SAP BW4HANA vs SAP HANA comparison

The compared SAP BW4HANA and SAP HANA solutions aren't in the same category. SAP BW4HANA is ranked #8 in Data Warehouse , with an average rating of 7.6, and holds a 4.5% mindshare in the category. SAP HANA is ranked #4 in EDS , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 8.7% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of SAP BW4HANA users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of SAP HANA users who would recommend it.

SAP BW4HANA

Read 42 SAP BW4HANA reviews

1,345 Views
909 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

SAP HANA

Read 84 SAP HANA reviews

484 Views
393 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

SAP BW4HANA

SAP HANA

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between SAP BW4HANA and SAP HANA based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Oracle, Teradata and others in Data Warehouse.

To learn more, read our detailed Data Warehouse Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Data Warehouse

April 2025

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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 BW4HANA

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Warehouse (8th)

SAP HANA

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Virtualization (2nd), Embedded Database (4th), Relational Databases Tools (4th)

Mindshare comparison

SAP BW4HANA and SAP HANA aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. SAP BW4HANA is designed for Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 4.5%, down 4.6% compared to last year.
SAP HANA, on the other hand, focuses on Embedded Database, holds 8.7% mindshare, down 12.4% since last year.

Data Warehouse

Embedded Database

Featured Reviews

Csaba Grünblatt

Senior Data, Data warehouse and BI/Analytics Architect at Techwave.

Performs all necessary data warehouse tasks and offers additional functionalities

SAP BW4HANA improved data reporting processes significantly. Performance on HANA database is good. Well-built data models ensure consistent and fast reporting. Reusable models enhance efficiency, even for SaaS services. In-memory computing, especially since HANA, has greatly improved performance in data analysis tasks. It eliminates the need for complex optimizations like creating indexes or aggregates. Queries that once took minutes now run in seconds, enabling real-time reporting, especially for SAP ECC on HANA. SAP BW4HANA's integration capabilities are streamlined with a simplified architecture and more virtual layers. You can directly load data into optimized layers, reducing the need for extra storage. The introduction of Open ODS Views allows for additional logic and master data inclusion, making integration faster and simpler. The learning curve for SAP BW4HANA is much faster now compared to ten years ago, thanks to abundant free resources like documentation, videos, blogs, and learning journeys provided by SAP. It is simpler to learn with these resources available compared to the past when you had to attend courses and rely on books. I would recommend SAP BW4HANA to users looking to implement it, especially if they want to keep their systems on-premise and already have SAP systems. Those with BW on HANA have two choices: BW4HANA or DataSphere, depending on their cloud strategy. If they are advanced in their cloud strategy and want to migrate off-premise, DataSphere is a good choice. However, for a robust solution on-premise or in a private cloud, BW4HANA is an excellent option. Overall, I would rate BW4HANA as a nine out of ten. It performs all necessary data warehouse tasks and offers additional functionalities. We use it traditionally, with complex transformations and models but with less emphasis on real-time processing and third-party sources.

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Jayarami Reddy Pujeri

ERP Head at ID Fresh Food

Comprehensive system with real-time analytics for versatile industry applications

Our primary use case is working with various clients in industries such as pharmaceuticals and other services. We support clients as implementers of SAP HANA, providing expertise in functionality, finance, logistics, and processes The solution is very user-friendly and supports all kinds of…

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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 most valuable aspect of this solution is that the infrastructure is easy to understand."

"SAP BW4HANA aids in managing data from ER to front-end analysis, contributes to ROI, and fosters business growth understanding. I like that the solution breaks down components to a very granular level, allowing for customization and implementation based on specific requirements. The solution is stable. The solution is scalable."

"Technology-wise, it is a very robust tool."

"The most valuable feature is that we can transform a huge amount of data and apply business logic as per the requirements."

"The solution is based on SAP ERP, so there's some business content already included. For customers who use SAP ERP, SAP BW4HANA is a good choice for their DW implementation."

"From an ERP point of view and a functionality point of view, it works very well. The benefits are in that of financial costing and material management."

"The solution is useful for connecting with external systems."

"You can do hierarchical alert slicing and dicing out-of-box, which is not available in other solutions. I haven't come across that in Oracle or any other software provider."

More SAP BW4HANA pros

"The tool is an in-memory database that stores and retrieves data very quickly. This speed makes it faster to use and maintain data, as no additional processes move data between memory and disk."

"Its in-memory capabilities are good, which is why many companies still use it."

"Technically it resembles Oracle, but as a somewhat lighter version."

"Eases management of databases."

"SAP HANA is a stable solution."

"The solution is easy to scale."

"The initial setup is straightforward. It usually takes around eight months but it depends on a customer's requirements. We can spend a month or two customizing."

"It is very stable and very innovative. You can integrate many applications with it."

More SAP HANA pros

Cons

"Pricing would be a good improvement. A lot of customers think that it's very expensive and especially support is very expensive."

"There should be a direct pipeline from Azure to SAP."

"They have taken out a few BW functionalities when they redesigned this. The way of multi-dimensional thinking and star schema got a little bit lost. It may be because of the cost, but certain functionalities that were previously implemented from the BW side should come back again in the whole product. It is a young product. It is version 2.0. In time, I'm pretty sure they will come back again because otherwise, it limits the potential of the product, and I have to do a lot of modeling towards that direction. For me, the analytics focus is too much. It is not cube-oriented in that way, so its functionality is limited. It is not really technically limited in the back end; it is more limited in the front end. It has a data-mining mindset for SQL developers. The navigational attributes should be easy. It needs to be built in models. I see the data mark cube or understanding that the composite provider needs to be models in a cube coming back. The multi-dimensional star schema approach and the reporting need to be done as well as possible to leverage the star scheme below. This is definitely not understood by many consultants and even composite providers for star schema. They always think in terms of flat tables, which is limiting. You need to build the right dimensions, objects, and so on. If you can build this in BW4HANA, then you have this understanding that BW4HANA is not forcing you in this direction, but it should force you a bit better in this direction. Maybe a few elements which were in use in BW should come back again. It would help the community to determine the direction to build on the cube. You can have maybe 50 elements, and then you can expand it to what you need by leveraging navigation. So far, this functionality is a little bit limited in the tool, and it is not thought through, but I think it will come. They should also be adding more capabilities for the transformation between different objects. In BW, this is currently limited, especially towards composite providers. It is a bit complex basically in the building. You have to have a lot of knowledge as well as know how to do it better because it is a bit different from BW. There is not too much expertise currently in the consulting markets. Many are trying to build something, but it may be based on their knowledge of what they have from the BW and HANA side. You have to find the right mix from both of them at this time. We also have HANA Native. These are our two different sync sources basically, and we have approaches to connect nicely, but it is hard to manage your team because a lot of coaching is required."

"SAP BW/4HANA can generally be less flexible than other tools, depending on how it is set up."

"Price wise, this solution is on the higher side."

"The solution is not easy to implement. It requires a lot of learning at the beginning."

"There's one area where the other vendors have an upper edge, which is the data lake. I think SAP is trying to figure out whether to stick with IQ, their own data lake solution, or push customers toward customer-preferred vendors, like Azure Data Lake, AWS, or any other provider."

"BW/4HANA could improve query optimization. For example, there could be an error message that pops up when you hover over it if any query fails. That would make it easier to find out what went gone wrong. Guided SAP help tools would make it easier for us to go forward."

More SAP BW4HANA cons

"There's an issue in the partition. When you record more than two million records, partitioning does not work well. In Oracle it's easy. SAP must resolve this issue in order to be more competitive with Oracle."

"In a future release, SAP HANA should add a module for taxation, such as income tax and withholding tax."

"There are a few areas wherein there could be a patch upgrade, and that can cover up the country-specific payroll areas."

"The challenge right now is all databases are on S4 HANA architecture. You're running it for HANA, but not all the functionalities are available. If they can speed up getting all the databases on S4 HANA that would help."

"The solution needs to work on its performance and make it faster."

"The only downside of the product is that it is an expensive solution that needs to consider lowering its prices to improve the product."

"The surface side or Attack dashboard needs improvement because there are some gaps after sales services."

"The support is lacking and not worth the premium price. If support was just a nominal fee, it would be perceived differently."

More SAP HANA cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"For some, the rates offered by SAP can be costly while for others it may seem cheap. The price ultimately depends on how you have negotiated your contract with SAP."

"Price wise, this solution is on the higher side."

"As an investment, the solution is very expensive."

"SAP BW/4HANA is expensive."

"It is an expensive product."

"It's a little expensive compared to Microsoft Azure."

"The SAP HANA application still hasn't been leveraged to the fullest extent, but it's a five-year enterprise license."

More SAP BW4HANA pricing and cost advice

"The licensing cost for SAP HANA is approximately $200 per user per month."

"A monthly or yearly license must be purchased, although its utility will be based on the cost-benefit analysis that is reached by the individual customer."

"The tool has a high price. I rate the solution’s pricing, one on a scale of ten, where one is expensive and ten is cheap."

"The price is high and could be a bit cheaper."

"There is a yearly subscription to use SAP HANA. There is a fee for maintenance."

"SAP HANA is very expensive for small to medium businesses."

"The tool’s subscription is yearly."

"The price of licensing is dependent on the size of the project, however, we have found that there is scope to negotiate the cost. If the solution is implemented on-premises there may be some extra costs for hosting etc."

More SAP HANA pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SAP BW4HANA?

One significant advantage of SAP BW/4HANA is the direct integration with the SAP HANA database, providing seamless access to real-time analytics. Additionally, it enables real-time data integrati...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP BW4HANA?

We have a broad licensing arrangement, which is expensive but worth it for sizeable businesses.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAP BW4HANA?

The interface could be more user-friendly, as we often need to do low-level coding to get things done.

See all answers

What are the biggest benefits of using SAP HANA?

Based on my work with SAP HANA, the biggest benefit that it can bring to your business is total data management. This product is by SAP - a company that serves almost all needs a client may have co...

See all answers

Is SAP HANA’s customer and technical support reliable?

We have been using SAP HANA for a fairly short period of time and have only taken advantage of their customer support. So far, we have not had issues that required specialized help from technical s...

See all answers

Is SAP HANA difficult to set up and start using?

SAP HANA is fairly easy to set up, however, I do not think a complete beginner can do it. You certainly need some preparation - either you need to have experience with similar solutions, or with ot...

See all answers

Comparisons

Snowflake vs SAP BW4HANA

Compared 32% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAP BW4HANA

Compared 28% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs SAP BW4HANA

Compared 9% of the time

SQL Server vs SAP BW4HANA

Compared 8% of the time

SAP IQ vs SAP BW4HANA

Compared 4% of the time

More SAP BW4HANA Competitors

Oracle Database vs SAP HANA

Compared 23% of the time

SQL Server vs SAP HANA

Compared 22% of the time

MySQL vs SAP HANA

Compared 11% of the time

IBM Db2 Database vs SAP HANA

Compared 9% of the time

SAP IQ vs SAP HANA

Compared 2% of the time

More SAP HANA Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SAP BW4HANA

March 2025

Download SAP BW4HANA product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP HANA

March 2025

Download SAP HANA product report

Also Known As

SAP BW/4HANA

SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance, HANA

Overview

SAP BW4HANA is a data warehouse solution developed by SAP for businesses looking to analyze big data in real time. It is designed to run on the SAP HANA database, offering improved performance and optimized processing of large data sets. SAP BW/4HANA provides an array of advanced analytics capabilities, including predictive analytics, text analytics, and spatial data processing. It also offers a modern, intuitive user interface and streamlined data modeling and administration tools, making it easier for businesses to access, manage, and utilize their data.

SAP BW4HANA Features

SAP BW4HANA has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

In-memory data processing: The solution runs on the SAP HANA database, providing fast and efficient data processing.

Advanced analytics: SAP BW4HANA includes capabilities for predictive analytics, text analytics, and spatial data processing.

Data modeling and administration: The solution provides streamlined data modeling and administration tools for efficient data management.

Modern user interface: SAP BW4HAN is designed with a modern, intuitive user interface for easier data access and analysis.

Data warehousing optimization: The solution is optimized for big data warehousing, offering improved performance and scalability.

Integration with SAP ecosystem: SAP BW4HAN integrates with the SAP ecosystem, including SAP S/4HANA and SAP Cloud Platform, for seamless data exchange.

Real-time data processing: It supports real-time data processing and analysis, enabling businesses to make data-driven decisions.

Data governance and security: With its robust data governance and security features, SAP BW4HAN can be used for secure data management and compliance.

Automated data loading: SAP BW4HAN supports automated data loading from various sources, including SAP and non-SAP systems.

Advanced data visualization: With its advanced data visualization capabilities, users can generate better data insights and make more informed business decisions.

SAP BW4HANA Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing SAP BW4HANA. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Improved data processing speed: Running on the SAP HANA database, SAP BW/4HANA provides fast and efficient data processing, resulting in improved performance and reduced downtime.

Streamlined data management: The solution's streamlined data modeling and administration tools make it easier for organizations to manage their data, improving overall efficiency and reducing the risk of errors.

Improved data governance: SAP BW/4HANA includes robust data governance and security features, helping organizations meet regulatory requirements and protect sensitive data.

Cost savings: By optimizing data warehousing processes, SAP BW/4HANA helps organizations reduce costs and improve their bottom line.

Reviews from Real Users

SAP BW4HANA is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Some of its major advantages are its hierarchical alert slicing, real-time insights, and its ability to transform large amounts of data.

PeerSpot reviewer, Srivatsav A., SAP BW/4HANA Specialist at a government, is very happy with the solution. He explains, "You can do hierarchical alert slicing and dicing out-of-box, which is not available in other solutions. I haven't come across that in Oracle or any other software provider."

“It has got wonderful features in terms of analyzing your production data, and it gives you real-time insight into productive maintenance. You can plan your budget, and you can map them against actuals. It gives you good insights on overall performance and processes,” says Amrit J., ERP Application Manager at an energy/utilities company.

In addition, a Technology Analyst at a tech services company mentions, "The most valuable feature is that we can transform a huge amount of data and apply business logic as per the requirements."

SAP

SAP HANA, also known as SAP High-performance Analytics Appliance, is a multi-model database that stores data in its memory, allowing users to avoid disk storage. The product combines its robust database with services for creating applications. SAP HANA is faster than other database management systems (DBMS) because it stores data in column-based tables in main memory and brings online analytical processing (OLAP) and online transaction processing (OLTP) together.

The column-oriented in-memory database design allows users to run high-speed transactions alongside advanced analytics, all in a single system. This provides companies with the ability to process very large amounts of data with low latency and query data in an instant. By combining multiple data management capabilities, the solution simplifies IT, helps businesses with innovations, and facilitates digital transformation.

The solution is structured into five groups of capabilities, categorized as:

Database design
Database management
Application development
Advanced analytics
Data virtualization

There are three more SAP products that work alongside SAP HANA and complete the experience for users together. SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a ready-to-run cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP). SAP BW/4HANA is a packaged data warehouse, based on SAP HANA, which allows users to consolidate data across the enterprise to get a consistent view of their data. Finally, SAP Cloud is a single database as a service (DBaaS) foundation for modern applications and analytics across all enterprise data. All three products can combine with SAP HANA to deliver to users an optimized experience regarding their data.

SAP HANA Features

Each architectural group of capabilities of SAP HANA has various features that users can benefit from. These include:

Parallel processing database: SAP HANA utilizes a single platform to run transactional and analytical workloads.
ACID compliance: This feature ensures compliance with requirements for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability (ACID) standards.
Multi-tenancy: This feature allows multiple tenant databases to run in one system while sharing the same memory and processors.
Multi-tier storage and persistent memory support: SAP HANA's native storage extension is a built-in capability to manage between memory and persistent storage, including SAP HANA Cloud Data Lake.
Scaling: The scaling feature supports terabytes of data in a single server and distributes large tables across multiple servers in a cluster to scale further.
Data modeling: This feature consists of graphical modeling tools that enable collaboration between stakeholders and the creation of models to execute complex business logic and data transformation in real time.
Stored procedures: The product has a native language to build stored procedures and uses advanced capabilities to create complex logic.
Administration: This feature consists of administration tools for various platform lifecycle, performance, and management operations and automations.
Security: SAP HANA provides its users with real-time data anonymization features to extract value from data while protecting privacy.
Availability and recovery: The tool supports high availability and disaster recovery through an array of techniques, including backup, storage mirroring, synchronous, asynchronous, and multitarget system replication.
Extended application services: Through its built-in application server, users can develop services such as REST and ODATA, as well as web applications that can run on multiple locations.
Client access: The product offers clients the ability to access it via other application platforms and languages, including Java, JavaScript, R, and Go.
Application lifecycle management: This set of features facilitates the building and packaging of applications, transporting them for development to test to production, and then deploying them.
Application development: This feature consists of a set of tools that offer application development on premises and in the Cloud. The programming language ABAP includes additional optimized features to build extensions to SAP applications.
Search: The search feature uses SQL to locate text promptly across multiple columns and textual content.
Spatial processing: This product feature provides native support for spatial data types and spatial functions.
Graph: Through this feature, users of the product can store and process highly connected data using a property graph.
Streaming analytics: This feature combines various data sources that users can utilize to discover trends over a set period.
Data integration and replication: The solution offers comprehensive features to handle all data integration scenarios.
Data federation: This feature allows users to perform queries on remote data sources in real time with data federation.
Caching: The capacity to cache data provides users with the ability to optimize federated queries against remote sources of data.

SAP HANA Benefits

SAP HANA provides many benefits for its users. These include:

This solution offers a high level of data and application security, beginning from a secure setup and providing continuous support.
SAP HANA offers augmentation for applications and analytics with built-in machine learning (ML).
The solution works in a timely manner, as it provides a response to queries within seconds in large production applications.
SAP HANA simplifies work, as it provides a single gateway to all user data with advanced data virtualization.
The product is very flexible, as it allows users to deploy applications in a public or private cloud, in multiple clouds, on premises, or hybrid.
SAP HANA scales easily for data volume and concurrent users across a distributed environment.
This is a powerful solution in terms of querying large datasets with a massively parallel processing (MPP) database.
SAP HANA is a versatile product that supports hybrid transactional and analytical processing as well as many data types.
The product provides a smaller data footprint with no data duplication or advanced compression, and reduces data silos.

Reviews from Real Users

According to a database consultant at a pharma/biotech company, SAP HANA is a very robust solution with good data access.

Bruno V., owner at LAVORO AUTOM INF E COM LTDA, likes SAP HANA because the product offers advanced features, helps reduce hours, and makes it easy to find what you need.

SAP

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Unilever, NHS 24, adidas Group, CHIO Aachen, Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited

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