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Alibaba Cloud vs SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 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

Alibaba Cloud
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
8th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 13.0%, up from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is 1.7%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution is useful for application development, but the user interface and user experience must be improved
The product must be made easier to use. The design is a bit tricky. When we log in to the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace and browse products, they look very small. The user experience must be improved. Alibaba Cloud must increase its partner network and brand awareness in our country. It will give our customers more opportunities to scale and save in the long run.
Rajnikant Verma - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time data processing and good support with room for market-driven improvements
SAP RFX and overall SAP solutions provide a very intuitive and integrated solution within finance, leading procurement, and other business scenarios. The real-time data processing and the ability to track all leasing processes and contracts are particularly valuable. SAP's capability to integrate with other systems like GIS and non-SAP applications also stands out.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Flexibility and costs were probably the most important thing for us. The cost was one of the big factors for choosing Alibaba Cloud relative to other cloud solutions, especially in Asia"
"Alibaba Cloud has lower costs and good support."
"The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable. It's quite inexpensive."
"Alibaba Cloud allows for easy setup of mirror sites and backup servers, ensuring data redundancy and high availability."
"We use the solution to run VMs."
"Feature-wise, it provides many features. ECS, VM, SP, bucket object storage, and databases are the most valuable."
"We use the product for storage and as a VPN."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy for me since I had a background in cloud products."
"It is a scalable solution if you have a good cloud infrastructure."
"The real-time data processing and the ability to track all leasing processes and contracts are particularly valuable."
"The solution is stable and we have never had a problem. We started with one terabyte of data when the solution was first implemented and today we have around almost 600 gigabytes of data, which means means the compression works properly. Before migrating from ECC, we had nine terabytes of data."
"The processes and the way we take advantage and use assistance are good."
"My company has not had any problems with the product's initial setup phase."
"The scalability is good because we have some cloud resources to support the ERP."
"It is a stable and scalable product."
"There's a minimum amount of downtime when using the solution. This platform is very effective."
 

Cons

"A big area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is its support. Another area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is SDK-based service because sometimes, the SDKs don't work correctly. Support for API-based services also needs improvement in Alibaba Cloud because, at the moment, it's not that stable."
"Users use websites as a tutorial. However, the Alibaba Cloud website has the content, and the scripts are copied from Amazon Web Services. We had received customer feedback where the customer asked us to get formulate original content instead of copying from Amazon Web Services. It’s very odd and awkward."
"From a performance point of view, Huawei and Azure are faster. Alibaba isn't as good."
"The solution needs to improve its graphical user interface."
"It is not robust."
"Alibaba Cloud has some problems related to latency and connection issues. If you go for a cloud solution provider, you will need to access the Internet, which may result in latency and bandwidth issues, leading to slowness in operations."
"The support offered by the tool is ridiculous."
"The solution name is not favorable in some markets and could cause us some problems gaining customers."
"SAP should adopt more rapid changes in market processes and customer needs to deliver solutions that meet new industry requirements swiftly."
"The licensing model for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud has changed, and it is not entirely clear for final customers. Instead of named users, they now have to calculate FUEs."
"They should probably offer more cloud services. Most of the cloud infrastructure providers we have make everything pretty transparent, you know what you're getting, you have all these metrics and measurements and everything in the dashboard. Here you have to go through the contracting negotiations and all those things."
"This product is not mature enough at this point in time."
"Customization is an area of concern in SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, where improvements are required."
"The SAP products are complicated to deploy anywhere."
"Our data centers are in Europe and come under GDPR regulations, and this doesn't apply to the Middle East yet. It causes a lot of confusion."
"Enterprise Cloud's reporting could be more automated to improve content accountability, especially regarding BI reports."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm not sure about the exact pricing, but let's just say if it cost a dollar for Amazon AWS, it was closer to 70 to 80 cents for Alibaba Cloud."
"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud. Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."
"The product is not that expensive."
"I noticed on the pricing that it's quite expensive. It is the price you pay for making a practical choice for enterprise-level companies since it has so many features and it fits an enterprise-level company just like our company right now."
"The cost is better than similar solutions."
"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"The cost of Alibaba Cloud is lower than that of AWS, but I feel that its price is on the higher end of the spectrum. Alibaba Cloud charges its users a price in dollars"
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"It's very, very expensive."
"I rate the product's price a five out of ten."
"The price is expensive compared to the competition."
"The price is on little bit higher. For SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, we see roughly five crores per annum."
"The price is high compared to other databases, which is why HANA is still not widely used. Some enterprises prefer Sybase, Oracle, or other traditional databases because HANA is a little pricey. Cost is one factor SAP needs to work on to make it more competitive with other databases. Otherwise, they'll never be able to develop a mass customer base."
"The licensing of the solution is on a yearly basis. The normal price of the solution is quite high, but I received a special discount by making a purchase near the end of the year."
"SAP may not be the most cost-effective option, but it does offer a comprehensive set of tools and features. When you have the right information, structure, and dashboard in place, it can provide excellent value. Additionally, competition with Oracle might be a factor to consider."
"The solution's cost is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
University
8%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alibaba Cloud?
ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alibaba Cloud?
On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten.
What needs improvement with Alibaba Cloud?
Alibaba Cloud needs to improve emails. Its pricing can also be lower. Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand,...
What do you like most about SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud?
It has significantly streamlined our operations.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud?
SAP HANA Cloud can be quite costly compared to other solutions. The high licensing costs make it an expensive option, particularly for smaller customers. However, they offer solutions for mid-sized...
What needs improvement with SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud?
When discussing migration projects with SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, one issue they face concerns the satellite systems - systems that have connections with their SAP. However, this has improved as S...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
FC Bayern Munich, Reuters News Agency, MEMEBOX
Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.