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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 (14th)
SAP NetWeaver Business Ware...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (23rd)
 

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

"SAP Business Warehouse is a scalable 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."
"Having the back-end data set with the right information is the best qualification for this solution."
"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 most valuable feature of this solution is the advanced structuring of data capabilities. You can get different structures of data to suit your needs."
"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 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."
"The product is very stable."
"The security and audit procedures are the most valuable features."
"A robust and efficient product."
"It is a robust system."
"It provides us with proof of data, we can centralize all of the information, check it, and then provide the information to our users."
"Transformation is a valuable feature of SAP NetWeaver. I can transform the data as per my needs or my client's needs. For example, flat tables can be transformed with respect to our requirements to combine multiple modules into one single table, and we can derive analytics."
"It's an excellent over-all tool for managers to analyze their business."
"Data modeling is a valuable feature."
 

Cons

"The solution should be more open to the cloud."
"It's a product that is at the end of life so they will not improve it anymore."
"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."
"Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward."
"The advanced structuring can be complicated and the interface is not very intuitive."
"In the next release, my suggestion would be to have user-friendly interfaces and performance issues be addressed."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Design and modeling could be simplified."
"I think more integration with other applications would be perfect."
"There are performance issues in terms of scalability and availability."
"The program is difficult to learn to use"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"All SAP products are expensive."
"The licensing cost is high for SAP NetWeaver compared to that for other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Retailer
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
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...
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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 SAP Business Warehouse vs. SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,455 professionals have used our research since 2012.