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Infobright DB 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Infobright DB
Ranking in Data Warehouse
19th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (36th)
SAP BW4HANA
Ranking in Data Warehouse
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Infobright DB is 2.3%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BW4HANA is 3.4%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BW4HANA3.4%
Infobright DB2.3%
Other94.3%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

it_user708987 - PeerSpot reviewer
MySQL DBA at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Excellent reporting server that is compatible with MySQL
We ran into some quirks that Infobright had. We interacted with Infobright's support and were able to resolve them. There still are issues with data replication - Infobright is currently for one server (unless you buy the Infobright appliance). This would mean that redundancy is something you need to implement yourself.
Ritesh Durvasha - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Has supported efficient data processing and streamlined reporting for large-scale sales operations
The capability to handle a large amount of data and perform ETL operations is most valuable. Additionally, sending data out of SAP BW4HANA through Open Hub, which is a free service, is another valuable feature. In contrast, many other products charge for sending data out of their systems, such as Data Sphere or BDC, which charge premium service fees. Regarding advanced analytic tools in SAP BW4HANA, users can directly connect to Analysis for Office without additional charges. It's convenient as users don't have to download data into Excel since it's already connected to the system. From an integration capabilities perspective, it's easy to connect to SAP systems, though integration with non-SAP systems presents more challenges.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A valuable feature was the use of a columnar database for large, ever-growing, big datasets."
"ICE helped us improve the speed for the “group-by” query by 10x."
"Infobright gave us the ability to avoid significant changes in our data structure and just use Infobright like BigDataMySql."
"The performance of ad hoc aggregation queries is superior to any RDBMS that I have used and I have used them all."
"It is very straightforward and easy to work with."
"It has very amazing smart grid query feature for very fast aggregate queries across millions of rows"
"We now have multiple times faster queries in comparison to MS SQL."
"The high compression and the relatively fast load for a free product."
"My advice for anybody who is considering SAP BW4HANA is that it's a very stable product, and if you are looking at a huge volume of data that you want to process daily or any similar kind of task, then this is definitely a good solution."
"The product has efficient performance."
"The features I find most valuable in SAP BW4HANA include the minimal modeling optics, where earlier in the BW System we had a lot of modeling objects for things like virtualization and data staging, but in SAP BW4HANA they have simplified everything, allowing us to design data by using minimal objects combined into a single object."
"The processes are the most valuable aspect of this solution."
"It is a stable solution...The initial setup was easy."
"I like that it's quite quick."
"It's quite scalable."
"I like how it blends no-code and ABAP code for complex transformations during data loading."
 

Cons

"There still are issues with data replication - Infobright is currently for one server (unless you buy the Infobright appliance)."
"MPP, distributed processing!!! And better integration with Hadoop."
"Only the data from the columns that reached 2GB will actually decrease. Other columns below 2GB in size do not leave the disk."
"When running a complex subquery, the system hangs without giving the user any response."
"After all the re-work to our product to remove as much reliance on Infobright, and the extra hardware costs we had to absorb, there was definitely a negative return on investment."
"On the contrary, we have switched back to the MS SSAS Tabular Model, because of pricing policy."
"We didn’t purchase the Enterprise Edition because it was too expensive for a product that wasn’t going to replace our main DWH database (Oracle), but was, somehow, only an addition for it."
"There was no scalability at all. Infobright didn't permit any changes in tables."
"Real-time processing isn't BW/4HANA's strongest point."
"So far, this functionality is a little bit limited in the tool, and it is not thought through, but I think it will come."
"The UI is not user-friendly."
"Not a ten because it's expensive and its ecosystem is not very open."
"We cannot integrate with third-party tools like Python or advanced integration options. You can't fine-tune tables within BW or generate specific views or reports."
"They have taken out a few BW functionalities when they redesigned this. The way of multi-dimensional thinking and star schema got a little bit lost. It may be because of the cost, but certain functionalities that were previously implemented from the BW side should come back again in the whole product. It is a young product. It is version 2.0. In time, I'm pretty sure they will come back again because otherwise, it limits the potential of the product, and I have to do a lot of modeling towards that direction. For me, the analytics focus is too much. It is not cube-oriented in that way, so its functionality is limited. It is not really technically limited in the back end; it is more limited in the front end. It has a data-mining mindset for SQL developers. The navigational attributes should be easy. It needs to be built in models. I see the data mark cube or understanding that the composite provider needs to be models in a cube coming back. The multi-dimensional star schema approach and the reporting need to be done as well as possible to leverage the star scheme below. This is definitely not understood by many consultants and even composite providers for star schema. They always think in terms of flat tables, which is limiting. You need to build the right dimensions, objects, and so on. If you can build this in BW4HANA, then you have this understanding that BW4HANA is not forcing you in this direction, but it should force you a bit better in this direction. Maybe a few elements which were in use in BW should come back again. It would help the community to determine the direction to build on the cube. You can have maybe 50 elements, and then you can expand it to what you need by leveraging navigation. So far, this functionality is a little bit limited in the tool, and it is not thought through, but I think it will come. They should also be adding more capabilities for the transformation between different objects. In BW, this is currently limited, especially towards composite providers. It is a bit complex basically in the building. You have to have a lot of knowledge as well as know how to do it better because it is a bit different from BW. There is not too much expertise currently in the consulting markets. Many are trying to build something, but it may be based on their knowledge of what they have from the BW and HANA side. You have to find the right mix from both of them at this time. We also have HANA Native. These are our two different sync sources basically, and we have approaches to connect nicely, but it is hard to manage your team because a lot of coaching is required."
"This solution is very costly compared to competitors on the market, which stops some people from implementing it."
"I don't see SAP actively supporting the solution now...a better support from SAP would be appreciated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our pricing was based on server instances and it was actually very cheap compared to Oracle. I guess you get what you pay for."
"It is an expensive product."
"For the on-premises version of the product, the solution offers a perpetual-based licensing model to its users. In general, SAP offers a monthly subscription-based licensing model to its users."
"The tool is affordable."
"The cost and licensing depends on how the customer is going to use the solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"The SAP HANA application still hasn't been leveraged to the fullest extent, but it's a five-year enterprise license."
"For some, the rates offered by SAP can be costly while for others it may seem cheap. The price ultimately depends on how you have negotiated your contract with SAP."
"SAP BW/4HANA is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
9%
Construction Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with SAP BW4HANA?
For improvement, I think AWS for HANA could be better, but it is an on-premise solution. SAP is asking us to move to one client approach and suggested moving to data warehouse cloud, which should h...
What is your primary use case for SAP BW4HANA?
My use cases involve the client I am working with, who already has a BW ON HANA system, and we are currently migrating and redeveloping things in SAP BW4HANA; they are decommissioning the BW On HAN...
 

Also Known As

Infobright
SAP BW/4HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

REZ-1, SonicWALL, IntegriChain, Fuseforward International Inc., Polystar, Live Rail, Mavenir Systems, JDSU Partners, Bango
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Find out what your peers are saying about Infobright DB vs. SAP BW4HANA and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.