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Dell PowerStore vs SAP BW4HANA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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
6.8
Dell PowerStore provides cost savings, improved performance, efficiency, and a positive ROI through effective data management and storage optimization.
Sentiment score
7.7
SAP BW4HANA centralizes data, enhances productivity and insights, with ROI expected in three to five years.
If you purchase storage with 300 terabytes, you can easily achieve one petabyte of effective capacity.
It's been trouble-free the entire time, with very high performance, as it has been designed and built properly.
We have reduced infrastructure but the same performance.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.0
Dell PowerStore's support quality varies by region and service level, with mixed reviews on responsiveness, expertise, and resolution times.
Sentiment score
5.6
SAP BW4HANA support receives mixed reviews, praised for technical assistance but criticized for variable response times and delays.
If necessary, they will search for a specialist within their Dell network who we can approach with our questions.
I would rate the technical support of Dell PowerStore between nine and ten out of ten.
They're responsive, knowledgeable, and have a quick turnaround.
In the meantime, I found solutions independently and provided two solutions to my client.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Dell PowerStore offers scalability with easy expansion, NVMe technology, and flexible upgrades, meeting diverse enterprise demands efficiently.
Sentiment score
7.1
SAP BW4HANA provides strong scalability through horizontal and vertical scaling, with positive user feedback despite budgeting challenges.
The solution's scalability is a ten out of ten.
The customer likely exceeds 20,000 users globally.
You can create as many tools as needed, providing scalability based on the use case.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Dell PowerStore is highly stable and reliable, praised for performance and seamless integration with minimal significant issues.
Sentiment score
7.6
SAP BW4HANA is stable and reliable but faces scalability challenges with large datasets and needs more cloud-orientation.
When I removed all the cables, it failed over within five minutes.
There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze.
I would rate the stability of Dell PowerStore as ten out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Dell PowerStore needs better VMware integration, enhanced features, cost efficiency, improved user interface, and refined support and documentation.
SAP BW4HANA struggles with complexity, integration issues, high costs, a steep learning curve, and limited customization and support.
If you want to delve into where your I/Os are going, the reporting might need more in-depth information to make informed decisions.
In my organization, we have had to go through two weeks with no replication, which is not very handy for our production environment.
Something needs to be done with the caching to ensure that if some issue occurs, there needs to be an ability to disable caching during maintenance to make it static, safe, and good.
Integration needs improvement.
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerStore is costly but justified by performance, scalability, and features, with competitive cost-per-compute and inclusive licensing.
SAP BW4HANA is costly, with high migration and certification fees, affordable for large enterprises but expensive for smaller ones.
Likely the cost is $400,000 whereas IBM may be $250,000.
Based on my experience, the cost of Dell PowerStore for around 500 GB of capacity is very competitive compared to any other platform in the market.
There's no need to pay for a license; it's all-inclusive.
The certification cost for SAP BW4HANA in 2025 is expected to be one lakh forty thousand.
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerStore is valued for its ease, flexibility, performance, NVMe support, VMware integration, scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.
SAP BW4HANA offers flexible, efficient data management and real-time analytics, featuring user-friendly interfaces and strong integration with SAP ERP.
The solution promotes data reduction, often meeting the compression ratio.
The PowerStore's compression ratio is even higher than the Unity system.
The deduplication part of the solution is valuable since, as a user, you get more space for less money.
The best features include the ability to create data sources directly on tables, and perform mapping without creating info objects.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerStore
Ranking in Data Warehouse
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
NAS (1st), Enterprise SAN (1st), All-Flash Storage (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
SAP BW4HANA
Ranking in Data Warehouse
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 1.2%. The mindshare of SAP BW4HANA is 4.2%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Hassan_Zaki - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrated AI and clustering enhance storage operations effectively
I promote and recommend Dell PowerStore for all workloads to my clients and customers. Most of my customers have one appliance per site. Approximately 80% of my customers have Dell PowerStore implemented in their data centers. We always use CLS as another Dell solution for cybersecurity and data security. The CLS is integrated with the Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Domain, not with Dell PowerStore. Windows, Linux, and some customers use Red Hat or SUSE. We have many operating systems working with Dell PowerStore in the same environments and data centers. CloudIQ and Storage IQ are used by some customers, but Apex AIOps has not been widely adopted yet. Dell PowerStore has integration with VMware and Kubernetes. Most workloads work fine and have very good integration with Dell PowerStore, except for one or two specific workloads in the market. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell PowerStore a nine.
Csaba Grünblatt - PeerSpot reviewer
Performs all necessary data warehouse tasks and offers additional functionalities
SAP BW4HANA improved data reporting processes significantly. Performance on HANA database is good. Well-built data models ensure consistent and fast reporting. Reusable models enhance efficiency, even for SaaS services. In-memory computing, especially since HANA, has greatly improved performance in data analysis tasks. It eliminates the need for complex optimizations like creating indexes or aggregates. Queries that once took minutes now run in seconds, enabling real-time reporting, especially for SAP ECC on HANA. SAP BW4HANA's integration capabilities are streamlined with a simplified architecture and more virtual layers. You can directly load data into optimized layers, reducing the need for extra storage. The introduction of Open ODS Views allows for additional logic and master data inclusion, making integration faster and simpler. The learning curve for SAP BW4HANA is much faster now compared to ten years ago, thanks to abundant free resources like documentation, videos, blogs, and learning journeys provided by SAP. It is simpler to learn with these resources available compared to the past when you had to attend courses and rely on books. I would recommend SAP BW4HANA to users looking to implement it, especially if they want to keep their systems on-premise and already have SAP systems. Those with BW on HANA have two choices: BW4HANA or DataSphere, depending on their cloud strategy. If they are advanced in their cloud strategy and want to migrate off-premise, DataSphere is a good choice. However, for a robust solution on-premise or in a private cloud, BW4HANA is an excellent option. Overall, I would rate BW4HANA as a nine out of ten. It performs all necessary data warehouse tasks and offers additional functionalities. We use it traditionally, with complex transformations and models but with less emphasis on real-time processing and third-party sources.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?
PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and next-gen apps. It is only Flash and can support many workloads from today's app...
How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?
Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated management of resources feature provides a more simple administration. I found the flex...
What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?
Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell offerings and integrated into the PowerStoreOS. The installation and setup have a ...
What do you like most about SAP BW4HANA?
One significant advantage of SAP BW/4HANA is the direct integration with the SAP HANA database, providing seamless access to real-time analytics. Additionally, it enables real-time data integrati...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP BW4HANA?
The certification cost is extremely high. I completed certification for $40,000. The certification cost for SAP BW4HANA in 2025 is expected to be one lakh forty thousand.
What needs improvement with SAP BW4HANA?
Integration needs improvement. In reporting, I am not comfortable with the creation of variables, and some calculations need improvement in BW queries.
 

Also Known As

PowerStore
SAP BW/4HANA
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. SAP BW4HANA and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.