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SAP BW4HANA vs Snowflake 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
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Snowflake
Ranking in Data Warehouse
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of SAP BW4HANA is 4.5%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 15.2%, down from 19.5% 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.
Snehasish Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Transformation in data querying speed with good migration capabilities
Snowflake is a data lake on the cloud where all processing happens in memory, resulting in very fast query responses. One key feature is the separation of compute and storage, which eliminates storage limitations. It also has tools for migrating data from legacy databases like Oracle. Its stability and efficiency enhance performance greatly. Tools in the AI/ML marketplace are readily available without needing development.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the tool's robustness and security."
"I like the reporting features of the solution."
"Out of the box, this solution has a lot of standard features."
"Technology-wise, it is a very robust tool."
"The most valuable features are the speed of reporting and the HANA database."
"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 most valuable feature is that we can transform a huge amount of data and apply business logic as per the requirements."
"The most valuable feature is the dashboard."
"The product's most important feature is unloading data to S3."
"The solution is very stable."
"Its performance is a big advantage. When you run a query, its performance is very good. The inbound and outbound share features are also very useful for sharing a particular database. By using these features, you can allow others to access the Snowflake database and query it, which is another advantage of this solution. It has good security, and we can easily integrate it. We can connect it with multiple source systems."
"Time travel is one feature that really helps us out."
"My company wanted to have all our data in one single place and this what we use Snowflake for. Snowflake also allows us to build connectors to different data sources."
"Snowflake is a great solution if you have substantial data volume."
"The way it is built and designed is valuable. The way the shared model is built and the way it exploits the power of the cloud is very good. Certain features related to administration and management, akin to Oracle Flashback and all that, are very important for modern-day administration and management. It is also good in terms of managing and improving performance, indexing, and partitioning. It is sort of completely automated. Everything is essentially under the hood, and the engine takes care of it all. As a data warehouse on the cloud, Snowflake stands strong on its ground even though each of the cloud providers has its own data warehouse, such as Redshift for AWS or Synapse for Azure."
"I like Snowflake's data exchange capabilities. It can exchange data with downstream systems and other vendor partners as well."
 

Cons

"Not a ten because it's expensive and its ecosystem is not very open."
"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."
"The tool is not easy to use for an end user."
"The product's initial setup phase is a bit complex."
"The speed of operations could be a little faster."
"The cost of the product might be an area that might introduce some restrictions or limitations to customers, making it one of the aspects where improvements are required."
"The solution is not easy to implement. It requires a lot of learning at the beginning."
"In the next release, I would like to see their BI component introduced with a mobile version, as it is not currently present."
"Its stability could be better."
"Snowflake has to build more capabilities because they have only built very few adapters, but they're growing and they're building. They should provide provisions to collect ETL pipeline capabilities, reduce developer work, and make more rapid application development, rather than some customizations. There are very few options, but they are building. I hope they will build ETL rapid application development provisions with more variety."
"I don't know about GCP, if they have connected for GCP. If they don't, they should allow for it."
"Room for improvement would be writebacks. It doesn't support extensively writing back to the database, and it doesn't support web applications effectively. Ultimately, it's a database call, so if we are building web applications using Snowflake, it isn't that effective because there is some turnaround time from the database."
"Cost reduction is one area I would like Snowflake to improve. The product is not very cheap, and a reduction in costs would be appreciated."
"The scheduling system can definitely be better because we had to use external airflow for that. There should be orchestration for the scheduling system. Snowflake currently does not support machine learning, so it is just storage. They also need some alternatives for SQL Query. There should also be support for Spark in different languages such as Python."
"Some SQL language functions could be included."
"Snowflake needs transparency over costs and pricing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is free if we have the ECC license."
"The solution is expensive."
"As an investment, the solution is very expensive."
"The SAP HANA application still hasn't been leveraged to the fullest extent, but it's a five-year enterprise license."
"It's a little expensive compared to Microsoft Azure."
"In general, it's quite expensive."
"The price is high and currently only affordable for large organizations."
"This is an expensive solution and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The price for the solution's license depends on the use cases."
"Snowflake licensing is more flexible and it is cheaper than other solutions. I can use it for only 10 days for MVP, or three years, and for flexible models. I can scale up, or down, and the pricing is based on the volume and duration. There are many licensing permutation combinations available."
"The price of Snowflake is very reasonable."
"There is a license needed to use this solution. There are a few licensing options available. They have a pay-as-you-go option, but it is recommended to pay upfront."
"You pay based on the data that you are storing in the data warehouse and there are no maintenance costs."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing part is based on the computing and storage. The costs are different and then there are services costs as well."
"Pricing is approximately $US 50 per DB. Terabyte is around $US 50 per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Retailer
8%
Educational Organization
37%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
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 Snowflake?
The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake?
Snowflake's pricing is on the higher side, rated as eight out of ten. If there were ways to reduce costs, it would be a positive improvement.
What needs improvement with Snowflake?
Cost reduction is one area I would like Snowflake to improve. The product is not very cheap, and a reduction in costs would be appreciated.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SAP BW/4HANA
Snowflake Computing
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP BW4HANA vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.