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Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAP Business Warehouse 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

Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP Business Warehouse
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.2%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 1.6%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Renee Hoon - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalable performance tuning and optimization for finance and supply chain jobs
We run our finance and supply chain jobs using SQL BW, and we visualize our data loads on Power BI. We are using SQL Data Warehouse for data warehousing In terms of cost savings, we don't need specialization in skills as advanced as Teradata. We used to pay extensive licensing fees for Teradata,…
Srini-Dhanaraj - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution enables seamless connection, but it is expensive, and the information is one day old
Out-of-the-box reports are very useful. The product provides a seamless connection between the SAP operation system and the data warehouse. It also moves the data from the operating system to the data warehouse in a 3D format. The report generation is easy. It’s a drag-and-drop process. People who want to do a project need not reinvent the wheel. Everything is designed, built, and delivered out of the box. All we have to do is interact with the customers to understand the kind of reports they need and check whether they are already available in the out-of-the-box report. If they are available, we just have to enable them and give the URLs to the customers. The Integration between the SAP operating system and data warehouse is excellent. The UI is good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The fact that we can ingest from different types of sources, whether they are internal systems or external sources."
"It's scalable; you can scale up and scale down."
"The product works well with other Azure products."
"One central workspace to manage everything for your data warehouse including visualization."
"The most valuable feature is the level of processing power, and being able to complete tasks in parallel."
"It is a highly stable solution and it's easy to use."
"Synapse Analytics gives you information and reports in real-time."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"The real-time information is great."
"The product is very stable."
"The solution has functionality that makes it easy for end-users to readily extract data directly from Business Warehouse into Excel and carry on their analysis on their own."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its capabilities to connect to Excel and to slice and dice."
"Having the integration with the reporting tool which is provided by SAP is great."
"In terms of stability, comparatively, the solution is quite stable."
"The key element in this solution is its rapid response. If you have a question about prices, buyers, customers, providers, or services, you need the answer in a minute or two. That's the key benefit for us that a solution like BW gives us."
"Out-of-the-box reports are very useful."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is complex."
"Scaling this solution up and down is not quick and easy. This could be improved. The pricing of this solution could also be improved."
"Synapse Analytics is generally stable, but its performance can be slow when performing very large datasets."
"It would be ideal if the solution could be better used intuitively by the staff without having a great deal of training."
"It could be beneficial to focus on integration with various data sources and similar enhancements."
"The only concern for us is the cost part. When it comes to the implementation and the support and maintenance, we see high-cost implications."
"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics could improve the section in the solution where you can implement the Python Spark pipelines, it's not the same as in Databricks which would be better."
"In the future, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics has the potential to enhance its capabilities by expanding its connectors, specifically with regard to Oracle solutions, such as operating systems. This would involve a comprehensive approach to adding more connectors for both data input and consumption purposes. By doing so, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics would be better equipped to meet the diverse needs of its users and achieve greater efficiency in its performance. The provision of more connectors is definitely a crucial area that needs improvement."
"The solution could offer better connectivity with other databases."
"Areas for improvement in SAP Business Warehouse include enhancing scheduling and monitoring tools, as well as improving communication about hidden features to make them more accessible to users."
"There is room for improvement from a technical perspective."
"You can start quickly but, when you have to get a little more detailed, when you have to change something, when you have to solve problems, it's not that easy. It's easy to start but evolving is not that easy."
"SAP Business Warehouse could improve by having more out-of-the-box use cases to cover more business types or operations."
"It's a product that is at the end of life so they will not improve it anymore."
"I get all the information quickly, but it is one day old."
"What I'd like improved in SAP Business Warehouse is its setup. It could be more flexible, and it could be a configuration-based setup."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pay for what you use"
"They are cost aggressive, and it integrates well with other Microsoft tools."
"It just depends on how big your instance is. It could be anywhere from 1,000 to 50,000 per year depending on how big your instance is. You pay based on how big you make your database. Essentially, they charge you per hour of usage."
"All of the prices are available online."
"Price varies by use-case. You pay for the database itself in addition to any consumed data within Serverless plus other fees if you use the Data Factory that is inside."
"This solution starts at €1000.00 a month for just the basics and can go up to €300,000.00 per month for the fastest version."
"The product is expensive."
"It requires a less expensive version because currently, not every customer is able to buy it. If it could have a smaller setup that doesn't require so many resources, it would be helpful, and we would be able to use it in more cases. We are a small country, and most of our customers are quite small businesses."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"It's quite pricey. SAP changed its pricing policy, so they give you one engine and then you have to buy everything next to it, like MSS, the BPC licenses, and everything else."
"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"The licensing cost for SAP Business Warehouse depends on your revenue. Its licensing structure is a little bit complicated. The more your revenue is, the higher the price, but SAP does have different pricing structures for various companies. For small businesses, licensing isn't based on revenue, but for big companies, it's revenue-based. There's some agreement regarding pricing for huge companies, so it's different, and SAP Business Warehouse pricing isn't fixed. On a scale of one to ten, I'm rating the licensing cost for SAP Business Warehouse as five because it's very high. As your revenue grows, your licensing cost also increases, so you have to factor that in when calculating your cost."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
The product is easy to use, and anybody can easily migrate to advanced DB.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
I think the price of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is very expensive, but that's not only for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics—it's for the cloud in general. The cloud is not cost-effective. I...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Business Warehouse?
The solution is quite expensive. We paid a yearly subscription fee.
What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?
Over a period, we realized that the license and maintenance costs were quite expensive. Every day, we had to run the background job ODS. Eventually, we moved away from SAP Business Warehouse and bo...
 

Also Known As

Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe, 
Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. SAP Business Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.