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SAP BW4HANA 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

SAP Business Warehouse
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (14th)
SAP BW4HANA
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (9th)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
AjayKumar7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Intuitive modeling and reporting capabilities and supports both vertical and horizontal scaling
I like the modeling and reporting capabilities. Real-time processing isn't BW/4HANA's strongest point. We typically run batch jobs for this purpose. So, it's not good for real-time reporting. BW/4HANA's modeling is quite intuitive because even those without technical database knowledge can model data from a business perspective. The tool can still be done without knowing the database functionalities of the data warehouse. Even if someone doesn't understand the database functionalities, you can still model. It provides the functions in a way that even a less technical person can do the modeling. The tool facilitates modeling for non-technical users, ensuring good modeling results.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"With the technical support, the response has been pretty good from the SAP side."
"SAP Business Warehouse is a scalable solution."
"The most useful feature is definitely the speed."
"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."
"The product is very 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."
"The solution is easier to maintain than traditional SAP products."
"The most valuable features are the speed of reporting and the HANA database."
"From an ERP point of view and a functionality point of view, it works very well. The benefits are in that of financial costing and material management."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it is a very powerful tool. The solution also has the best stability, robustness, and customizability features."
"The most valuable feature is the dashboard."
"The processes are the most valuable aspect of this solution."
"It can calculate data in detail. Before we could not calculate financial documents and accountant documents in detail, we could not do it at a document level but now we can. This is the most important feature. It also has predictive analysis memory."
"It's quite scalable."
 

Cons

"SAP Business Warehouse could improve by having more out-of-the-box use cases to cover more business types or operations."
"There is room for improvement from a technical perspective."
"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 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."
"The solution could offer better connectivity with other databases."
"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."
"The way the data is stored is kind of rigid in SAP BW as a product. It could be more flexible so that when we are designing a solution, we can design our own data structures and try to improve performance."
"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."
"Not a ten because it's expensive and its ecosystem is not very open."
"The monitoring for the remodeling feature is very difficult to understand."
"Connecting multiple sources is a challenge because you have to go through a lot of different setups."
"One thing that could be enhanced in SAP BW4HANA is the user interface for process chains."
"The speed of operations could be a little faster."
"Pricing would be a good improvement. A lot of customers think that it's very expensive and especially support is very expensive."
"BW/4HANA could improve query optimization. For example, there could be an error message that pops up when you hover over it if any query fails. That would make it easier to find out what went gone wrong. Guided SAP help tools would make it easier for us to go forward."
"I cannot integrate it with my other tools. It's not possible to do something in the predictive analysis. Mobile reporting is also not available."
 

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."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"The cost and licensing depends on how the customer is going to use the solution."
"The cost of ownership is higher. It's resource-intensive, and naturally, that increases costs."
"For some, the rates offered by SAP can be costly while for others it may seem cheap. The price ultimately depends on how you have negotiated your contract with SAP."
"SAP BW/4HANA is expensive."
"The price is high and currently only affordable for large organizations."
"The SAP HANA application still hasn't been leveraged to the fullest extent, but it's a five-year enterprise license."
"This is an expensive solution and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about SAP BW4HANA?
One significant advantage of SAP BW/4HANA is the direct integration with the SAP HANA database, providing seamless access to real-time analytics. Additionally, it enables real-time data integrati...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP BW4HANA?
The certification cost is extremely high. I completed certification for $40,000. The certification cost for SAP BW4HANA in 2025 is expected to be one lakh forty thousand.
What needs improvement with SAP BW4HANA?
Integration needs improvement. In reporting, I am not comfortable with the creation of variables, and some calculations need improvement in BW queries.
 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP BW/4HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP BW4HANA vs. SAP Business Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.