Amazon EMR vs SAP Business Warehouse comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and SAP are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.8, while SAP is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.3. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 3.4% mindshare in CDW, compared to SAP’s 2.3% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Amazon EMR

Read 25 Amazon EMR reviews

1,599 Views
831 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

SAP Business Warehouse

Read 26 SAP Business Warehouse reviews

912 Views
547 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Amazon EMR

SAP Business Warehouse

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Amazon EMR and SAP Business Warehouse are prominent solutions in the big data and analytics market. While Amazon EMR offers a cost-effective cloud-based approach, SAP Business Warehouse excels in integration and analytical capabilities, giving SAP Business Warehouse a slight upper hand in business data management.

Features: Amazon EMR provides advanced scalability, integration with Hadoop and HDFS, and cost-efficient cloud services using EC2 and S3. Its strengths include rapid processing speeds and substantial data storage. SAP Business Warehouse integrates seamlessly with SAP ERP, handling complex data and offering robust transformation tools tailored for financial, HR, and procurement needs.

Room for Improvement: Amazon EMR has a steep learning curve for beginners and an outdated support interface. Desired improvements include better monitoring, reduced job start times, and enhanced cost control. SAP Business Warehouse needs improved visualization tools and simpler report-building capabilities for non-developers, alongside better real-time data processing and expanded non-SAP integration options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon EMR is renowned for its effective public cloud deployment and generally positive support, though technical support consistency is an area of concern. SAP Business Warehouse requires complex hybrid environment setups, with support quality varying, as some users report inconsistencies.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon EMR's pricing is based on resource usage, allowing scalability without extra licensing costs, though unmanaged costs can be substantial. Its ROI is generally favorable according to user feedback. SAP Business Warehouse’s pricing is complex, based on company revenue, with high licensing costs that deter smaller businesses. While ROI is positive for companies transitioning from on-premise solutions, it remains costly.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon EMR vs. SAP Business Warehouse Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR vs. SAP Business Warehouse

December 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

Amazon EMR

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

13th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Hadoop (3rd)

SAP Business Warehouse

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

14th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 3.4%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 2.3%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon EMR	3.4%
SAP Business Warehouse	2.3%
Other	94.3%

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

reviewer1343079

Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Has simplified ETL workflows with on-demand processing but needs improved cost efficiency and visibility

I have used AWS Glue with S3 for making tables and databases, but regarding Amazon EMR, I do not remember much as we are currently using it very minimally. This is my observation: In EKS, we have had to deploy by ourselves because EKS does not provide the Hadoop framework, Spark, Hive, and everything, but we have completed all the deployment ourselves. Whereas Amazon EMR provides all these things. The cost factor differs significantly. When you run Spark application on EKS, you run at the pod level, so you can control the compute cost. But in Amazon EMR, when you have to run one application, you have to launch the entire EC2. In Qubole, the interface was very good. I could see many details because in Amazon EMR console, very few details are available. In Qubole, at one link, you can get all the details of what is happening, how the processes are running, and the cost decreased by using Qubole. I found Qubole more user-friendly and cost-effective. From the security point of view, we had to open some access rights to Qubole, which might be a drawback in comparison to Amazon EMR which is native to AWS.

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VishnuReddy2

Consulting Enterprise Architect at R2V2.ai

Have encountered complexity with programming language while working on large-scale data integration and have experienced improved governance and reporting

The only complexity I find with the product is the programming language; people find it harder, but once you know the language, it's not that difficult. Regarding the future of SAP Business Warehouse, I would to see added features that simplify the product very well now. They are coming up with a terminology called SAP BDC where they are consolidating their tools, SAP Data Sphere for integration and SAP BW for the ETL and warehousing parts, and SAP Analytics Cloud. They are packaging these three features and calling it Business Data Cloud; they are fully coming on the cloud. We have to wait and watch; they have been speaking about BW/4HANA for quite some time now, but the customers or clients I work with are not finding great interest and it was seen as a candidate for evaluation. I have seen people looking at the latest technologies who are already on cloud who started building from scratch on cloud, such as Snowflake or Databricks, which can process very huge amounts of data and also address unstructured data, where SAP lags behind in cases where there is a need to bring in unstructured data. I have worked with SAP Data Intelligence, which earlier used to be called SAP Data Hub. The unstructured data is not greatly handled in SAP at this point in time.

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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 security of the managed workflow and the managed services are the best features for us. Since we inherited their security model and it's all managed services, those are the key benefits for our clients."

"I rate Amazon EMR as ten out of ten."

"Amazon EMR has multiple connectors that can connect to various data sources."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"The ability to resize the cluster is what really makes it stand out over other Hadoop and big data solutions."

"In Amazon EMR it is easy to rebuild anything, easy to upgrade and has good fault tolerance."

"The project management is very streamlined."

"It allows users to access the data through a web interface."

More Amazon EMR pros

"In terms of stability, comparatively, the solution is quite stable."

"The solution has functionality that makes it easy for end-users to readily extract data directly from Business Warehouse into Excel and carry on their analysis on their own."

"The product is very stable."

"With the technical support, the response has been pretty good from the SAP side."

"Now, because of the HANA integration, the hard disk and RAM are together, and because of that, the output is very quick and very fast actually."

"The warehouse is the solution's most valuable feature."

"The real-time information is great."

"Having the back-end data set with the right information is the best qualification for this solution."

More SAP Business Warehouse pros

Cons

"There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."

"The solution can become expensive if you are not careful."

"The most complicated thing is configuring to the cluster and ensure it's running correctly."

"The product must add some of the latest technologies to provide more flexibility to the users."

"The dashboard management could be better. Right now, it's lacking a bit."

"I feel some lack of functionality in Amazon EMR."

"The product's features for storing data in static clusters could be better."

"Amazon EMR is continuously improving, but maybe something like CI/CD out-of-the-box or integration with Prometheus Grafana."

More Amazon EMR cons

"SAP Business Warehouse could improve by having more out-of-the-box use cases to cover more business types or operations."

"In the next release, my suggestion would be to have user-friendly interfaces and performance issues be addressed."

"We are very unhappy with technical support. First of all, they send their sales agents or pre-sales agents and most of them who don't know the solution as a properly trained tech would. We have an on-site SAP representative who is supposed to help us with our high priority and production issues, and they're not satisfactory to say the least."

"What I'd like to improve in SAP Business Warehouse is its data structure, that's a little bit rigid. It could be a bit more flexible, so you can design your data structure and improve performance when creating a solution. Currently, the way data is stored in SAP Business Warehouse is rigid."

"There is room for improvement from a technical perspective."

"Areas for improvement in SAP Business Warehouse include enhancing scheduling and monitoring tools, as well as improving communication about hidden features to make them more accessible to users."

"More integration with Microsoft Office products (not just Excel) would be helpful."

"What I'd like improved in SAP Business Warehouse is its setup. It could be more flexible, and it could be a configuration-based setup."

More SAP Business Warehouse cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."

"There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"The cost of Amazon EMR is very high."

"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten. It can be expensive since it's a managed service, and if you are not careful, you can run into unexpected charges. You can make a mistake that costs you tens of thousands of dollars. That's happened to us twice, so I'm sensitive to it. We're still trying to work on that. Our smallest client probably spends a hundred thousand dollars yearly on licensing, while our largest is well over a million."

"You don't need to pay for licensing on a yearly or monthly basis, you only pay for what you use, in terms of underlying instances."

"Amazon EMR's price is reasonable."

"There is a small fee for the EMR system, but major cost components are the underlying infrastructure resources which we actually use."

More Amazon EMR pricing and cost advice

"The licensing cost for SAP Business Warehouse depends on your revenue. Its licensing structure is a little bit complicated. The more your revenue is, the higher the price, but SAP does have different pricing structures for various companies. For small businesses, licensing isn't based on revenue, but for big companies, it's revenue-based. There's some agreement regarding pricing for huge companies, so it's different, and SAP Business Warehouse pricing isn't fixed. On a scale of one to ten, I'm rating the licensing cost for SAP Business Warehouse as five because it's very high. As your revenue grows, your licensing cost also increases, so you have to factor that in when calculating your cost."

"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."

"It's quite pricey. SAP changed its pricing policy, so they give you one engine and then you have to buy everything next to it, like MSS, the BPC licenses, and everything else."

"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."

"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."

"The solution is quite expensive."

"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."

"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Educational Organization

13%

Computer Software Company

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

13%

Retailer

10%

Energy/Utilities Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	15

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?

I would rate the price for Amazon EMR, where one is high and ten is low, as a good one.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?

I feel some lack of functionality in Amazon EMR. I have thoughts on what would be great to see in the product, such as AI/ML features or additional options.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Amazon EMR?

I find it easy to integrate Amazon EMR with other AWS services like S3 or EC2 for data processing needs. I would rate this review as eight out of ten.

See all answers

What do you like most about SAP Business Warehouse?

Out-of-the-box reports are very useful.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Business Warehouse?

The pricing for SAP Business Warehouse is on the expensive side. I am not sure about the current costing model as such. In my experience on cloud, I did not use BW HANA Cloud. I used the cloud prod...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?

See all answers

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Compared 12% of the time

Apache Spark vs Amazon EMR

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Amazon Redshift vs Amazon EMR

Compared 8% of the time

Cloudera Data Platform vs Amazon EMR

Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 18% of the time

BigQuery vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 11% of the time

SAP BW4HANA vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 10% of the time

Snowflake vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 9% of the time

More SAP Business Warehouse Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR

January 2026

Download Amazon EMR product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP Business Warehouse

January 2026

Download SAP Business Warehouse product report

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce

No data available

Overview

Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR) is a web service that makes it easy to quickly and cost-effectively process vast amounts of data. Amazon EMR simplifies big data processing, providing a managed Hadoop framework that makes it easy, fast, and cost-effective for you to distribute and process vast amounts of your data across dynamically scalable Amazon EC2 instances.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Reporting, analysis and interpretation of business data are crucial to preserve and enhance the competitive edge of companies by optimizing processes and enabling them to react quickly and in line with market needs. SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) provides tools and functions that enable companies to attain these goals. In SAP BW, you can integrate, transform, and consolidate relevant business information from productive SAP applications and external data sources. SAP BW provides you with a high-performance infrastructure that helps you evaluate and interpret data. Decision makers can make well-founded decisions and identify target-orientated activities on the basis of the analyzed data.

SAP

Sample Customers

Yelp

Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR vs. SAP Business Warehouse

December 2025

Free Report: Amazon EMR vs. SAP Business Warehouse

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