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SAP Business Warehouse vs SAP NetWeaver 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
6.1
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (15th)
SAP NetWeaver Business Ware...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (20th)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
AK
Project Manager - Analytics at Mindsprint
Can transform data per clients' needs and can easily distribute reports to end users
I would recommend looking at all of the solutions currently available and then decide. I would not immediately suggest going for SAP NetWeaver. Being able to transform the data according to my requirements is a crucial feature; the phasing layers are helpful to distinguish data with respect to a specific project; analytics and reporting are very feasible; and the distribution of reports to the end users is also very easy. However, connectors need to be simplified, and technical support needs to be improved. Thus, on a scale from one to ten, I would rate SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse at eight.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its capabilities to connect to Excel and to slice and dice."
"The most valuable feature is the new version of Business Explorer Analyzer, which is a very good version because there are a lot of analytical features of Excel also."
"We switched to SAP because the solution is more comfortable to work with."
"In terms of stability, comparatively, the solution is quite stable."
"The key element in this solution is its rapid response, because if you have a question about prices, buyers, customers, providers, or services, you need the answer in a minute or two, and that is the key benefit for us that a solution like BW gives us."
"The real-time information is great."
"With SAP BW, the organization can start to deploy a data warehouse and deliver data to business people."
"A robust and efficient product."
"The security and audit procedures are the most valuable features."
"Queries based on the Data warehouse have enabled the Service department of the organization analyze data deeply and get insights into daily inflow and revenue as well as analyze data over time periods, various models, model years, by customer segment, etc."
"Data modeling is a valuable feature."
"Data cleansed and harmonization. It provides us with proof of data, we can centralize all of the information, check it, and then provide the information to our users."
"It's an excellent over-all tool for managers to analyze their business."
"This is a very robust and efficient product, and it's very powerful, in particular when it comes to data management in the SAP system."
 

Cons

"The big minuses are its not being user friendly."
"Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward."
"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."
"People are getting frustrated as they have to spend lots of time - 10 minutes to 15 minutes - generating the report."
"The way the data is stored is kind of rigid in SAP BW as a product."
"I would for sure like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users."
"More integration with Microsoft Office products (not just Excel) would be helpful."
"I'm not sure if our issue is related to BW or the Analysis Office. However, we're having performance issues in terms of time. It takes a long time to generate the report."
"The product could provide more features."
"It is difficult when your native language is not English. It is difficult for us to explain our issue and also difficult for the technical team to explain a resolution to us."
"The solution could be improved by simplifying the modeling and the design. We're faced with too many options and too many object types."
"Connectors are complex, and it is difficult to understand or know which connector should be used. For instance, if I want to connect APIs, I will not be able to do it directly. I would have to go to the portal integration to get the data. Therefore, having simplified connectors will make things much easier."
"People using SAP BW have to undergo some training to be able to use the product. Complexity can be reduced and could be made a bit more user-friendly."
"I think more integration with other applications would be perfect."
"The setup needs skilled resources in SAP BW. A lack of trained resources can create serious problems."
"The complexity of this data warehouse application is huge and makes it tough to manage and deploy it. In general, it requires a lot of know-how and time which makes it expensive to deliver fast answers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is quite expensive."
"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 moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"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 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 license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Pricing is based on the number of user IDs and tyhe user ID works across a suite of products."
"The licensing cost is high for SAP NetWeaver compared to that for other products."
"All SAP products are expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
9%
Healthcare Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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Also Known As

No data available
NetWeaver Business Warehouse, NetWeaver BusinessObjects Warehouse
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
EMC Corporation, Takisada-Osaka Co. Ltd., Eldorado, Mozzart, The VELUX Group, AOK Bundesverband, Hilti Group, Nissha Printing Company Ltd., Asian Paints, Aareal Bank Group, Magazine zum Globus (Migros Group)
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Teradata, Oracle and others in Data Warehouse. Updated: July 2026.
906,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.