SAP Business Warehouse excels as a corporate data warehouse, providing integrated ETL, warehousing, and reporting capabilities. While other solutions may offer more flexibility, SAP BW stands out as an all-in-one solution, especially for clients using SAP's backend systems like ERP and CRM. It is a logical choice for organizations seeking a comprehensive data warehousing solution tailored to their SAP ecosystem. Before HANA, SAP Business Warehouse's ETL functions were basic compared to competitors, fulfilling their job but lacking sophistication. However, with HANA technology, there has been a significant improvement. Now, we can work with real-time data warehousing, breaking the traditional paradigm of nightly data updates. HANA enables real-time data integration, a substantial advancement in SAP's data warehousing capabilities. By using online database replication, SAP Business Warehouse provides real-time integration of data from multiple sources into the data warehouse. With BW's modeling and transformation features, raw data becomes actionable insights, presented in user-friendly formats, aiding informed decision-making. SAP Business Warehouse's data modeling capabilities have significantly improved our decision-making processes. By leveraging features like Core Data Services and HANA graphical calculation views, we can model data closely to SQL standards and transform it effectively for reporting needs. This enables us to have real-time data in a structured environment optimized for reporting, providing insights that were previously difficult to obtain from transactional systems. If you are considering using SAP Business Warehouse, my advice would be to let the business lead the project, not IT. Overall, I would rate SAP Business Warehouse as an eight out of ten.
