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Apache Hadoop vs SAP Business Warehouse comparison

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Executive Summary

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

Apache Hadoop
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (12th)
SAP Business Warehouse
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (15th)
 

Featured Reviews

NR
Financial Advisor at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Reliable performance maintained but requires ongoing management and support
Hadoop was used for years, but there were problems since the people who originally set it up left the firm. The group that owned it later didn't have the technical resources to properly maintain it. Although there was nothing wrong with Hadoop itself, issues arose without proper management and upgrades.
VishnuReddy2 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Distributed File System, which is the base of Hadoop, has been the most valuable feature with its ability to store video, pictures, JSON, XML, and plain text all in the same file system."
"Two valuable features are its scalability and parallel processing. There are jobs that cannot be done unless you have massively parallel processing."
"Since both Apache Hadoop and Amazon EC2 are elastic in nature, we can scale and expand on demand for a specific PoC, and scale down when it's done."
"The platform's quick data processing capabilities have been instrumental in supporting our AI-driven projects."
"The most valuable feature is the database."
"Its flexibility in handling and storing large volumes of data is particularly beneficial, as is its resilience, which ensures data redundancy and fault tolerance."
"High throughput and low latency. We start with data mashing on Hive and finally use this for KPI visualization."
"It's open-source, so it's very cost-effective."
"The fact that it can integrate with Microsoft Excel is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The best features of SAP Business Warehouse that I am fond of are how this technology handles navigational attributes and the hierarchy; these are two interesting features."
"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is that it's a seamless integration platform."
"The customer support is wonderful. If your technical team is stuck somewhere, they are there to help."
"Getting high volume data is most valuable for us; it is really fast and it has great integration with SAP ERP or a non-SAP system."
"Having the integration with the reporting tool which is provided by SAP is great."
"The product is very stable."
"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is its ability to feed data into new, multiple systems in various formats. It can open its data to any system over gateway services or a portal or application that needs to consume and analyze data."
 

Cons

"We are using HDTM circuit boards, and I worry about the future of this product and compatibility with future releases."
"The integration with Apache Hadoop with lots of different techniques within your business can be a challenge."
"It could be because the solution is open source, and therefore not funded like bigger companies, but we find the solution runs slow."
"It would be good to have more advanced analytics tools."
"The problem with Apache Hadoop arose when the guys that originally set it up left the firm, and the group that later owned it didn't have enough technical resources to properly maintain it."
"Improvements in security measures would be beneficial, given the large volumes of data handled."
"In the next release, I would like to see Hive more responsive for smaller queries and to reduce the latency."
"It could be more user-friendly."
"The solution should be more open to the cloud."
"It takes more work to get the data, including reporting on that data, because some coding is required, and a significant level of transformation is needed when using SAP Business Warehouse."
"In the next release, my suggestion would be to have user-friendly interfaces and performance issues be addressed."
"People are getting frustrated as they have to spend lots of time - 10 minutes to 15 minutes - generating the report."
"The way the data is stored is kind of rigid in SAP BW as a product. It could be more flexible so that when we are designing a solution, we can design our own data structures and try to improve performance."
"The big minuses are its not being user friendly."
"Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward."
"From a support perspective, SAP Business Warehouse is quite a complex module."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is open-source, but some associated licensing fees depend on the subscription level."
"This is a low cost and powerful solution."
"The price of Apache Hadoop could be less expensive."
"The price could be better. Hortonworks no longer exists, and Cloudera killed the free version of Hadoop."
"We just use the free version."
"We don't directly pay for it. Our clients pay for it, and they usually don't complain about the price. So, it is probably acceptable."
"For any big enterprise the costs can be handled, and it is suitable for big enterprises because the scale of data is large. For medium and small enterprises, the tool is on the high-price side."
"Do take into consider that data storage and compute capacity scale differently and hence purchasing a "boxed" / 'all-in-one" solution (software and hardware) might not be the best idea."
"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"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."
"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."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Apache Hadoop?
The problem with Apache Hadoop arose when the guys that originally set it up left the firm, and the group that later owned it didn't have enough technical resources to properly maintain it. This wa...
What is your primary use case for Apache Hadoop?
My use cases for Apache Hadoop include the setups I completed, connecting to the database, and analyzing the incidences, making it a good tool for Hadoop. Apache Hadoop helps us analyze all of the ...
What advice do you have for others considering Apache Hadoop?
When I've dealt with open-source technologies, it's crucial that there's a mechanism for issue escalation. Structured support is invaluable, which is why I appreciate having technical account manag...
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...
What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?
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 Warehou...
What is your primary use case for SAP Business Warehouse?
I am using SAP Business Warehouse in my organization for data warehousing as well as an ETL tool. Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward. Integration with SAP ER...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon, Adobe, eBay, Facebook, Google, Hulu, IBM, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Spotify, AOL, Twitter, University of Maryland, Yahoo!, Cornell University Web Lab
Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Hadoop vs. SAP Business Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.