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Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs SAP HANA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.5
Measuring ROI from Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is complex due to diverse applications, pricing, and evaluation difficulties.
Sentiment score
6.3
SAP HANA users saw financial and speed benefits, but mid-sized businesses faced mixed feelings about integration costs and challenges.
We do not feel we're getting value for the investment due to the additional resources needed for integration and maintenance.
SAP HANA is a cost-saving solution that helps save money and serves as a time-saving solution that helps save time.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
Cloudera's Hadoop support receives mixed reviews, with users praising responsiveness while noting concerns on quality and accessibility.
Sentiment score
6.0
SAP HANA customer service is well-received but varies; improvements needed in response speed, solution accuracy, and expert access.
The technical support is quite good and better than IBM.
The community support is better than the official SAP support.
While issues are resolved eventually, the first level of support is not as good as we would like.
Time to respond to SAP support is an issue, and finding the right person and handling the whole process are problems too.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is highly scalable and flexible, suitable for large deployments but can be costly to expand.
Sentiment score
7.8
SAP HANA efficiently scales for various user loads, supports growing data, and manages enterprise transactions across industries.
Our operations have grown from a hundred data operations a day to as many in a couple of seconds.
The scalability rating is based on the ability to expand.
There is enough scalability offered by SAP to meet our deployment needs.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop has mixed stability reviews, with hardware issues noted, but support and workarounds are available.
Sentiment score
7.8
SAP HANA is generally stable and reliable, but some users face occasional performance issues linked to external factors.
We faced challenges but overcame those challenges successfully.
We recently faced customer data loss during the cluster handover or failover fallback.
We have not had any problems in the last seven to eight years.
Regarding stability, they are using legacy systems and have implemented SAP HANA.
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop struggles with stability and integration, needing better performance, security, documentation, and modern deployment solutions.
SAP HANA faces criticism for high cost, complex deployment, resource limitations, and a challenging interface, affecting adoption and usability.
Integrating with Active Directory, managing security, and configuration are the main concerns.
The main issue is the ecosystem, which lacks the widespread support that SQL enjoys.
The problem is the price; it's too expensive for what it actually delivers.
Many customers still prefer Oracle, possibly due to cost or familiarity, despite SAP mandating that they have to go to SAP HANA.
 

Setup Cost

Cloudera's Hadoop distribution is costly, aimed at large enterprises, lacking a community version, with per-node licensing.
SAP HANA's high pricing favors larger enterprises, requiring careful budgeting, with some opting for alternatives due to costs.
It can be deployed on-premises, unlike competitors' cloud-only solutions.
It's a recurring subscription model, which is expensive compared to legacy systems with just a maintenance fee.
The pricing of SAP HANA is quite expensive.
I would rate the price for SAP HANA as high.
 

Valuable Features

Cloudera for Hadoop offers easy installation, robust security, tool integration, scalability, and supports on-premises and cloud environments.
SAP HANA offers real-time analytics, integration, scalability, and a user-friendly interface, supporting large enterprises with efficient data handling.
It is scalable, ready for vertical scaling, and very powerful, offering numerous functionalities and configurations for generative AI.
The concept enhances speed, allowing the database to serve and move data quickly.
It allows some tables to be stored in a column base, others in a row base, and the In-Memory functionalities are mostly the highlight of SAP HANA, especially compared to disk-based memory users.
This architecture allows for faster data processing and real-time analytics that were not possible with traditional databases.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudera Distribution for H...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (2nd), NoSQL Databases (8th)
SAP HANA
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (2nd), Embedded Database (4th), Relational Databases Tools (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

Rok Dolinsek - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables on-premise implementation with powerful data processing capabilities
This is the only solution that is possible to install on-premise. Cloudera provides a hybrid solution that combines compute on cloud or on-premises. It includes all machine learning algorithms in the Spark machine learning library. All functionalities needed for a big data platform and ETL are on the platform, eliminating the need for other tools. It is scalable, ready for vertical scaling, and very powerful, offering numerous functionalities and configurations for generative AI.
Dhiraj Jankar - PeerSpot reviewer
Users appreciate the mix of in-memory architecture and ease of backend management
The most valuable SAP HANA features are that, compared to Oracle, there is less administrative work and less complex work to handle, making it very straightforward. The tool itself takes care of the backend work. The main benefits SAP HANA provides to users include its architecture, which combines both column store and row store capabilities. Some places find the row feature important, whereas others find column store important. It allows some tables to be stored in a column base, others in a row base, and the In-Memory functionalities are mostly the highlight of SAP HANA, especially compared to disk-based memory users. This was the main reason SAP HANA was introduced initially.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
18%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
11%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
The tool can be deployed using different container technologies, which makes it very scalable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
The price for Cloudera is average, yet it is very good compared to other solutions. It can be deployed on-premises, unlike competitors' cloud-only solutions.
What needs improvement with Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
If they could support modifying the data more easily than the current implementation, it would be beneficial.
What are the biggest benefits of using SAP HANA?
Based on my work with SAP HANA, the biggest benefit that it can bring to your business is total data management. This product is by SAP - a company that serves almost all needs a client may have co...
Is SAP HANA’s customer and technical support reliable?
We have been using SAP HANA for a fairly short period of time and have only taken advantage of their customer support. So far, we have not had issues that required specialized help from technical s...
Is SAP HANA difficult to set up and start using?
SAP HANA is fairly easy to set up, however, I do not think a complete beginner can do it. You certainly need some preparation - either you need to have experience with similar solutions, or with ot...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance, HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

37signals, Adconion,adgooroo, Aggregate Knowledge, AMD, Apollo Group, Blackberry, Box, BT, CSC
Unilever, NHS 24, adidas Group, CHIO Aachen, Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs. SAP HANA and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.