SAP Data Services Reviews

We're primarily using it at a customer's company. It's used in the banking sector. We use it for dashboards and reporting.

It's a good product overall. 

The dashboard is great. It allows us to drill down on data. 

It offers good flexibility.

The solution is doing some good R&D. We have found the technology to be quite good in general.

The initial setup is not complex. 

The solution is stable.

It is scalable.

There is some room for improvement across the product, however, for the most part, we are happy with it. 

We have had some language issues. There needs to be multi-language support, however, my understanding is they are working on multi-language now.

It is expensive. 

I've been using the solution for about 15 years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. I'd rate it eight out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution is scalable. If you want to expand it, you can expand it, depending on how the customer is using it.

We have various customers using the solution. It's suitable for both small and enterprise-level companies. 

We get proper support. It is in English and we'd like different language options, however, their responsiveness and help are fine. Whenever we open a case, we get support.

I have previously used various different solutions.

It is easy to initially set up. If we do have questions, we're always able to reach out to them to get support.

The implementation timelines depend on the customer. Sometimes clients know what they want to do quickly. Others are more slow and steady and take their time. 

The pricing is okay, however, you do pay a lot. It's expensive. The costs vary from client to client. There are different mechanisms for licensing, including user and CPU-based licensing. 

That said, I don't directly deal with licensing and can't get into specifics. 

I've evaluated other options, however, we do use this tool as we have an agreement with SAP.

We are SAP partners.

The solution can work for big or small banks. 

I'd advise users to try this product, however, it needs to be implemented well with requirements taken into consideration properly. However, it does work very well.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our primary use for this solution is just, one-hundred percent, ERP purposes. We were typically Business Intelligence guys and we were not focusing on dealing with the data in-house. After the acquisition of this product, we were led to believe that it was a good business development opportunity for us as well and that we could become a candidate for data analysis projects. Because of the fact that we were based in Istanbul, we quickly became number one in the region for data analysis projects. We used this product in the telecom business. A few of these companies we worked with are still using the solution.

After discovering and deploying this product for our own use in data analysis, we were able to branch out and use it to increase our product line and deploy for other organizations.

The solution helps us to collect and analyze data, and this is the most valuable feature for us. When we first used data services right after  SAP acquisition (previously Acta), we knew that we could deal with DWH projects much more easier way using the tool. Moreover, we were also sure that strong integration with BusinessObjects BI platform was also going to help us for impack analysis, automatic business layer creation etc. 

An area that seems to need to be improved in this product is that it isn't completely ready to compete as it should in the market. Because of some more recent acquisitions to enhance functionality, the product parts are not one-hundred percent integrated. Because some of the integration is still missing, it seems incomplete. People with the product should be able to use most features, generally. The main differentiation in the past product from where it is now is that the product feels like it was integrated. After the acquisitions, things became more complicated. In SAP, the added products and features lack better integration and that impacts things like the metadata. So that is why I believe it can be improved. It's a GUI issue, mostly.

I'm sure this next suggestion is already done to some extent in SAP because SAP is already HANA but it seems SAP — as one of the software giants — is not making the most of their advantage to position data services as a stand-alone product. This is a problem in the market for greater acceptance, but maybe it's the strategy that SAP has chosen. But I believe that it could do better that way and increase the speed of performance. For example, some of the functionality might sit in memory. It would be using the HANA advantage, for example, but without the service to HANA. So maybe we limit certain functionality to HANA. I believe that some of the jobs with higher priority can be done in the memory of the data services which could be differentiating the product from the rest of the market more clearly.

The product is quite stable and quite scalable. Because of our market, some companies are not convinced that these features can possibly be so good, and the cost is not helping to market the product. They want to see an example of how it is scalable. We had telecom data in our last project, and we know it works fine and we haven't had any problem. But somehow this kind of negative impression is common in our market. I believe this is just because of a lack of knowledge and not based on reality.

In the past, we have had about twenty to twenty-five users in the company. We had five to seven developers who were doing our development. On the customer side, we didn't have more than three or four for the development of external projects.

I think it may be that SAP can improve in the area of customer support because SAP is historically a data solution company. Unfortunately, they can open themselves up to better or broader product support and that this is not up to a desirable level in the marketplace. I believe the product as a whole should be improved much more to support a wider range of devices and clients.

Before using SAP, we were using SSIS — the Microsoft product. Of course, the Microsoft product is a simple product. At some point, we realized that it was not powerful enough, and, feeling discouraged, we evolved to using a better product.

Just last week we installed data services to impact data sharing in one of the bigger companies we work for and from an implementation point of view, the ease of setup is okay, I believe.

To be honest, because of the economic situation we are in we always install on-premises. This is because of the Turkish market and some telecom companies aren't quite ready to elect to deploy on the cloud. So the business environment here is not ready yet.

We do our own installations and install for other companies.

I'm not up to date about the pricing for the past three years as it is not my concern in the business, but I can advise users on some things. Since data services are not usually positioned as a stand-alone product in the telecom sector, I believe that it should be. The price should be segmented with attention to the market with some variety in enterprise packages to offer more marketing opportunities. In the past, they had some kind of pricing packaging coming from the distribution center which was definitely an advantage in the market and that's why we were able to get more than twenty projects in the past, including staying within the enterprise market. Then after that time, the pricing changed. Unfortunately, of course, SAP tried to increase revenue and the prices went up. But again, they are losing the market against products like Microsoft SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services). It is integration services, and it's also a good product for a lot of people, but in my opinion, it's not as good as SAP data services. Because of the price, the game now has changed and there is more competition.

On a scale from one to ten, when one is the worst and ten is the best, I think I would rate SAP Data Services BI a nine out of ten. For me, a product needs to be perfect to rate as a ten. I couldn't even give a ten to any product because I haven't seen any product that is perfect. My true feeling is that it is between eight and nine, but if I have to say eight or nine, I choose nine.

I can recommend SAP as a product because the negative side of the product usually comes from different approaches to development. In a way, this is a kind of marketing because some developers prefer to use one type of development where they feel comfortable and think data services can be implemented properly. I believe there are better data services approaches which are much more of an advantage in the long run for projects, but of course, people don't always project the best long-term data approach because they expect short term results.

I primarily use Data Services as a data service and ETL tool.

Data Services' best features are its robustness and plug-and-play integration with other SAP applications. It's also very user- and developer-friendly and has a huge, experienced, and well-informed user community.

In the future, Data Services should offer a cloud version.

I've been using Data Services for between six and seven years.

Data Services' stability is top-notch.

Data Services' scalability is good and can be done vertically and horizontally.

SAP's tech support is okay.

I previously used Informatica, but there were performance issues with it.

The initial setup is not straightforward. You need experience with data services, and if you're upgrading or migrating, you'll need a consultant to help. A brand-new installation takes a day or two, but migration will take longer. However, one good thing is that SAP provides the white papers for their products on their website, so you can find the installation guides there.

We've seen a good ROI from Data Services.

If you're using any SAP application, you shouldn't skip using Data Services. I would give Data Services a rating of eight out of ten.

The ease of mapping and creating the queries are quite useful aspects. Manipulating an integration to different systems is relatively better than any of the ATL2, which are available as well.

It's a flexible solution. You can always manipulate a lot of things as long as you have the skill level.

The initial setup is usually pretty straightforward. 

There is always room for improvement when it comes to the sources being dynamic, however, it is not something that can be done easily. These changes, take years to come into the picture, and it's usually the patch upgrade that comes in. Those are very less at the functional level. 

At the integration level, there could be a certain set of improvements to connect to various other systems.

There are still a lot of glitches with SAP Data Services as of now. 

I'd like for them to make scheduling much more dynamic when we create jobs. 

The dependencies to other systems, when we are running a job, we have certain problems, some optimization schemes, if it can be implemented for the data flows when we run it. If we had multiple data loaders and if we could use that at the same time while ensuring the backend data system doesn't get affected, it would be ideal. 

I've been using the solution for seven years now. 

I cannot confirm stability. It depends on the kind of projects when you get them or if you work in an enterprise-style project that is analytics-based. 

Scalability-wise, we are ATL2. We are not really doing anything pertaining to improving the data quality directly through the group - we are just converting it up, applying business rules from that perspective. It's a bit flexible compared to other ATL2s when it is connecting to data databases. In terms of scalability right now, there is some improvement needed.

Technical support typically caters to us if any of the server systems are down. Otherwise, technical support, pertaining to the builds, I usually don't require assistance. I fix it up at my own speed sometimes with certain tricks I know. Otherwise, the SAP communities are there and you can find answers that way. In worse-case scenarios, if you mess stuff up, you can always raise a ticket to SAP and they can come in with certain experts and they can try and fix the problem.

I'm also working on learning Azure Data Factory. 

The ease of setup depends on the systems you're connecting to. If I'm just forming a data store with say any database it's easy. However, if I'm forming it with any of the SAP systems targeting S4 or above, it's slightly complex and takes some time. There are also a lot of authorizations required and due to all that it's not a thing for an individual person to just pass through. That said, on a technical level, it is still relatively easy if you do receive all the required inputs.

The level of maintenance needed is always dependent on the projects and the amount of data that you're getting. Supposedly if you're giving me ten to 20 million records, my application issues I've stabilized. Data is going fine, and one person can support it if he has a bit of knowledge (somewhere around two to three years working with SAP). However, if it is much more dynamic and still there is a lot of junk data coming in, corrections are needed. In that case, a team of seven or even eight members will not suffice. I've worked once in a team of 40 members and it took us close to four years to stabilize the entire application. 

We used an integrator for the implementation process. 

The licensing costs vary. It depends on the company, on the project. A regular person cannot afford it. It's more for enterprise-level organizations. I'm not sure about the licensing based upon monthly or yearly, however.

There should just be one set fee, however, there may be costs associated with ancillary platforms a company has integrated with SAP. 

I'm an end-user of SAP. I'm using it with my partner. 

I'd advise new users that if they want to be on an equal level in the data analyst field, this is one of the finest tools. It is still a bit under the radar of people and many don't really realize its potential. They're still sticking on the data stage or Informatica. However, there are certain dependencies that SAP has created in which this particular Data Services works best.

I'd rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We use it in at least two ways. One area is data migration from several legacy systems, and the second scenario is data quality. We use it, together with another tool that is in the same package, for cleansing.

It's easy to understand and deploy. It's easy to create new applications, and depending on the complexity of the application, it is easy to deploy the new requirements.

Some of the jobs that are built within Data Services require local files, and during initial deployment, those local files cannot be transported between machines simply because of security issues.

There are no issues from a technical point of view, and the issues are from a security point of view. In this scenario, we need to be sure that we have all of the files in the same centralized environment in order to get one big server to fulfill several or many developers.

I've been working with SAP Data Services since 2008.

It is a stable solution.

You can add a lot of different job servers in order to get a network. It is called grid computing. We can deploy pieces of the work in several servers in order to improve the performance.

I would give an overall rating of nine to technical support.

Positive

The initial deployment is usually easy if you have one machine/one box deployed. However, if you have a network in which there are several job servers, then it is a little bit complex.

The maintenance is not complex. One morning session is enough to upgrade the tool itself.

At the entry level, if you're using it only for data integration, it is a little bit cheap. However, for large organizations it can be expensive. There are additional costs apart from the license.

I have experience with SSIS from Microsoft and DataStage from IBM. I've grown with SAP Data Services, and even though there are other features that I can use in other tools, I am able to build workarounds within SAP Data Services and get the same results.

It's easy to learn, and you can start with the training courses provided within the tool and follow them. Because I've used this tool for a long time, I would give it a rating of ten out of ten.

The maintenance of data services is the solution's most valuable feature.

The solution should allow for better integration with other analysis tools. It needs to integrate better specifically with big data and other management solutions.

The pricing of the solution should be improved.

I've been using the solution for seven years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

Technical support could be a bit better. We haven't been completely satisfied with them.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We use Data Services for data integration, MDM, quality assurance, etc.

I like how SAP Data Services links reporting and data integration. That's what's most interesting. You also have the opportunity to leverage the power of the Data Services server.

I want some more business intelligence applications. People need to know more and more about data, including the transformation rules, etc. Informatica is a better product for data cataloging. SAP should update the data catalog. 

We've used SAP Data Services for around 15 years.

SAP Data Services is stable. 

SAP support is extremely helpful, and SAP Data Services is widely used, so it's easy to find a third-party specialist. It's not the same with Talend. I rate SAP support eight out of 10. 

Positive

We also use Informatica PowerCenter, but it's harder to find an Informatica consultant. SAP is more widely used.

You need some specialized knowledge about SAP tools before the setup. 

Informatica and SAP Data Services are both pricey for a small business. We may have to find another solution that's on the cloud. The license itself isn't the most expensive part. We have to pay for servers, consultants, etc. 

I rate SAP Data Services nine out of 10. 

We've been using this tool for data integration in the banking sector. We gather data from different sources and prepare it for analysis. I'm an integrator and a senior data engineer. 

SAP is quite easy to start working with, especially for those with SAP experience. The basic functionality is quite good as is the basic logic and data information. 

I have several issues with this solution. The first is that the deployment process, the migration of the solution between different environments, is quite complex. Data services doesn't have much in terms of data transformation components so if you want to do something special, it requires custom coding. The embedded features that SAP Data Services offers are not enough for me to implement everything that I want.

I've also found that the internet resources SAP provides are really poor despite the good documentation on their site. If I want to have a conversation with other developers or get an opinion from them, there's not much available. I would prefer to use other tools, but because of our current client's requirements, we are using Data Services. 

I don't have any concerns about stability. I haven't noticed any gaps or issues.

The solution is scalable. 

We previously used Talend which I found to be more flexible in terms of data transformation, applying additional logic and things like that. SAP Data Services has limited possibilities for data transformation.

The solution was implemented prior to my joining the company. We do upgrades and implement some small changes. Unfortunately, this can take some time and is not as easy as it should be. Deployment could be improved. We have a team of four people maintaining Data Services. 

I rate this solution six out of 10.