Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAP Business Warehouse comparison

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. SAP Business Warehouse

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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

Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

5th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.2%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 1.9%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics	6.2%
SAP Business Warehouse	1.9%
Other	91.9%

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Joy Maitra

Sr. Technical Architect at Hexaware Technologies Limited

Has supported data pipeline development but still requires better integration and support

The best feature of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is the notebook functionality; it provides a very good interface, and we can easily do our experiments, POCs, and check things before migration or deployment to higher environments such as from development to SIT and then production. The deployment process is also much smoother. Driving data-driven insights in my organization depends upon the preparation of the data. If your data is not good, then insights won't be good, and Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics helps in preparing your data, so it is very helpful. I find Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics' native data lake support beneficial.

Read full review

Srini-Dhanaraj

Founder & CEO at imfine.club

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.

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

"Microsoft provides both the platform and the data center, so you don't have to look for a cloud vendor. It saves you from having to deal with two vendors for the same task."

"The best thing about it is that it has integration at multiple places. It can talk to more than 90 types of data sources, which is one good thing about it."

"What I found most valuable in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is that it's native only for Azure, so you get better performance and there's no issue. To explain further, many different types of data come, in particular, structured and unstructured data. For audit purposes, there's also unstructured data, so the most important aspect is that with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, you have the capability of using both technologies, meaning that you can use or mix structured and unstructured data which is important. This can also be done in Hadoop, and on other platforms, so you have everything in one place. You don't have to worry about how to manage both structured and unstructured data and where to store information. With Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, you can take care of everything, particularly in Azure. The solution also provides you with many features apart from analytics, for example, storage which makes it better."

"The product is easy to use, and anybody can easily migrate to advanced DB."

"It's scalable; you can scale up and scale down."

"I love the way all the application resources from Microsoft can synchronize, help me with a lot of stuff, and reduce the time or hour of having maybe a resource for an hour a day while also being able to use artificial intelligence."

"Can capture all the transactional data throughout a company."

"I have been working with Microsoft, and they have been very helpful."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics pros

"Having the back-end data set with the right information is the best qualification for this solution."

"The most valuable feature of SAP Business Warehouse is transformation, where I extract data from different sources, particularly the raw data. Then I do some transformations and store that in a format that allows me to do reporting easily."

"I like that it integrates to open-source."

"The most valuable feature of SAP Business Warehouse is its hybrid functionality, allowing users to leverage both SQL-based data warehouse capabilities from HANA and feature-based data warehousing from BW."

"The most useful feature has been he ability to feed data into multiple systems in various formats."

"The most useful feature is definitely the speed."

"Predominantly, our company uses SAP Business Warehouse for reporting purposes across various departments, especially for managers to gain a quick understanding of their current standing and make informed decisions."

"We are currently in a basic stage of analytics and the first goal we have is to make sure the numbers are correct. BW has some features that help you to build factors and ETL in such a way that it's easy to get to correct responses. That's the number one condition that you have to have in an analytic solution."

More SAP Business Warehouse pros

Cons

"Integration with other vendors has limitations and could be improved."

"The scalability of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is a concern, depending on the size of the data warehouse to be built."

"It's a complicated product."

"Adding more transformations and plugins to the solution is very important."

"If I'm looking for something good in the cloud, I would want it to have better standard connectors."

"The linked services can be improved. We can create dynamic linked services to access a lot of databases but only those of the same type. For example, I can use the same linked services to access 11 SQL databases. However, if I have 11 SQL databases and five Oracle databases, I need two dynamic linked services. I cannot do it with only one linked service. The UI also needs to be improved. When I have used Azure Synapse for programming with PySpark, Scala, or .NET, for example, the UI has been unstable. If I open two notebooks for programming, one notebook will queue the session of the other."

"I am very sure that there are areas in need of improvement, but I can't recall what they are off the top of my head."

"The macro functions, though useful, are not totally user-friendly. Some people have difficulties in learning them."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics cons

"There is room for improvement from a technical perspective."

"In the next release, my suggestion would be to have user-friendly interfaces and performance issues be addressed."

"They should reduce the product’s installation package size for easier downloading."

"What I'd like to improve in SAP Business Warehouse is its data structure, that's a little bit rigid. It could be a bit more flexible, so you can design your data structure and improve performance when creating a solution. Currently, the way data is stored in SAP Business Warehouse is rigid."

"The solution could offer better connectivity with other databases."

"A few things which are missing include the visualization of reports. That's where your costs and licensing become heavy. When it comes to this database compared Microsoft Warehouse, it's an expensive solution."

"It's a product that is at the end of life so they will not improve it anymore."

"I would like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users."

More SAP Business Warehouse cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"All of the prices are available online."

"This is a cost-effective product."

"Its price could be better. It was a school project, and I got it for free. If I try to pay through my company, it is a little bit more expensive as compared to Oracle."

"Microsoft's pricing is relatively high, and it varies according to the extent of our usage. The pricing is directly tied to our consumption. This decision is ultimately a business choice."

"The price of this solution could be improved."

"We are on a monthly payment plan for the use of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics."

"We normally pay between $300 and $500 per month, which is quite expensive for how much we actually use it, performance- and usage-wise. They have a cheap version and an expensive version, and our usage usually falls in the middle ground, which makes it not as cost-effective as it could be."

"I don't know about the price, but I'm trying to get a sense of the cost."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics pricing and cost advice

"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."

"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."

"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."

"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."

"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 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."

"The solution is quite expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

13%

Retailer

10%

Energy/Utilities Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	28
Midsize Enterprise	18
Large Enterprise	54

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	15

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 do you like most about SAP Business Warehouse?

Out-of-the-box reports are very useful.

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...

Snowflake vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Comparisons

Compared 17% of the time

Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 10% of the time

SAP BW4HANA vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 8% of the time

AWS Lake Formation vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Competitors

Databricks vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 27% of the time

BigQuery vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 25% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 13% of the time

Snowflake vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 12% of the time

More SAP Business Warehouse Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Download Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics product report

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics report

SAP Business Warehouse

Download SAP Business Warehouse product report

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

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is an end-to-end analytics solution that successfully combines analytical services to merge big data analytics and enterprise data warehouses into a single unified platform. The solution can run intelligent distributed queries among nodes, and provides the ability to query both relational and non-relational data.

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is built with these 4 components:

Synapse SQL
Spark
Synapse Pipeline
Studio

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Features

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics has many valuable key features, including:

Cloud Data Service: WIth Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics you can operate services (data analytics, machine learning, data warehousing, dashboarding, etc.) in a single workspace via the cloud.
Structured and unstructured data: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics supports both structured and unstructured data and allows you to manage relational and non-relational data - unlike data warehouses and lakes that tend to store them respectively.
Effective data storage: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers next-level data storage with high availability and different tiers.
Responsive data engine: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics uses Massive Parallel Processing (MPP) and is designed to handle large volumes of data and analytical workloads efficiently without any problems.
Several scripting languages: The solution provides language compatibility and supports different programming languages, such as Python, Java, Spark SQL, and Scala.
Query optimization: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics works well to facilitate limitless concurrency and performance optimization. It also simplifies workload management.

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Benefits

Some of the benefits of using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics include:

Database templates: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers industry-specific database templates that make it easy to combine and shape data.
Better business insights: With Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics you can expand discovery of insights from all your data and apply machine learning models to all your intelligent apps.
Reduce project development time: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics makes it possible to have a unified experience for developing end-to-end analytics, which reduces project development time significantly.
Eliminate data barriers: By using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, you can perform analytics on operational and business apps data without data movement.
Advanced security: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics provides both advanced security and privacy features to ensure data protection.
Machine Learning: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics integrates Azure Machine Learning, Azure Cognitive Services, and Power BI.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics users who are currently using the solution.

PeerSpot user Jael S., who is an Information Architect at Systems Analysis & Design Engineering, comments on her experience using the product, saying that it is “Scalable, intuitive, facilitates compliance and keeps your data secure”. She also says "We also like governance. It looks at what the requirements are for the company to identify the best way to ensure compliance is met when you move to the cloud."

Michel T., CHTO at Timp-iT, mentions that "the features most valuable are the simplicity, how easy it is to create a dashboard from different information systems."

A Senior Teradata Consultant at a tech services company says, "Microsoft provides both the platform and the data center, so you don't have to look for a cloud vendor. It saves you from having to deal with two vendors for the same task."

Microsoft

Reporting, analysis and interpretation of business data are crucial to preserve and enhance the competitive edge of companies by optimizing processes and enabling them to react quickly and in line with market needs. SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) provides tools and functions that enable companies to attain these goals. In SAP BW, you can integrate, transform, and consolidate relevant business information from productive SAP applications and external data sources. SAP BW provides you with a high-performance infrastructure that helps you evaluate and interpret data. Decision makers can make well-founded decisions and identify target-orientated activities on the basis of the analyzed data.

SAP

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

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. SAP Business Warehouse