Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse vs SAP Business Warehouse comparison

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse vs. SAP Business Warehouse

Download the complete report

Helped 849,963 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

Microsoft Parallel Data War...

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Warehouse (10th)

SAP Business Warehouse

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Warehouse (14th)

Featured Reviews

StevenLai

Sr. Data Engineer at Amrock

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…

Read full review

JavedKhan1

SAP Security/GRC Manager at Tata Consultancy

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.

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

"Tools like the BI and SAS are excellent."

"Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse integrates beautifully with other Microsoft ecosystem products."

"The interface is very user-friendly."

"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."

"I like Data Warehouse's data integrity features. Data integrity is what databases are made for as opposed to spreadsheets."

"It is not a pricey product compared to other data warehouse solutions."

"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."

More Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse pros

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

"Now, because of the HANA integration, the hard disk and RAM are together, and because of that, the output is very quick and very fast actually."

"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."

"The warehouse is the solution's most valuable feature."

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

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

"The features that I have found most valuable are its capabilities to connect to Excel and to slice and dice."

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

More SAP Business Warehouse pros

Cons

"A major issue is with table statistics. Sometimes the statistics are not refreshed correctly, which causes issues for us."

"SQL installation is pretty tricky. The scalability and customer support also should be improved."

"It could be made more user-friendly for business users which would increase the user base."

"Sometimes, the product requires rolling back to its previous version during a software update. This particular area could be enhanced."

"Some compatibility issues occur during deployment, so we need to build the product from scratch for some features."

"When there are many users or many expensive queries, it can be very slow."

"I think that the error messages need to be made more specific."

"The query is slow if we don't optimize it."

More Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse cons

"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."

"So far, the initial setup process in our company has not been easy enough for us to understand."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

More SAP Business Warehouse cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They offer an annual subscription. The pricing depends on the size of the environments."

"I think the program is well-priced compared to the other offerings that are out in the market."

"The tool could be expensive if we need to manage a lot of data."

"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."

"All the features that we use do not require any additional subscription or yearly fees."

"The solution's pricing is fairly decent for organizations with huge data sizes."

"Technical support is an additional fee and is expensive."

"The solution is cost-effective."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"The solution is quite expensive."

See which vendors are best for you

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

See recommendations

849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

30%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Insurance Company

10%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

10%

Computer Software Company

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is very expensive.

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 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...

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse

Comparisons

Compared 53% of the time

Teradata vs Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse

Compared 47% of the time

More Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse Competitors

Amazon Redshift vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 23% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 19% of the time

Snowflake vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 17% of the time

Databricks vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 14% of the time

BigQuery vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 13% of the time

More SAP Business Warehouse Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse

Download Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse product report

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse report

SAP Business Warehouse

Download SAP Business Warehouse product report

Also Known As

Microsoft PDW, SQL Server Data Warehouse, Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, MS Parallel Data Warehouse

No data available

Overview

The traditional structured relational data warehouse was never designed to handle the volume of exponential data growth, the variety of semi-structured and unstructured data types, or the velocity of real time data processing. Microsoft's SQL Server data warehouse solution integrates your traditional data warehouse with non-relational data and it can handle data of all sizes and types, with real-time performance.

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

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

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse vs. SAP Business Warehouse