SAP BW4HANA vs Vertica comparison

SAP and OpenText are both solutions in the Data Warehouse category. SAP is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.6, while OpenText is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.0. SAP holds a 4.5% mindshare in Data Warehouse, compared to OpenText’s 8.6% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of SAP users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of OpenText users who would recommend it.

SAP BW4HANA

Read 42 SAP BW4HANA reviews

1,345 Views
909 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Vertica

Read 86 Vertica reviews

2,233 Views
1,718 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

SAP BW4HANA

Vertica

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Vertica and SAP BW4HANA are leading products in the analytics and data warehousing sector. Vertica tends to have the upper hand in terms of cost-efficiency and query performance, while SAP BW4HANA excels in integration with the SAP ecosystem and handling real-time data.

Features: Vertica is praised for its strong scalability, fast data ingestion, and excellent query performance, supported by advanced analytics capabilities like clustering and projections. SAP BW4HANA handles large volumes of real-time data efficiently, offers robust data transformations, and integrates seamlessly with SAP's extensive ecosystem.

Room for Improvement: Vertica could benefit from enhanced workload management, simplified cluster configuration, and improved documentation. It also lacks native stored procedures and optimized SQL performance. SAP BW4HANA needs to be more user-friendly with easier integration capabilities and lower pricing. A streamlined migration process from BW would also be beneficial.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Vertica supports private, public, and hybrid cloud deployments, as well as on-premises setups. While its customer service is lauded, its technical support receives mixed reviews. SAP BW4HANA is primarily on-premises but offers some cloud options. Its customer support is generally rated lower, with technical support being less reliable.

Pricing and ROI: Vertica offers flexible licensing based on data size, making it reasonably priced with strong ROI through cost savings in hardware and high-performance analytics. SAP BW4HANA, on the other hand, is seen as expensive with a complex licensing model. Its comprehensive capabilities can be advantageous for those deeply integrated within the SAP ecosystem.

To learn more, read our detailed SAP BW4HANA vs. Vertica Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

SAP BW4HANA vs. Vertica

March 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

Ranking in Data Warehouse

8th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Vertica

Ranking in Data Warehouse

5th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Warehouse (11th)

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 Vertica is 8.6%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Warehouse

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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T Venkatesh

Deputy Manager at ICICIBANK Ltd

Processes query faster through multiple systems simultaneously, but it could support different data types

We use the solution for various tasks, including preparing data marts and generating offers. It helps extract data based on rules from the policy team and provides insights to enhance business operations. We also analyze transactions to target customers and improve business performance The…

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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 solution's performance is really good. Also, it's easy to operate, easy to administer, and relatively simple to install."

"The ability to instantly pull data is the most valuable feature."

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

"I like the tool's robustness and security."

"The processes are the most valuable aspect of this solution."

"It is a stable solution...The initial setup was easy."

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

"The solution saves time and cost."

More SAP BW4HANA pros

"I have found the solution to be scalable."

"Vertica is a columnar database, this support our developments in analytics, advanced analytics, and ETL process with large sets of data."

"The feature I like best is performance. We use Red Tool and Red Job for the data warehouse and reporting. It's perfect. Performance is good, and it can return ad hoc queries very quickly. Of course, it's a cluster, so it's easy to scale."

"We are also opening new areas of business and potential new revenue streams using Vertica's analytic functions, most notably geospatial, where we are able to run billions of comparisons of lat/long point locations against polygon and point/radius locations in seconds. "

"Vertica's most outstanding features are the compression rates achieved and the speed of access of high volume data."

"Its analytics has enabled Pythian's clients to get the business insights as quick as they wanted. Its lower maintenance has also improved the ROI."

"It maximize cloud economics for mission-critical big data analytical initiatives."

"Allows us to take volumes and process them at a very high speed."

More Vertica pros

Cons

"One thing that could be enhanced in SAP BW4HANA is the user interface for process chains."

"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."

"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."

"Other competitors provide better solutions that are more up to date with current technology."

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

"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."

"Connecting multiple sources is a challenge because you have to go through a lot of different setups."

"The licensing cost could be made better."

More SAP BW4HANA cons

"In our company, we have faced difficulties in scaling the solution for certain use cases."

"Promotion/marketing must be improved, even though it is a very useful product at very good price, it is not as "popular" as it should be."

"The geospatial functionality could be designed better."

"The documentation of Vertica is an area with shortcomings where improvements are required."

"Limitations in group by projections is where I would like to see an improvement."

"They could improve the integration and some of the features in the cloud version."

"Pricing could be more competitive."

"There are a lot of limitations within this product and it makes things extremely hard for developers. It lacks Stored Procedure, packages, and triggers like other RDBMs."

More Vertica cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is affordable."

"The cost of ownership is higher. It's resource-intensive, and naturally, that increases costs."

"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."

"It is an expensive product."

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

"This is an expensive solution and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"The price is high and currently only affordable for large organizations."

"The cost and licensing depends on how the customer is going to use the solution."

More SAP BW4HANA pricing and cost advice

"The pricing and licensing depend on the size of your environment and the zone where you want to implement."

"The price of Vertica is less expensive than some competitors, such as Teradata."

"The pricing depends on the license model because there are several. It depends on the client, but it's cheaper than other solutions. I think it's cheap for all the functionality and robustness. It's not very expensive to deploy."

"From a cost perspective, the software is less than most of its competitors."

"The price could be cheaper and it is best to negotiate the price."

"Read the fine print carefully."

"The solution is free and we pay for the storage."

"It's difficult today to compete with open-source solutions. In these areas, there is a lot of competition and the price of this solution is a bit pricy."

More Vertica pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

University

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 do you like most about Vertica?

Vertica is easy to use and provides really high performance, stability, and scalability.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vertica?

The solution is relatively cost-effective. Pricing and licensing are reasonable compared to other solutions.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Vertica?

The product could improve by adding support for a wider variety of data types and enhancing features to better compete with other databases.

See all answers

Comparisons

Snowflake vs SAP BW4HANA

Compared 32% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAP BW4HANA

Compared 29% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs SAP BW4HANA

Compared 9% of the time

SQL Server vs SAP BW4HANA

Compared 8% of the time

SAP HANA vs SAP BW4HANA

Compared 8% of the time

More SAP BW4HANA Competitors

SQL Server vs Vertica

Compared 14% of the time

Teradata vs Vertica

Compared 12% of the time

Snowflake vs Vertica

Compared 10% of the time

BigQuery vs Vertica

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Exadata vs Vertica

Compared 8% of the time

More Vertica Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SAP BW4HANA

March 2025

Download SAP BW4HANA product report

Buyer's Guide

Vertica

March 2025

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Also Known As

SAP BW/4HANA

Micro Focus Vertica, HPE Vertica, HPE Vertica on Demand

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

Vertica is a deploy-anywhere SQL database created for elasticity, speed, and advanced analytics. Vertica enables today’s busy teams to modernize their data warehouses, democratize data and analytics to enable increased access, and deploy analytics in a hybrid cloud environment. Additionally, Vertica merges how companies power their analytics by providing a scalable, open, and elastic database with numerous intuitive features.

In today’s marketplace, organizations are experiencing continued robust growth of data volumes, and citizen data scientists’ broader use of analytics is causing many companies to re-visit and re-examine their systems in order to match the demands of an aggressive marketplace. Analytics are continually swiftly evolving. New data from social media, blogs, IoT sources, data streams, gas and electrical grids, and mobile networks is being constantly gathered in extensive data sets. This presents organizations with a new opportunity to become more data driven, and they must be able to manage the new data growth and identify the trends and sequences that can lead to both improved business opportunities and continued repeat business from their clients.

Vertica Benefits:

Vertica has many valuable key benefits. Some of its most useful benefits include:

Efficiency: Vertica provides robust compression and intuitive impressions. This results in users requiring significantly less storage and hardware than other comparable data analytics solutions. The progressive Vertica architecture results in queries that are 10-50 times faster than other platforms while providing more storage data per server.
Integration: Each new iteration of Vertica is tested and certified with the latest ETL and visualization tools. It actively supports Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), and popular SQL providers. All these solutions and most leading BI and visualization tools interact seamlessly, making Vertica overall a very cost-effective solution and solid business investment.
Cloud flexibility: With Vertica, users do not have to get locked into a single cloud vendor. Users are able to take complete advantage of the current infrastructure that is already in place. Vertica seamlessly integrates with popular public clouds, including Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Azure, AWS, Alibaba, VMware clouds, and more. It also provides for easy portability across on-premise and multi-cloud environments and data lakes. Vertica designs a robust flexible platform for running a company’s analytical and computing workloads, which allows applications to run simultaneously on numerous environments in a hybrid cloud infrastructure. Vertica is able to seamlessly use public clouds and private data centers, and it grants the flexibility to switch in an instant.
Security: Vertica offers dynamic end-to-end security with support for partner solutions and industry-standard protocols such as Apache Sentry, AWS IAM, Kerberos, LDAP, and more. Vertica utilizes an intuitive layered security model that provides multiple security authentication authorization mechanisms. Vertica will also maintain an audit trail, natively exported to other security domains for analysis and persistence.

Reviews from Real Users

“I am using Vertica for aggregations and dashboards. The most valuable feature of Vertica is the ability to receive large aggregations at a very quick pace. The use case of subclusters is very good.” - Bijal S., Group Chief Technology Officer at Netcore Solutions

“The hardware usage and speed has been the most valuable feature of this solution. It is very fast and has saved us a lot of money.” - Munkhsaikhan B., Project Lead - Digital Transformation Unit at Bodi Electronics LLC

OpenText

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Cerner, Game Show Network Game, Guess by Marciano, Supercell, Etsy, Nascar, Empirix, adMarketplace, and Cardlytics.

Buyer's Guide

SAP BW4HANA vs. Vertica

March 2025

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