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SAP BW4HANA vs SAP IQ 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 BW4HANA
Ranking in Data Warehouse
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP IQ
Ranking in Data Warehouse
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of SAP BW4HANA is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP IQ is 2.3%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Csaba Grünblatt - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Tejas Raj - PeerSpot reviewer
Columnar database, so pulling records is easy but there isn't enough documentation for installation
I've seen very few SAP IQ systems in recent years. So people are moving away from SAP IQ In the last three years, I've rarely encountered customers using it. Fewer systems with SAP IQ usage among our customers. Most of them have moved on to HANA. There are parallel products, and there are also viable alternatives from AWS, so many have migrated to those.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can get good visualization and less redundant data."
"The product has efficient performance."
"It provides the functions in a way that even a less technical person can do the modeling."
"The most valuable features are the speed of reporting and the HANA database."
"The UI is completely new, beautiful, and user-friendly. There are some other helpful features like global filters and advanced tools. We can perform custom calculations easily From a technical perspective, the performance has been enhanced and optimized for a limited number of flows. The content settings are more advanced, and there are so many other features that I can't name them all."
"It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable feature is that we can transform a huge amount of data and apply business logic as per the requirements."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it is a very powerful tool. The solution also has the best stability, robustness, and customizability features."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The column-based technologies (basically all the database for ITP) are used for SAP IQ. It is used as a column-based solution."
"IQ is a very high-performance and high-transaction database."
"It is very robust for ad hoc DW queries and its columnar compression is unique and valuable."
"All data is compressed and indexed, allowing for fast execution of transactions."
"Unbeatable speed and compression with a colummn-structured relational database."
"Columnar storage allows high compression, high load rates and high query performance."
"The primary benefit of SAP IQ is its ability to limit the expansion of the costly SAP HANA database, which has limited storage capacity. This necessitates a form of data management that involves moving data from SAP HANA to SAP NLS, which is essentially archiving. This allows us to retain access to the data via a link whenever it is required."
 

Cons

"The interface could be more user-friendly, as we often need to do low-level coding to get things done."
"One thing that could be enhanced in SAP BW4HANA is the user interface for process chains."
"The solution does occasionally get a few bugs, but this is typical for any product."
"The speed of operations could be a little faster."
"We cannot integrate with third-party tools like Python or advanced integration options. You can't fine-tune tables within BW or generate specific views or reports."
"SAP BW/4HANA can generally be less flexible than other tools, depending on how it is set up."
"The tool is not easy to use for an end user."
"It's complicated to use. You need to spend a lot of time learning about it. The interface could be improved. It's not intuitive to build a data model and use their ETL tools."
"There is very little documentation available."
"Multiplex is very problematic. There are consistency problems in the metadata, meaning it is possible to lose metadata consistency. You should make sure you have healthy backups."
"The tool gets stuck sometimes."
"The room for improvement would be the marketing of the product, because this product is much better than advertised."
"The primary negative aspect is the cost, which can be a challenge due to the economic conditions in Peru."
"I think the universe should be part of the Sybase IQ tool set."
"The solution works best when combined with other SAP solutions. If the environment has other systems other options might be better."
"Concurrency and functional error messaging."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As an investment, the solution is very expensive."
"The cost of ownership is higher. It's resource-intensive, and naturally, that increases costs."
"SAP BW/4HANA is expensive."
"In general, it's quite expensive."
"Price wise, this solution is on the higher side."
"We have a broad licensing arrangement, which is expensive but worth it for sizeable businesses."
"The solution is expensive."
"The SAP HANA application still hasn't been leveraged to the fullest extent, but it's a five-year enterprise license."
"Negotiate based on the features required."
"Negotiation is very important."
"The only costs after standard licensing fees are for add-ons and upgrades."
"Evaluate all options; check to see if you need expensive add-ons."
"The cost of implementation is about $3,000."
"It's not that costly. So, the pricing is cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
43%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
5%
 

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...
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.
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.
What do you like most about SAP IQ?
The primary benefit of SAP IQ is its ability to limit the expansion of the costly SAP HANA database, which has limited storage capacity. This necessitates a form of data management that involves mo...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP IQ?
IQ implementation costs about three thousand dollars. It's less expensive compared to alternatives like Teradata Base in terms of transactional efficiency.
What needs improvement with SAP IQ?
The primary negative aspect is the cost, which can be a challenge due to the economic conditions in Peru.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SAP BW/4HANA
Sybase IQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ASR Group, Citrix, State of Indiana, PocketCard Co. Ltd.
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP BW4HANA vs. SAP IQ and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.