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Oracle Exadata 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

Oracle Exadata
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
130
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (2nd)
SAP Business Warehouse
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (15th)
 

Featured Reviews

Prabir Kumar Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
Has consistently delivered high performance and aligned security while evolving with AI-driven improvements
When discussing Oracle Exadata, the main thing is the specialized database appliance, the flash cache, and the engineered machine on the database for the database itself. Overall, all the features are useful and meaningful for any database like Oracle to run the Oracle database. Regarding Smart Scan technology, it is for better performance. If a customer cannot tune their applications, this will help them to run the database and run the application without any tuning itself. Oracle Exadata's advanced compression techniques have affected my customer's data storage efficiency positively, with the feature being great, but as of now, our customer is not using that. I find its security measures align with my customer's organization, as security is aligned as per the customer's requirement. It has helped optimize performance and cost.
VishnuReddy2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consulting Enterprise Architect at R2V2.ai
Have encountered complexity with programming language while working on large-scale data integration and have experienced improved governance and reporting
The only complexity I find with the product is the programming language; people find it harder, but once you know the language, it's not that difficult. Regarding the future of SAP Business Warehouse, I would to see added features that simplify the product very well now. They are coming up with a terminology called SAP BDC where they are consolidating their tools, SAP Data Sphere for integration and SAP BW for the ETL and warehousing parts, and SAP Analytics Cloud. They are packaging these three features and calling it Business Data Cloud; they are fully coming on the cloud. We have to wait and watch; they have been speaking about BW/4HANA for quite some time now, but the customers or clients I work with are not finding great interest and it was seen as a candidate for evaluation. I have seen people looking at the latest technologies who are already on cloud who started building from scratch on cloud, such as Snowflake or Databricks, which can process very huge amounts of data and also address unstructured data, where SAP lags behind in cases where there is a need to bring in unstructured data. I have worked with SAP Data Intelligence, which earlier used to be called SAP Data Hub. The unstructured data is not greatly handled in SAP at this point in time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The separation between the database nodes and storage cells is the key feature of Exadata."
"I am satisfied with its functionalities and performance."
"With SuperCluster and Exadata, all of the servers and storage are integrated within the same rack, reducing configuration and setup time, increasing performance, and making maintenance and patching easy."
"Oracle Exadata is the most stable system I have used."
"Exadata's best features are its performance during redo logging and the elasticity of the database handling."
"It is the best solution for OLTP and data warehousing."
"I like its reliability."
"You have to pay for the storage and the database in Oracle Exadata; it costs a lot, but it is worth it."
"The best features of SAP Business Warehouse that I am fond of are how this technology handles navigational attributes and the hierarchy; these are two interesting features."
"The best features of SAP Business Warehouse that I am fond of are how this technology handles navigational attributes and the hierarchy; these are two interesting features."
"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is that it's a seamless integration platform. A valuable feature in the tool is the monitoring alert that makes you aware of what process chain has failed. There's no manual monitoring required if you have configured an alert system, so the process chain can run in the background, and you can get alerts about it. The functionalities I find good in SAP Business Warehouse are alerting and monitoring. If you have configured the tool and have integrated it with SAP Solution Manager, then it's a good product to use."
"Having the back-end data set with the right information is the best qualification for this solution."
"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."
"The real-time information is great."
"Technical support is very good, and we were very satisfied with their level of support when we needed it."
"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."
 

Cons

"Price. Extremely expensive."
"The setup is a little bit complex. We would like to see the installation part get easier."
"Oracle manages the entire hardware and software including database and OS patches but companies need to pay heavily for that service."
"With its value proposition, Exadata is being used to run mission-critical, 24x7 applications. Unfortunately, not all hardware in the Exadata rack are hot-swappable (such as memory, processor and battery maintenance in older models), and therefore business application downtime may be required for those hardware replacements."
"I don't think it's so scalable because Exadata is a box."
"We have experienced some issues with processing unstructured data on Exadata. This is an important requirement for our AIML based use case. Reactive analytics data can not be prepared easily in Oracle Exadata."
"Licensing is per CPU and relatively expensive."
"Technical support can be patchy, particularly a couple of years back, the number of support personnel with Exadata skills was perhaps not at the level it could have been."
"I would like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users."
"SAP Business Warehouse could integrate better with other ETL tools."
"The problem with BW, and the factor that differentiated it from the original BW, is that you only get limited functionality with your runtime license. So, you have to pay extra for extracting data."
"SAP Business Warehouse could integrate better with other ETL tools."
"We are running an older version; it is doing what we need it to do but there is some limitation due to its version."
"Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward."
"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."
"From a support perspective, SAP Business Warehouse is quite a complex module."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"All things considered, the price of this product is fairly high, as is always the case with Oracle."
"It is quite expensive."
"Exadata is an expensive tool, but, considering the ROI, it's worth going for the solution."
"I give the pricing of the solution a five out of ten."
"The cost of the product could be improved."
"The Initial investment price could use improvement"
"The majority of our customers are in government or big enterprises, and the projects that we sell come out to several million USD. With this amount of money on the table, it's always better to have an experienced team of consultants, who know Exadata very well, handle the implementation."
"Oracle Exadata is costly. Its licensing should also be more versatile. Smaller companies would benefit if Oracle Exadata had lower pricing."
"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."
"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Marketing Services Firm
5%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise86
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Exadata?
I find its pricing reasonable and cost-effective for large organizations, but for smaller organizations, it may not be that useful.
What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata?
I believe that there is still room for improvement in Oracle Exadata, as they are putting AI features on those databases, which is making the database more user-friendly. Even you can talk to the d...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Exadata?
I deal most with Oracle database. I have been working with Oracle Database Appliance for more than 25 years, and if you're talking about appliance, it's more than 10 years, but on Oracle database, ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Business Warehouse?
The pricing for SAP Business Warehouse is on the expensive side. I am not sure about the current costing model as such. In my experience on cloud, I did not use BW HANA Cloud. I used the cloud prod...
What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?
The only complexity I find with the product is the programming language; people find it harder, but once you know the language, it's not that difficult. Regarding the future of SAP Business Warehou...
What is your primary use case for SAP Business Warehouse?
I am using SAP Business Warehouse in my organization for data warehousing as well as an ETL tool. Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward. Integration with SAP ER...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PayPal, EBS, Organic Food Retailer, Garmin, University of Minnesota, Major Semiconductor Company, Deutsche Bank, Starwood, Ziraat Bank, SK Telecom, and P&G.
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 Oracle Exadata vs. SAP Business Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.