution more usable."
"The solution’s interface is good but it could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"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."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"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 rate the product's licensing cost a five or six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price, and ten is high price."
"The solution's pricing is affordable."
"Snowflake charges per query, which amounts to a very minor cost, such as $0.015 per query."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price, and ten is high price."
"Snowflake Analytics is not an expensive solution, and its pricing is average."
"It is not overly expensive. I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"It's not costly if you configure it properly to ensure optimal performance. People don't configure it properly, which is why costs go up."
"Snowflake Analytics is a little more costly than Azure."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Computer Software Company
19%
Retailer
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake Analytics?
Snowflake is better and cheaper than Redshift and other cloud warehousing systems. It's economical.
What needs improvement with Snowflake Analytics?
Most features are already available. Perhaps AIML integration might be further needed, or Snowflake is already implementing it. AIML-based SQL prompt and query generation could be an area for enhan...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Lionsgate, Adobe, Sony, Capital One, Akamai, Deliveroo, Snagajob, Logitech, University of Notre Dame, Runkeeper
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP Business Warehouse vs. Snowflake Analytics and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.