Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse vs SAP Business Warehouse comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Parallel Data War...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (10th)
SAP Business Warehouse
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (14th)
 

Featured Reviews

StevenLai - PeerSpot reviewer
Strong scalable solution with streamlined metadata warehousing
We use it to build our data warehouse and databases, and everything in the back end It helps streamline our metadata warehousing process. As it is our only type of data warehouse and database, it serves as our source, destination, and staging area. This product has many features which are useful…
JavedKhan1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers powerful analytics and integration capabilities but requires improved upgrade processes
SAP Business Warehouse could have been better. There is room for improvement from a technical perspective. So, from a technical perspective, when we are upgrading a Business Warehouse server or we are migrating from one place to another, the capability required for this upgradation has many manual activities. It took us around a month to streamline our server. Let’s say there are some transaction codes. Transaction code is a set of programs, and when you want to run a program from the backend, you need to hit the transaction code. It is called a T-code. So during the upgrade, many transaction codes get affected, and as a security consultant, it is my responsibility to recheck those transaction codes which are affected. Sometimes more than 100 codes may get affected, sometimes 500, and sometimes more as well. So, it takes a hell lot of time to integrate them again. That is a limitation or defect within the SAP Business Warehouse. SAP Business Warehouse should come up with proper solutions. Upgradation is an automatic activity. It should happen by itself. We just need to initiate it, and the backend SAP server is automatically upgraded. But it should handle the transactional code as well. They should not get absolutely, and any authorization object should not get deleted from the transaction codes. So, that functionality SAP Business Warehouse should come up with.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is not a pricey product compared to other data warehouse solutions."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."
"The interface is very user-friendly."
"It handles high volumes of data very well."
"Data collection and reporting are valuable features of the solution."
"​It has allowed fast daily loads and analysis of millions of rows of data, which eventually moved to near real-time.​"
"The interface is very user-friendly."
"The solution has been reliable."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its capabilities to connect to Excel and to slice and dice."
"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."
"Having the integration with the reporting tool which is provided by SAP is great."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the integration with SAP ERP."
"Having the back-end data set with the right information is the best qualification for this solution."
"Out-of-the-box reports are very useful."
"The product is very stable."
"With the technical support, the response has been pretty good from the SAP side."
 

Cons

"We'd like to see it be a bit more compatible with other solutions."
"​Concurrent queries are limited to 32, making it more of a data storage mechanism instead of an active DWH solution."
"The solution is expensive and has room for improvement."
"When there are many users or many expensive queries, it can be very slow."
"I would like the tool to support different operating systems."
"The product must provide more frequent updates."
"The feature updates on the on-premise solution come very slowly, and it would be great if they came faster."
"It could be made more user-friendly for business users which would increase the user base."
"It takes more work to get the data, including reporting on that data, because some coding is required, and a significant level of transformation is needed when using SAP Business Warehouse."
"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."
"One of our requirements is the ability to easily get answers regarding trends and exceptions. In BW, it is not that easy to get such information. I expect better trend and exception detection, better pattern detection."
"SAP Business Warehouse could improve by having more out-of-the-box use cases to cover more business types or operations."
"SAP Business Warehouse could integrate better with other ETL tools."
"The solution could offer better connectivity with other databases."
"I would like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users."
"We are very unhappy with technical support. First of all, they send their sales agents or pre-sales agents and most of them who don't know the solution as a properly trained tech would. We have an on-site SAP representative who is supposed to help us with our high priority and production issues, and they're not satisfactory to say the least."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"All the features that we use do not require any additional subscription or yearly fees."
"The tool could be expensive if we need to manage a lot of data."
"I think the program is well-priced compared to the other offerings that are out in the market."
"The solution's pricing is fairly decent for organizations with huge data sizes."
"Technical support is an additional fee and is expensive."
"Microsoft has an agreement with the government in our country, so our customers get their licensing costs from the Ministry. Whenever we work with any government, company, or government institute, which is mainly what we are doing, that license comes directly from the Ministry of Technology and Information."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"They offer an annual subscription. The pricing depends on the size of the environments."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is 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."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"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."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
858,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Insurance Company
9%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse provides good firewall processing in terms of response time.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is excellent but very expensive. Working on the pricing could make it a better solution.
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

Microsoft PDW, SQL Server Data Warehouse, Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, MS Parallel Data Warehouse
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Auckland Transport, Erste Bank Group, Urban Software Institute, NJVC, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Tata Steel Europe
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 Parallel Data Warehouse vs. SAP Business Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
858,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.