Azure Data Factory vs SAP Business Warehouse comparison

Microsoft and SAP are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Microsoft is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.2, while SAP is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.0. Microsoft holds a 6.8% mindshare in CDW, compared to SAP’s 2.1% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Azure Data Factory

Read 92 Azure Data Factory reviews

13,131 Views
2,232 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

SAP Business Warehouse

Read 25 SAP Business Warehouse reviews

730 Views
511 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Azure Data Factory

SAP Business Warehouse

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

SAP Business Warehouse and Azure Data Factory are competing in the data integration and management category. Azure Data Factory seems to have the upper hand due to its feature set and scalability advantages.

Features: SAP Business Warehouse specializes in comprehensive analysis, built-in warehousing, and structured data management. Azure Data Factory excels in seamless cross-platform integration, handling complex ETL processes, and scalable cloud-based solutions.

Room for Improvement: SAP Business Warehouse could enhance ease of deployment, reduce setup complexity, and improve integration with non-SAP systems. Azure Data Factory might focus on expanding community support, enhancing user training resources, and simplifying certain advanced configurations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP Business Warehouse requires substantial deployment resources but offers excellent support and detailed installation guidance. Azure Data Factory provides a quick, cloud-based setup with extensive Microsoft documentation, relying more on community resources for support.

Pricing and ROI: SAP Business Warehouse has a higher initial cost, potentially affecting early ROI, yet offers significant returns through data optimization. Azure Data Factory provides a flexible pricing model with lower entry costs, allowing scalability and yielding favorable ROI by aligning with varying data volumes.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Data Factory vs. SAP Business Warehouse Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Data Factory vs. SAP Business Warehouse

September 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

Azure Data Factory

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

2nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Integration (1st)

SAP Business Warehouse

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

14th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Azure Data Factory is 6.8%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 2.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Azure Data Factory	6.8%
SAP Business Warehouse	2.1%
Other	91.1%

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

KandaswamyMuthukrishnan

Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Integrates diverse data sources and streamlines ETL processes effectively

Regarding potential areas of improvement for Azure Data Factory, there is a need for better data transformation, especially since many people are now depending on DataBricks more for connectivity and data integration. Azure Data Factory should consider how to enhance integration or filtering for more transformations, such as integrating with Spark clusters. I am satisfied with Azure Data Factory so far, but I suggest integrating some AI functionality to analyze data during the transition itself, providing insights such as null records, common records, and duplicates without running a separate pipeline or job. The monitoring tools in Azure Data Factory are helpful for optimizing data pipelines; while the current feature is adequate, they can improve by creating a live dashboard to see the online process, including how much percentage has been completed, which will be very helpful for people who are monitoring the pipeline.

Read full review

Srini-Dhanaraj

Founder & CEO at imfine.club

The solution enables seamless connection, but it is expensive, and the information is one day old

Out-of-the-box reports are very useful. The product provides a seamless connection between the SAP operation system and the data warehouse. It also moves the data from the operating system to the data warehouse in a 3D format. The report generation is easy. It’s a drag-and-drop process. People who want to do a project need not reinvent the wheel. Everything is designed, built, and delivered out of the box. All we have to do is interact with the customers to understand the kind of reports they need and check whether they are already available in the out-of-the-box report. If they are available, we just have to enable them and give the URLs to the customers. The Integration between the SAP operating system and data warehouse is excellent. The UI is good.

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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

"What I like best about Azure Data Factory is that it allows you to create pipelines, specifically ETL pipelines. I also like that Azure Data Factory has connectors and solves most of my company's problems."

"Data Flow and Databricks are going to be extremely valuable services, allowing data solutions to scale as the business grows and new data sources are added."

"For developers that are very accustomed to the Microsoft development studio, it's very easy for them to complete end-to-end data integration."

"The data is more scalable."

"On the tool itself, we've never experienced any bugs or glitches. There haven't been crashes. Stability has been good."

"I think it makes it very easy to understand what data flow is and so on. You can leverage the user interface to do the different data flows, and it's great. I like it a lot."

"The scalability of the product is impressive."

"The solution includes a feature that increases the number of processors used which makes it very powerful and adds to the scalability."

More Azure Data Factory pros

"SAP Business Warehouse is a scalable solution."

"We are currently in a basic stage of analytics and the first goal we have is to make sure the numbers are correct. BW has some features that help you to build factors and ETL in such a way that it's easy to get to correct responses. That's the number one condition that you have to have in an analytic solution."

"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the integration with SAP ERP."

"The most valuable feature of SAP Business Warehouse is its hybrid functionality, allowing users to leverage both SQL-based data warehouse capabilities from HANA and feature-based data warehousing from BW."

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

"The most useful feature is definitely the speed."

"I like that it integrates to open-source."

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

More SAP Business Warehouse pros

Cons

"On the UI side, they could make it a little more intuitive in terms of how to add the radius components. Somebody who has been working with tools like Informatica or DataStage gets very used to how the UI looks and feels."

"Data Factory's performance during heavy data processing isn't great."

"Currently, our company requires a monitoring tool, and that isn't available in Azure Data Factory."

"The setup and configuration process could be simplified."

"Data Factory could be improved by eliminating the need for a physical data area. We have to extract data using Data Factory, then create a staging database for it with Azure SQL, which is very, very expensive. Another improvement would be lowering the licensing cost."

"User-friendliness and user effectiveness are unquestionably important, and it may be a good option here to improve the user experience. However, I believe that more and more sophisticated monitoring would be beneficial."

"I do not have any notes for improvement."

"The speed and performance need to be improved."

More Azure Data Factory cons

"I'm not sure if our issue is related to BW or the Analysis Office. However, we're having performance issues in terms of time. It takes a long time to generate the report."

"I would like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users."

"The solution should be more open to the cloud."

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

"So far, the initial setup process in our company has not been easy enough for us to understand."

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

"One of our requirements is the ability to easily get answers regarding trends and exceptions. In BW, it is not that easy to get such information. I expect better trend and exception detection, better pattern detection."

"SAP Business Warehouse could integrate better with other ETL tools."

More SAP Business Warehouse cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing appears to be reasonable in my opinion."

"The price is fair."

"The price you pay is determined by how much you use it."

"The pricing is a bit on the higher end."

"Data Factory is expensive."

"It's not particularly expensive."

"Our licensing fees are approximately 15,000 ($150 USD) per month."

"Product is priced at the market standard."

More Azure Data Factory pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Manufacturing Company

13%

Retailer

10%

Energy/Utilities Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	31
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	55

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	15

Questions from the Community

How do you select the right cloud ETL tool?

AWS Glue and Azure Data factory for ELT best performance cloud services.

See all answers

How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica PowerCenter?

Azure Data Factory is flexible, modular, and works well. In terms of cost, it is not too pricey. It offers the stability and reliability I am looking for, good scalability, and is easy to set up an...

See all answers

How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica Cloud Data Integration?

Azure Data Factory is a solid product offering many transformation functions; It has pre-load and post-load transformations, allowing users to apply transformations either in code by using Power Q...

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 solution is quite expensive. We paid a yearly subscription fee.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?

Over a period, we realized that the license and maintenance costs were quite expensive. Every day, we had to run the background job ODS. Eventually, we moved away from SAP Business Warehouse and bo...

See all answers

Comparisons

Snowflake vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 8% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 6% of the time

Informatica PowerCenter vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 6% of the time

FME vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 5% of the time

Palantir Foundry vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 5% of the time

More Azure Data Factory Competitors

Databricks vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 30% of the time

BigQuery vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 25% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 23% of the time

Snowflake vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 10% of the time

More SAP Business Warehouse Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Data Factory

October 2025

Download Azure Data Factory product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP Business Warehouse

September 2025

Download SAP Business Warehouse product report

Overview

Azure Data Factory efficiently manages and integrates data from various sources, enabling seamless movement and transformation across platforms. Its valuable features include seamless integration with Azure services, handling large data volumes, flexible transformation, user-friendly interface, extensive connectors, and scalability. Users have experienced improved team performance, workflow simplification, enhanced collaboration, streamlined processes, and boosted productivity.

Microsoft

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

1. Adobe 2. BMW 3. Coca-Cola 4. General Electric 5. Johnson & Johnson 6. LinkedIn 7. Mastercard 8. Nestle 9. Pfizer 10. Samsung 11. Siemens 12. Toyota 13. Unilever 14. Verizon 15. Walmart 16. Accenture 17. American Express 18. AT&T 19. Bank of America 20. Cisco 21. Deloitte 22. ExxonMobil 23. Ford 24. General Motors 25. IBM 26. JPMorgan Chase 27. Microsoft (Azure Data Factory is developed by Microsoft) 28. Oracle 29. Procter & Gamble 30. Salesforce 31. Shell 32. Visa

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

Buyer's Guide

Azure Data Factory vs. SAP Business Warehouse

September 2025

Free Report: Azure Data Factory vs. SAP Business Warehouse

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