SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Teradata comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and Teradata compete in the business analytics and data management domain. SAP BusinessObjects has the upper hand in providing a comprehensive suite for business data consistency, while Teradata is favored for its high-speed analytics and scalability.

Features: SAP BusinessObjects offers ad-hoc reporting capabilities through Web Intelligence, robust data connectivity, and a semantic layer for consistent data. Users value its report and dashboard development tools. Teradata is recognized for its parallel processing, efficient handling of large datasets, and high-speed analytics capabilities.

Room for Improvement: SAP BusinessObjects users encounter difficulties with updates, integration, and a user-unfriendly interface. The licensing models are considered expensive. Teradata could improve cloud adoption, reduce costs, and enhance advanced analytics features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP BusinessObjects can be deployed on hybrid and on-premises infrastructures, with mixed reviews on deployment complexity and support. Teradata allows on-cloud and on-premises deployment, offering better customer service despite high pricing and complexity in setup.

Pricing and ROI: SAP BusinessObjects is often expensive with variable ROI based on usage and company size, deterring smaller businesses. Teradata is also costly but provides value to large enterprises needing robust data warehousing, making it worthwhile for large-scale operations despite high costs.

To learn more, read our detailed SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs. Teradata Report (Updated: March 2025).

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs. Teradata

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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 BusinessObjects Busines...

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

6th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

103

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Teradata

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

10th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Customer Experience Management (4th), Backup and Recovery (20th), Data Integration (16th), Relational Databases Tools (7th), Data Warehouse (3rd), Marketing Management (6th), Cloud Data Warehouse (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 3.8%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Teradata is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Sumeet Zalpuri

Data engineer at ASR Nederland N.V.

Fully integrated enterprise-level tool

The initial setup was not straightforward. Since it is a complete enterprise tool, it needs a certain level of expertise to set up the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. There are a lot of steps involved. You need to get the user accepted and you need to validate the data. So you need to understand the architecture of the application. I would rate the initial setup as moderate since it's not very easy or much difficult. For a small enterprise, the installation would take one day. You must ensure you are on a supported platform like Windows or Linux and if your database is not on the server but in a different zone of the network, you need to ensure connectivity. You must also ensure the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform supports your organization's browser. These are the major things that must be taken care of before the installation. Around 500 users are using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform in my company. We are a team of around eight technical people involved in the deployment and maintenance of the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. If you run a SAP shop with ECC, the best solution is the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform because it's tightly integrated. You'll get lots of offers from SAP when it comes to licensing. So there's an advantage. But if you are not a SAP shop, the licensing becomes a hindrance. So if you have SAP as a source, then I recommend people to go with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform as it's a tool that works wonders. I have been working on POCs where we use SAP data for BI, which was a nightmare. So if you have ECC and SAP in the back end, go with the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. If you have any other tools in the back end, then try to negotiate and see the use case.

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SurjitChoudhury

Data engineer at Cocos pt

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The report development tool called SAP Web Intelligence under the BI Launch Pad portal has been the most valuable feature."

"Enables us to present data with Smart Objects that can be embedded within presentations and which automatically update when the presentations are run."

"The features which the solution has been awesome. The way the data is fetched from the database, and the queries are executed, is unique using the Universe of Business Objects. That makes it unique and we could not find another solution that functions in a similar way. It's has a great way of receiving and executing queries."

"Ease of report development is a key feature."

"We use it to identify critical KPIs to senior management."

"I have seen improvement in our work after using the solution."

"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform's most valuable features are it has a great presentation layer. We can develop the presentation layer with drag-and-drop capabilities. For end-users and for our interns in the company can create reports and do their data analysis processes or works by using the objects that we created on the presentation layer by themselves."

"We find the product to be very stable."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform pros

"The data mover is valuable over the last two years as it allows us to achieve data replication to our disaster recovery systems."

"The product's scalability is great. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"IntelliFlex is easy to scale - one of its best features is that you can upscale it to the size you want."

"I like writing preformance queries for preprocessing on AWS Cloud."

"The two types of partitioning have been very significant for us - row and columnar partitioning."

"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."

"The solution scales well on the cloud."

"I like this solution's ease of design and the fact that its performance is quite good. It is stable as well."

More Teradata pros

Cons

"It would be good if they could integrate the possibility for end users to create end models for themselves that they can use, especially for site operators, and if they could provide the end user not only the self-service BI, but also the self-service analytics, based on a predefined model, the same way that Oracle did."

"It could be a lighter solution."

"I really want SAP to focus on the dashboarding side. Based on what I have seen in the past 10 years, dashboarding has captured a lot of markets. Executives at the top-level want data that is summarized, looks good, and tells you a story. That's where Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI have an upper edge. It doesn't mean SAP doesn't give you dashboarding. They do have a dashboarding solution, but Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI are more intuitive and more attractive. I would like SAP to capture the dashboarding market as well, wherein they give at least some competition to other competitors. Presently, Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI are leading the market."

"We're an Epic shop, and Epic is moving away from Crystal. It would be nice if it had tighter integration with products like Epic. It would be awesome to have better integration with third-party products."

"More thorough testing of Service Packs before release."

"Most of the Apps right now are into dashboarding. This tool, for the Crystal Reports in the phase I'm primarily working on, does not have those dashboarding capabilities, like in the other advanced tools like Power BI or ClickView, and compared to them the dashboard generation is not that great."

"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has always struggled with dashboarding."

"Currently, we can use Explore to do data discovering, but cannot generate charts."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform cons

"Data synchronization to the DR site."

"Teradata should focus on functionality for building predictive models because, in that regard, it can definitely improve."

"I'm not sure about the unstructured data management capabilities. It could be improved."

"There is a need to improve performance in high transaction processes, as well as the reporting system."

"The following could be better: licensing, architecture openness, integration with other tools."

"There are some ways that the handling of unstructured data could be improved."

"The solution’s pricing, scalability, and technical support response time could be improved."

"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."

More Teradata cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."

"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."

"There's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."

"Depending on your size, try to stick with SAP BusinessObjects BI Edge. Most people tend to overthink the licensing. Remember that one concurrent user means that one person can be performing a task at a given time. That does not mean that only one user can be on the system at a time, it means that only one person can be refreshing a report or designing a dashboard. There are tons of ways you can access your data or reports without consuming a license. I've seen cases where five concurrent licenses support thousands of users."

"The price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."

"There is an annual license to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform."

"I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."

"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform pricing and cost advice

"Price is quite high, so if it is really possible to use other solutions (e.g. you do not have strict requirements for performance and huge data volumes), it might be better to look at alternatives from the RDBMS world."

"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."

"The price needs to be more competitive as Hadoop, Redshift, Snowflake, etc are constantly making way into EDW space."

"It is still a very expensive solution. While I very much like the pure technological supremacy of the software itself, I believe Teradata as a company needs to become more affordable. They are already losing the market to more flexible or cheaper competitors."

"The cost is substantial, totaling around $1.2 million, solely dedicated to upgrading the hardware."

"I rate the product price a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."

"In this day and age, we want to get things done quickly. So, we go to the AWS Marketplace."

More Teradata pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user6663

BI Expert at a transportation company with 51-200 employees

May 25, 2013

SAP Business Objects vs. Microsoft BI

A quick look at the whole idea on another weblogs gives you a sense that all of them just talked about very brief things like report refresh feature in BO or cube feature in MS Analysis Service. I choose MS BI and I want to share my reasons and opinions on why I choose it and give you another quick…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...

Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?

Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...

What do you like most about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?

What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process.

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,...

SAP Analytics Cloud vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Comparisons

Compared 23% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 17% of the time

IBM Cognos vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 11% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Essbase vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 6% of the time

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Competitors

Oracle Exadata vs Teradata

Compared 14% of the time

SQL Server vs Teradata

Compared 11% of the time

MySQL vs Teradata

Compared 8% of the time

Snowflake vs Teradata

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Db2 Database vs Teradata

Compared 6% of the time

More Teradata Competitors

Product Reports

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Download SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform product report

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform report

Download Teradata product report

Also Known As

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects

IntelliFlex, Aster Data Map Reduce, , QueryGrid, Customer Interaction Manager, Digital Marketing Center, Data Mover, Data Stream Architecture

Overview

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a versatile and flexible solution for reporting and dashboards, focusing on analytics and ad hoc reporting. It can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. The solution includes tools such as Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, SAP Lumira, and Analytical Cloud and is primarily used for comprehensive business intelligence reporting.

The most valuable features include excellent reporting features, good technical support, scalability, and the ability to translate database data into business language. The solution has helped organizations by providing analytics, monitoring KPIs, and making important decisions as a financial business.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Key Features

Central management: Access all your BI from a single, central launchpad that can be customized to meet user-specific needs. The launchpad provides business users with access to all their BI tools, reports, notifications, and applications in a single place. This includes the ability to launch SAP Analytics Cloud.
Data visualization and analytics: Create powerful visualizations, dashboards, and applications to assess risk, improve efficiency, identify opportunities, and enable users to analyze developments and data. Business insights can be shared with colleagues across enterprises.
Integration with Microsoft Office: Integrate with SAP Business Warehouse and SAP HANA to power real-time analytics. For large-scale data analysis, you can integrate with Microsoft Excel to discover in-depth business insights and forecasts. Data analytics information can also be embedded into Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.
Cloud support: Extend and expand your BI on the cloud. SAP Analytics Cloud connects your BI to the cloud and offers enterprise planning and advanced analytics from a single online solution.

Reviews from Real Users

SAP BusinessObjects BI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its user-friendly dashboard, its impressive reporting and analytic features, and its ability to integrate with multiple solutions.

A managing partner at a tech services company writes, "One of the most valuable features of SAP BusinessObjects is that it's not a dashboarding solution. It's a real product. You can create operational reports and publish it to anyone. You can create schedules. You can create a Universe, semantic layers. There's also a security configuration. It's a huge product, so if there is a business need, SAP BusinessObjects can cover it."

An associate manager at a consultancy notes, "It provides flexibility for creating reports. It is very good for creating highly complex reports. I like this solution because when I buy BusinessObjects, it comes with many components, such as reporting, dashboard, and data visualization tools. Its performance is good. It is running on top of SAP BW and SAP HANA."

A manager of data analytics and interfaces at a healthcare company says, "It has got great flexibility. As a reporting tool, it has a great deal of flexibility for numerous data resources that you can bring into it. It allows you to write your SQL query directly within the product. It has great visualization.

SAP

Teradata is a scalable data analytics platform designed to meet enterprise demands for large-scale data management and processing, focusing on performance, scalability, and security for complex query executions.

As a leading data warehousing solution, Teradata integrates advanced analytics enabling organizations to derive insights from massive datasets. It supports high-volume data workloads with its architecture optimized for analytical queries. Users benefit from its robust scalability, allowing seamless expansion as data grows. Teradata's SQL engine is compatible with a wide range of data types, ensuring flexibility in data analysis. With advanced security measures, it protects sensitive data across various environments, providing peace of mind to users handling critical information.

What are the most important features of Teradata?

Linear Scalability: Easily expands data processing capabilities to handle increasing data loads without performance degradation.
Advanced Analytics: Supports complex analytical operations integrating machine learning and AI for predictive insights.
SQL Compatibility: Offers a comprehensive SQL interface that supports complex queries across diverse data types.
Data Security: Implements rigorous security protocols to protect data integrity and confidentiality.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Improved Decision-Making: Derive actionable insights quickly for strategic business decisions.
Cost Efficiency: Optimized resource usage reduces operational costs associated with data processing.
Increased Productivity: Streamlined data operations save time, allowing teams to focus on analysis.
Enhanced Scalability: Seamless growth without significant additional investment as data volumes increase.

Teradata is widely used in industries like finance, telecommunications, and healthcare, where data-driven decisions are critical. Companies leverage its robust analytics capabilities to enhance customer experiences, streamline operations, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. In these sectors, quick access to data insights can significantly impact competitive advantage.

Sample Customers

SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.

Netflix

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs. Teradata