IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs SAP HANA comparison

IBM and SAP are both solutions in the Data Virtualization category. IBM is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.0, while SAP is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.2. IBM holds a 19.8% mindshare in DV, compared to SAP’s 13.7% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of SAP users who would recommend it.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Read 13 IBM Cloud Pak for Data reviews

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145 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

SAP HANA

Read 87 SAP HANA reviews

255 Views
184 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

SAP HANA

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

SAP HANA and IBM Cloud Pak for Data both compete in the enterprise data management and analytics category. SAP HANA appears to have an edge with its robust integration and real-time analytics capabilities.

Features: SAP HANA is known for its in-memory database capabilities, enabling rapid data processing and real-time analytics. It excels in data compression, reducing storage needs significantly. Additionally, integration and security features are highlights, proving effective in supplier relationship management and optimization. IBM Cloud Pak for Data is lauded for its Watson Studio and Machine Learning features. It benefits from containerization for ease of deployment, robust data governance via Watson Knowledge Catalog, and strong AI integration capabilities.

Room for Improvement: SAP HANA is critiqued for its high cost and difficult customization, with users desiring easier integration and a better user interface. IBM Cloud Pak for Data faces challenges with complex deployment and limited native connectors. Improvements in user experience and broader system integration are suggested to enhance its comprehensiveness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP HANA offers deployment flexibility with on-premises and hybrid cloud options, but customer support quality varies. IBM Cloud Pak for Data is typically deployed in public and hybrid clouds, praised for customer and technical support, though its infrastructure demands can be a hurdle during initial deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Both SAP HANA and IBM Cloud Pak for Data are high-cost solutions, targeting larger enterprises. SAP HANA's pricing is often justified by its integration and performance benefits, yet it's extremely costly for smaller companies. IBM Cloud Pak for Data also requires significant setup costs, limiting its appeal to small businesses. Despite high costs, both products offer substantial ROI in terms of performance improvements, but cost remains a significant barrier.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. SAP HANA Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. SAP HANA

June 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

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Ranking in Data Virtualization

3rd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Integration (24th)

SAP HANA

Ranking in Data Virtualization

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Embedded Database (4th), Relational Databases Tools (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Data Virtualization category, the mindshare of IBM Cloud Pak for Data is 19.8%, up from 15.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP HANA is 13.7%, down from 18.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Virtualization

Featured Reviews

Michelle Leslie

Data asset management engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Starts strong with data management capabilities but needs a demo database

What I would love to see is an end-to-end, almost a training demo database of some sort, where one of the biggest problems with data management is demonstrated. There are so many components to data management, and more often than not, people understand one thing really well. They may understand DataStage and how to move data around, but they do not see the impact of moving data incorrectly. They also do not see the impact of everyone understanding a piece of data in the same way. I would love Cloud Pak to come with a demo database that illustrates the different components of data management in a logical way, so I can see the whole picture instead of just the area I'm specializing in. It would be great if Cloud Pak, from a data modeling point of view, allowed us to import our PDMs, for example. It would be ideal to import and create business terms in Cloud Pak. The PEA would be great to create the technical data. The association between the business and the technical metadata could then be automated by pulling it through from your ACE models. The data modeling component is available in Cloud Pak. Additionally, when it comes to Cloud Pak, even though it has the NextGen DataStage built into it, there is Cloud Pak for data integration as well. Currently, I do not think we have a full enough understanding of how CP4D and CP4I can enhance each other.

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Hisham Ismail

Director of Operations of Support / co CEO at Snag Free

An integrated and reliable solution that offers in-memory database

The tool is an in-memory database that stores and retrieves data very quickly. This speed makes it faster to use and maintain data, as no additional processes move data between memory and disk. With SAP HANA's in-memory technology, accessing your data is exceptionally fast. You don't need to retrieve it from disks or other media. Everything you need is already in memory, making data retrieval and report generation quick. In certain instances, decisions must be made within 90 minutes. For instance, ideas that require data to support them are proposed during support meetings. This analysis involves comparing various data sets and dashboards to inform decisions. Integrating our infrastructure with the tool allows for connectivity between different functions, such as material management, manufacturing, human resources, and finance.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are data virtualization and reporting."

"IBM Watson Catalog and data pipelines are the most valuable features of the solution."

"Cloud Pak's most valuable features are IBM MQ, IBM App Connect, IBM API Connect, and ISPF."

"The most valuable feature of IBM Cloud Pak for Data is the Modeler flows. The ability to develop models using a graphical approach and the capability to connect to various sources, as well as the data virtualization capabilities, allow me to easily access and utilize data that is dispersed across different sources."

"Its data preparation capabilities are highly valuable."

"You can model the data there, connect the data models with the business processes and create data lineage processes."

"The most valuable features of IBM Cloud Pak for Data are the Watson Studio, where we can initiate more groups and write code. Additionally, Watson Machine Learning is available with many other services, such as APIs which you can plug the machine learning models."

"I love the way that I can start at a very basic level with my data management journey by capturing my policies, justifying my data, and putting them into different categories to say this is data relating to individuals, for example, or data relating to geography."

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data pros

"The most valuable features are the flexibility and the integration with other solutions in data quality."

"The solution offers advanced features that the company was struggling to implement."

"The solution is marvelous because it controls everything including workflow and that makes our company more productive."

"SAP HANA's best features are its programmability and extensibility - you can size and shape the software however you need."

"Integration is the most valuable feature we use SAP HANA for."

"It's stable and reliable."

"In comparison with other DMS solutions, it offers good performance."

"I would rate the stability a 10 out of 10, and it absolutely deserves that mark."

More SAP HANA pros

Cons

"The solution's user experience is an area that has room for improvement."

"The technical support could be a little better."

"The interface could improve because sometimes it becomes slow. Sometimes there is a delay between clicks when using the software, which can make the development process slow. It can take a few seconds to complete one action, and then a few more seconds to do the next one."

"The solution could have more connectors."

"There is a solution that is part of IBM Cloud Pak for Data called Watson OpenScale. It is used to monitor the deployed models for the quality and fairness of the results. This is one area that needs a lot of improvement."

"One challenge I'm facing with IBM Cloud Pak for Data is native features have been decommissioned, such as XML input and output. Too many changes have been made, and my company has around one hundred thousand mappings, so my team has been putting more effort into alternative ways to do things. Another area for improvement in IBM Cloud Pak for Data is that it's more complicated to shift from on-premise to the cloud. Other vendors provide secure agents that easily connect with your existing setup. Still, with IBM Cloud Pak for Data, you have to perform connection migration steps, upgrade to the latest version, etc., which makes it more complicated, especially as my company has XML-based mappings. Still, the XML input and output capabilities of IBM Cloud Pak for Data have been discontinued, so I'd like IBM to bring that back."

"The setup cost is very expensive. The cost depends on the pieces of the solution I'm using, how much data I have, and whether it's on the cloud or on-prem."

"One thing that bugs me is how much infrastructure Cloud Pak requires for the initial deployment. It doesn't allow you to start small. The smallest permitted deployment is too big. It's a huge problem that prevents us from implementing the solution in many scenarios."

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data cons

"The solution is very expensive, however. The pricing depends on the number of users and many other factors that affect licensing."

"A documents preview could be helpful."

"The product is very demanding on memory requirements."

"The performance and integration with other products are areas in need of improvement."

"The surface side or Attack dashboard needs improvement because there are some gaps after sales services."

"Unlike other databases, it lacks management features that legacy databases like Oracle or SQL servers have. They need to make the solution easier to manage and offer tools that make management more effective. A lot of things you have on traditional databases you have to develop into HANA."

"In my limited experience using SAP, the process of granting access to different modules is difficult. Specifically, the requirement to assign roles and key codes to users rather than being able to assign them individually made the process more complex. It would be beneficial if there was a way to assign key codes separately, rather than having to create multiple roles. This would make managing access easier."

"I think that the pricing is high and it needs improvement."

More SAP HANA cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Cloud Pak for Data is expensive. If we include the training time and the machine learning, it's expensive. The cost of the execution is more reasonable."

"I think that this product is too expensive for smaller companies."

"Cloud Pak's cost is a little high."

"The solution is expensive."

"For the licensing of the solution, there is a yearly payment that needs to be made. Also, since it is expensive, cost-wise, I rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten."

"I don't have the exact licensing cost for IBM Cloud Pak for Data, as my company is still finalizing requirements, including monthly, yearly, and three-year licensing fees. Still, on a scale of one to five, I'd rate it a three because, compared to other vendors, it's more complicated."

"It's quite expensive."

"The solution's pricing is competitive with that of other vendors."

"The licensing cost for SAP HANA is approximately $200 per user per month."

"We pay for a maintenance license, and the licensing cost is high. In general, it is a very expensive solution."

"We pay annually for the license of the solution."

"SAP HANA is affordable. I rate it a seven out of ten."

"The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive."

"The solution's license is very expensive so I rate pricing a one out of ten."

"There is an annual license to use SAP HANA."

"The tool’s subscription is yearly."

More SAP HANA pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

30%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Cloud Pak for Data?

DataStage allows me to connect to different data sources.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Cloud Pak for Data?

The setup cost is very expensive. The cost depends on the pieces of the solution I'm using, how much data I have, and whether it's on the cloud or on-prem.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cloud Pak for Data?

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

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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...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 41% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 15% of the time

Denodo vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 13% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 10% of the time

Informatica PowerExchange vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data Competitors

Oracle Database vs SAP HANA

Compared 23% of the time

SQL Server vs SAP HANA

Compared 21% of the time

MySQL vs SAP HANA

Compared 11% of the time

IBM Db2 Database vs SAP HANA

Compared 9% of the time

Apache Spark vs SAP HANA

Compared 5% of the time

More SAP HANA Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

June 2025

Download IBM Cloud Pak for Data product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP HANA

March 2025

Download SAP HANA product report

Also Known As

Cloud Pak for Data

SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance, HANA

Overview

IBM Cloud Pak® for Data is a fully-integrated data and AI platform that modernizes how businesses collect, organize and analyze data to infuse AI throughout their organizations. Cloud-native by design, the platform unifies market-leading services spanning the entire analytics lifecycle. From data management, DataOps, governance, business analytics and automated AI, IBM Cloud Pak for Data helps eliminate the need for costly, and often competing, point solutions while providing the information architecture you need to implement AI successfully.

Building on the streamlined hybrid-cloud foundation of Red Hat® OpenShift®, IBM Cloud Pak for Data takes advantage of the underlying resource and infrastructure optimization and management. The solution fully supports multicloud environments such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud™ and private cloud deployments. Find out how IBM Cloud Pak for Data can lower your total cost of ownership and accelerate innovation.

IBM

SAP HANA, also known as SAP High-performance Analytics Appliance, is a multi-model database that stores data in its memory, allowing users to avoid disk storage. The product combines its robust database with services for creating applications. SAP HANA is faster than other database management systems (DBMS) because it stores data in column-based tables in main memory and brings online analytical processing (OLAP) and online transaction processing (OLTP) together.

The column-oriented in-memory database design allows users to run high-speed transactions alongside advanced analytics, all in a single system. This provides companies with the ability to process very large amounts of data with low latency and query data in an instant. By combining multiple data management capabilities, the solution simplifies IT, helps businesses with innovations, and facilitates digital transformation.

The solution is structured into five groups of capabilities, categorized as:

Database design
Database management
Application development
Advanced analytics
Data virtualization

There are three more SAP products that work alongside SAP HANA and complete the experience for users together. SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a ready-to-run cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP). SAP BW/4HANA is a packaged data warehouse, based on SAP HANA, which allows users to consolidate data across the enterprise to get a consistent view of their data. Finally, SAP Cloud is a single database as a service (DBaaS) foundation for modern applications and analytics across all enterprise data. All three products can combine with SAP HANA to deliver to users an optimized experience regarding their data.

SAP HANA Features

Each architectural group of capabilities of SAP HANA has various features that users can benefit from. These include:

Parallel processing database: SAP HANA utilizes a single platform to run transactional and analytical workloads.
ACID compliance: This feature ensures compliance with requirements for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability (ACID) standards.
Multi-tenancy: This feature allows multiple tenant databases to run in one system while sharing the same memory and processors.
Multi-tier storage and persistent memory support: SAP HANA's native storage extension is a built-in capability to manage between memory and persistent storage, including SAP HANA Cloud Data Lake.
Scaling: The scaling feature supports terabytes of data in a single server and distributes large tables across multiple servers in a cluster to scale further.
Data modeling: This feature consists of graphical modeling tools that enable collaboration between stakeholders and the creation of models to execute complex business logic and data transformation in real time.
Stored procedures: The product has a native language to build stored procedures and uses advanced capabilities to create complex logic.
Administration: This feature consists of administration tools for various platform lifecycle, performance, and management operations and automations.
Security: SAP HANA provides its users with real-time data anonymization features to extract value from data while protecting privacy.
Availability and recovery: The tool supports high availability and disaster recovery through an array of techniques, including backup, storage mirroring, synchronous, asynchronous, and multitarget system replication.
Extended application services: Through its built-in application server, users can develop services such as REST and ODATA, as well as web applications that can run on multiple locations.
Client access: The product offers clients the ability to access it via other application platforms and languages, including Java, JavaScript, R, and Go.
Application lifecycle management: This set of features facilitates the building and packaging of applications, transporting them for development to test to production, and then deploying them.
Application development: This feature consists of a set of tools that offer application development on premises and in the Cloud. The programming language ABAP includes additional optimized features to build extensions to SAP applications.
Search: The search feature uses SQL to locate text promptly across multiple columns and textual content.
Spatial processing: This product feature provides native support for spatial data types and spatial functions.
Graph: Through this feature, users of the product can store and process highly connected data using a property graph.
Streaming analytics: This feature combines various data sources that users can utilize to discover trends over a set period.
Data integration and replication: The solution offers comprehensive features to handle all data integration scenarios.
Data federation: This feature allows users to perform queries on remote data sources in real time with data federation.
Caching: The capacity to cache data provides users with the ability to optimize federated queries against remote sources of data.

SAP HANA Benefits

SAP HANA provides many benefits for its users. These include:

This solution offers a high level of data and application security, beginning from a secure setup and providing continuous support.
SAP HANA offers augmentation for applications and analytics with built-in machine learning (ML).
The solution works in a timely manner, as it provides a response to queries within seconds in large production applications.
SAP HANA simplifies work, as it provides a single gateway to all user data with advanced data virtualization.
The product is very flexible, as it allows users to deploy applications in a public or private cloud, in multiple clouds, on premises, or hybrid.
SAP HANA scales easily for data volume and concurrent users across a distributed environment.
This is a powerful solution in terms of querying large datasets with a massively parallel processing (MPP) database.
SAP HANA is a versatile product that supports hybrid transactional and analytical processing as well as many data types.
The product provides a smaller data footprint with no data duplication or advanced compression, and reduces data silos.

Reviews from Real Users

According to a database consultant at a pharma/biotech company, SAP HANA is a very robust solution with good data access.

Bruno V., owner at LAVORO AUTOM INF E COM LTDA, likes SAP HANA because the product offers advanced features, helps reduce hours, and makes it easy to find what you need.

SAP

Sample Customers

Qatar Development Bank, GuideWell, Skanderborg Music Festival

Unilever, NHS 24, adidas Group, CHIO Aachen, Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. SAP HANA

June 2025

Free Report: IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. SAP HANA

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