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 7.0, while SAP is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.1. IBM holds a 14.4% mindshare in DV, compared to SAP’s 10.0% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of SAP users who would recommend it.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Read 13 IBM Cloud Pak for Data reviews

2,186 Views
240 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

SAP HANA

Read 91 SAP HANA reviews

6,540 Views
196 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

SAP HANA

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

SAP HANA and IBM Cloud Pak for Data compete in the enterprise data management category. SAP HANA has an edge in real-time processing, whereas IBM Cloud Pak for Data excels in cloud flexibility.

Features: SAP HANA is known for its real-time data processing and zero downtime capabilities which are ideal for high-speed processing and scalability. Its in-memory capabilities enhance speed and data compression, and it supports supplier relationship management with strong integration capabilities. IBM Cloud Pak for Data stands out with data governance features offered through Watson Knowledge Catalog, enabling easy creation of data catalogs and data modeling for business processes. Its containerization flexibility aids cloud deployments, coupled with strong AI modeling and machine learning support.

Room for Improvement: SAP HANA faces high costs and complex customization processes, with users calling for better technical support, scalability, and integration options. Challenges in user experience and more management and mobility options are also noted. IBM Cloud Pak for Data struggles with steep infrastructure requirements and complexities in cloud transition, needing simpler installation and better connectivity with existing data services.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP HANA is typically deployed on-premises or as a hybrid cloud solution, complicating setup, and customer service varies with mixed feedback results. IBM Cloud Pak for Data focuses more on public and hybrid cloud deployments, generally receiving positive reviews for ease of deployment despite being resource-intensive.

Pricing and ROI: SAP HANA is often viewed as expensive relative to other solutions, its high costs sometimes prohibitive for smaller companies, though it can provide good ROI through reduced time and resources needed. IBM Cloud Pak for Data is competitively priced in relation to alternatives, ideally suited for larger companies due to its cost structure, allowing for careful consideration of cost versus value.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. SAP HANA

September 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 870,697 peers since 2012

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 (26th)

SAP HANA

Ranking in Data Virtualization

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

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

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Data Virtualization category, the mindshare of IBM Cloud Pak for Data is 14.4%, down from 16.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP HANA is 10.0%, down from 17.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Virtualization Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
SAP HANA	10.0%
IBM Cloud Pak for Data	14.4%
Other	75.6%

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.

Read full review

Dhiraj Jankar

Senior SAP Basis Consultant at Capgemini

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.

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."

"It is a scalable solution, and we have had no issues with its scalability in our company. I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten."

"Its data preparation capabilities are highly valuable."

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

"One of Cloud Pak's best features is the Watson Knowledge Catalog, which helps you implement data governance."

"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine or ten out of ten."

"Cloud Pak is a very, very, very good system."

"What I found most helpful in IBM Cloud Pak for Data is containerization, which means it's easy to shift and leave in terms of moving to other clouds. That's an advantage of IBM Cloud Pak for Data."

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data pros

"We've had good experiences with technical support."

"SAP HANA is vertically and horizontally scalable."

"The speed at which it gets the data is great."

"The solution is extremely stable. That's the most important aspect of the solution, for our organization. There is no downtime, and the performance is very good."

"We are using the solution for the DW system. The primary function of the solution is for the database in memory."

"Eases management of databases."

"I like the integration process. Also, the data is trusted by our management, and we use the data from transactions for analysis."

"The most value for us was in terms of using it to issue tenders online. We host our server, but it is open to the public, so clients who want to buy those tenders were able to go online, put their tender documents up, and we could evaluate them using SAP."

More SAP HANA pros

Cons

"The tool depends on the control plane, an OpenShift container platform utilized as an orchestration layer...So, we have communicated this issue to IBM and asked if it is feasible to adapt the solution to work on a Kubernetes platform that we support."

"The solution could have more connectors."

"The product is trying to be more maturity in terms of connectors. That, I believe, is an area where Cloud Pak can improve."

"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 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."

"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."

"The solution's catalog searching or map search needs to be improved."

"Cloud Pak would be improved with integration with cloud service providers like Cloudera."

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data cons

"There could be better management for faster updates, last year there were some changes in India to the e-invoicing feature."

"Uses a large amount of RAM and is costly."

"Ease of use could be improved in SAP HANA. I like SAP because SAP solutions can be used by anyone, which means even laymen can start working on SAP tools, but in SAP HANA modeling, you'll need to know some other technologies and sequel scripting, and you need a separate skillset, so if you don't have the skillset, you won't be able to work on SAP HANA. Making SAP HANA low-code would make it even better."

"The user experience should be better. Its user interface is not good. I also don't like the transition concept."

"The worst thing about SAP HANA is the price; it's very expensive. The licensing cost, implementation cost, hosting cost, and appliance cost are all high."

"The SAP HANA interface has room for improvement because it takes more work to manage than the Microsoft SQL Server interface."

"FI, or the financial module of SAP, has room for improvement. It has to have some better localization for the Middle East, especially in regards to taxes and the letter of credit cycle. I would like to see better localization from the HCM."

"SAP HANA is a very proprietary tool and there's not as much support available for it as there is for an SQL Server (which is more popular)."

More SAP HANA cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

"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 is expensive."

"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."

"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."

"The price is on the expensive side, at eight out of ten, with ten being expensive."

"It comes with a significant cost."

"There is a yearly subscription to use SAP HANA. There is a fee for maintenance."

"The cost of SAP HANA is high, and I would rate the price at eight out of ten."

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

"The pricing is a bit on the high side."

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

"SAP HANA is very expensive here in China. My company bought the SAP ERP suite, which includes SAP HANA. For others who use SAP HANA as an analytical database, CPU numbers will affect the pricing, so as a solution, it's costly."

More SAP HANA pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Virtualization solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

870,697 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	61

Questions from the Community

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 is your primary use case for IBM Cloud Pak for Data?

My primary use case for Cloud Pak is that I am the reference Data steward for the Africa regions in the banks where I work. My main objective is to capture the reference data in Caltech or Data and...

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...

See all answers

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 44% of the time

Denodo vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 13% of the time

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

Compared 11% of the time

Palantir Foundry vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 9% of the time

IBM InfoSphere Information Server vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data Competitors

Oracle Database vs SAP HANA

Compared 25% of the time

SQL Server vs SAP HANA

Compared 19% of the time

MySQL vs SAP HANA

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Db2 Database vs SAP HANA

Compared 8% of the time

Apache Spark vs SAP HANA

Compared 4% of the time

More SAP HANA Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

October 2025

Download IBM Cloud Pak for Data product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP HANA

September 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

September 2025

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

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. SAP HANA and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

870,697 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. SAP HANA report.

See our list of best Data Virtualization vendors.

We monitor all Data Virtualization reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.