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SAP Business Warehouse vs Teradata comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Teradata
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (4th), Backup and Recovery (20th), Data Integration (17th), Relational Databases Tools (7th), Data Warehouse (3rd), BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (10th), Marketing Management (6th)
 

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.
SurjitChoudhury - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers seamless integration capabilities and performance optimization features, including extensive indexing and advanced tuning capabilities
We created and constructed the warehouse. We used multiple loading processes like MultiLoad, FastLoad, and Teradata Pump. But those are loading processes, and Teradata is a powerful tool because if we consider older technologies, its architecture with nodes, virtual processes, and nodes is a unique concept. Later, other technologies like Informatica also adopted the concept of nodes from Informatica PowerCenter version 7.x. Previously, it was a client-server architecture, but later, it changed to the nodes concept. Like, we can have the database available 24/7, 365 days. If one node fails, other nodes can take care of it. Informatica adopted all those concepts when it changed its architecture. Even Oracle databases have since adapted their architecture to them. However, this particular Teradata company initially started with its own different type of architecture, which major companies later adopted. It has grown now, but initially, whatever query we sent it would be mapped into a particular component. After that, it goes to the virtual processor and down to the disk, where the actual physical data is loaded. So, in between, there's a map, which acts like a data dictionary. It also holds information about each piece of data, where it's loaded, and on which particular virtual processor or node the data resides. Because Teradata comes with a four-node architecture, or however many nodes we choose, the cost is determined by that initially. So, what type of data does each and every node hold? It's a shared-no architecture. So, whatever task is given to a virtual processor it will be processed. If there's a failure, then it will be taken care of by another virtual processor. Moreover, this solution has impacted the query time and data performance. In Teradata, there's a lot of joining, partitioning, and indexing of records. There are primary and secondary indexes, hash indexing, and other indexing processes. To improve query performance, we first analyze the query and tune it. If a join needs a secondary index, which plays a major role in filtering records, we might reconstruct that particular table with the secondary index. This tuning involves partitioning and indexing. We use these tools and technologies to fine-tune performance. When it comes to integration, tools like Informatica seamlessly connect with Teradata. We ensure the Teradata database is configured correctly in Informatica, including the proper hostname and properties for the load process. We didn't find any major complexity or issues with integration. But, these technologies are quite old now. With newer big data technologies, we've worked with a four-layer architecture, pulling data from Hadoop Lake to Teradata. We configure Teradata with the appropriate hostname and credentials, and use BTEQ queries to load data. Previously, we converted the data warehouse to a CLD model as per Teradata's standardized procedures, moving from an ETL to an EMT process. This allowed us to perform gap analysis on missing entities based on the model and retrieve them from the source system again. We found Teradata integration straightforward and compatible with other tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Having the back-end data set with the right information is the best qualification for this solution."
"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."
"I like that it integrates to open-source."
"The real-time information is great."
"Out-of-the-box reports are very useful."
"The product is very stable."
"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 valuable feature of this solution is the advanced structuring of data capabilities. You can get different structures of data to suit your needs."
"It is quick, secure, and has less hassles because we don't have to involve our networking team, infrastructure, etc. It is very easy to deploy and make market ready."
"I found all parts --loading, transformation, processing & querying work in parallel, and end-to-end-- to be valuable."
"Intelliflex is very scalable. In fact, scalability has improved 100 times by Intelliflex, in my personal opinion."
"The key advantages are Performance when processing Terabytes of data and scalability."
"It has increased the speed of reporting."
"The data processing, clustering, and distributed computing are impressive."
"Teradata solutions help organizations reduce IT, operations, and maintenance costs; enhance on-time delivery of products and services."
"I like this solution's ease of design and the fact that its performance is quite good. It is stable as well."
 

Cons

"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."
"In the next release, my suggestion would be to have user-friendly interfaces and performance issues be addressed."
"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."
"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."
"The solution should be more open to the cloud."
"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."
"I would like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users."
"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."
"I've been using the same UI for 20 years in Teradata. It could use some updating. Adding more stability around Teradata Studio would be outstanding. Teradata Studio is a Java-based version of their tool. It's much better now, but it still has some room for improvement."
"Teradata's pricing is quite high compared to Redshift, Synapse, or GCP alternatives."
"The cost of Teradata Cloud Data Warehouse has room for improvement."
"I would like to see more integration with many different types of data."
"Teradata could improve by being less complicated. There are some aspects that are not available on the Unix server and a Unix system is required to access some data, such as in case of an emergency."
"There are some ways that the handling of unstructured data could be improved."
"Query language and its functionality are rather limited, compared to Oracle or even SQL Server. However, it is possible to perform any kind of logic in it (though some workarounds may be required)."
"​I think the UI is not there yet. It could be improved by being more user-friendly.​"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is quite expensive."
"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."
"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 license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"We are looking for a more flexible cost model for the next version that we use, whether it be cloud or on-premise."
"We had a lot of parties involved when purchasing from the AWS Marketplace. They are very flexible and aggressive in trying to close the deal. They are good at what they have to offer and listening to the customer. It's a two-way street."
"Teradata is a very expensive solution."
"Users have to pay a yearly licensing fee for Teradata IntelliFlex, which is very expensive."
"​I would advise others to look into migration and setup as a fixed price and incorporate a SaaS option for other Teradata services​."
"Teradata's licensing is on the expensive side."
"In this day and age, we want to get things done quickly. So, we go to the AWS Marketplace."
"Make sure you have the in-house skills to design and support the solution, as relying on external sources is extremely costly and tends to lock you into specific platforms, tools, and paradigms."
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Comparison Review

it_user232068 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 5, 2015
Netezza vs. Teradata
Original published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-i-choose-net Two leading Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) architectures for Data Warehousing (DW) are IBM PureData System for Analytics (formerly Netezza) and Teradata. I thought talking about the similarities and differences…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

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...
Comparing Teradata and Oracle Database, which product do you think is better and why?
I have spoken to my colleagues about this comparison and in our collective opinion, the reason why some people may declare Teradata better than Oracle is the pricing. Both solutions are quite simi...
Which companies use Teradata and who is it most suitable for?
Before my organization implemented this solution, we researched which big brands were using Teradata, so we knew if it would be compatible with our field. According to the product's site, the comp...
Is Teradata a difficult solution to work with?
Teradata is not a difficult product to work with, especially since they offer you technical support at all levels if you just ask. There are some features that may cause difficulties - for example,...
 

Also Known As

No data available
IntelliFlex, Aster Data Map Reduce, , QueryGrid, Customer Interaction Manager, Digital Marketing Center, Data Mover, Data Stream Architecture
 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
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