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SAP BW4HANA vs SAP HANA 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.8
SAP BW4HANA enhances data management, productivity, and decision-making, offering long-term ROI through centralized data and advanced analytics.
Sentiment score
6.1
SAP HANA offers time and cost savings, with notable ROI and customization benefits, though integration costs challenge some companies.
We do not feel we're getting value for the investment due to the additional resources needed for integration and maintenance.
Director of Infrastructure at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees
I have seen a return on investment with SAP HANA as it typically delivers measurable ROI, especially in finance and month-end close processes.
Finance Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
SAP HANA is a cost-saving solution that helps save money and serves as a time-saving solution that helps save time.
Senior Manager at PwC
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.8
SAP BW4HANA support quality varies; some users experience delays, while others leverage resources for independent issue resolution.
Sentiment score
6.1
SAP HANA offers high-quality 24/7 customer service, but experiences vary, with concerns over slow responses and complex issue handling.
In the meantime, I found solutions independently and provided two solutions to my client.
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
I am satisfied with the response time and quality.
Senior consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
The community support is better than the official SAP support.
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
While issues are resolved eventually, the first level of support is not as good as we would like.
Sup-basis consultant at a security firm with 51-200 employees
When we raise a ticket for AWS or Azure issues, we find their support is very proactive, while SAP's support is quite passive.
Senior SAP Basis Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
SAP BW4HANA is scalable, excelling in cloud environments, while on-premise scaling may encounter cost and planning challenges.
Sentiment score
7.8
SAP HANA provides scalable enterprise-level solutions, allowing seamless vertical and horizontal expansion to efficiently handle substantial data volumes.
SAP HANA handles large data volumes efficiently, allowing for adding more modules or users without performance issues.
Finance Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Our operations have grown from a hundred data operations a day to as many in a couple of seconds.
Director of Infrastructure at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees
It depends on what needs to change in the structure, as some entities cannot be changed and require a new implementation, while others can be modified.
IT Application Manager at TBTD
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
SAP BW4HANA is highly reliable and integrates well, though some users mention performance issues with large datasets.
Sentiment score
7.8
SAP HANA is praised for its stability, reliability, and efficiency, with improvements seen in version 2.0 and initial configurations.
We recently faced customer data loss during the cluster handover or failover fallback.
Senior SAP Basis Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We have not had any problems in the last seven to eight years.
Sup-basis consultant at a security firm with 51-200 employees
Regarding stability, they are using legacy systems and have implemented SAP HANA.
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
 

Room For Improvement

SAP BW4HANA is costly and complex, with integration, usability, migration issues, and competition from better cloud solutions.
SAP HANA needs improvements in interface, scalability, integration, and cost efficiency, with enhanced support, training, and mobile integration.
SAP is asking us to move to one client approach and suggested moving to data warehouse cloud, which should have been done before HANA, as the cloud solution is better for them due to the lack of hardware maintenance on the client's end.
Consultant at IBM
Integration needs improvement.
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
The integration with AI/ML in SAP BW4HANA is currently very limited, which is definitely an area that needs improvement.
Senior consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
The main issue is the ecosystem, which lacks the widespread support that SQL enjoys.
Director of Infrastructure at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees
The setup process and deployment process for SAP HANA is complex.
Program manger at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Licensing costs with SAP HANA are very high.
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
 

Setup Cost

SAP BW/4HANA is costly, with prices varying widely; often affordable for large enterprises and negotiable per customer needs.
SAP HANA is costly due to licensing, setup, and hardware expenses, affecting affordability for smaller businesses despite robust capabilities.
The certification cost for SAP BW4HANA in 2025 is expected to be one lakh forty thousand.
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
It's a recurring subscription model, which is expensive compared to legacy systems with just a maintenance fee.
Director of Infrastructure at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees
SAP is not a cheap company, and its licenses are expensive.
Sup-basis consultant at a security firm with 51-200 employees
I would rate the price for SAP HANA as high.
Senior SAP Basis Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

SAP BW4HANA excels in user-friendly design, advanced analytics, real-time processing, scalability, and seamless integration for informed business decisions.
SAP HANA offers real-time processing, integration, scalability, and user-friendly interface, enhancing speed, reporting, and diverse business adaptability.
The best features include the ability to create data sources directly on tables, and perform mapping without creating info objects.
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
The capability to handle a large amount of data and perform ETL operations is most valuable.
Senior consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
My impression of the stability of SAP BW4HANA is that it is a robust system, scalable, and effective for business reporting as well as combining multiple datasets into a single point of view.
Consultant at IBM
This architecture allows for faster data processing and real-time analytics that were not possible with traditional databases.
Director of Infrastructure at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees
The concept enhances speed, allowing the database to serve and move data quickly.
Sup-basis consultant at a security firm with 51-200 employees
One of our dashboards using Excelsius was previously developed on normal BW on Oracle data, which took 10 minutes to open. After developing the same calculation views using those tables and replacing them with calculation views in Excelsius, the dashboard opened in seconds.
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
 

Categories and Ranking

SAP BW4HANA
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (11th)
SAP HANA
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (2nd), Embedded Database (1st), Relational Databases Tools (3rd), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

SAP BW4HANA and SAP HANA aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. SAP BW4HANA is designed for Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 3.4%, down 4.1% compared to last year.
SAP HANA, on the other hand, focuses on Embedded Database, holds 12.8% mindshare, up 9.1% since last year.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BW4HANA3.4%
Snowflake9.4%
Teradata8.6%
Other78.6%
Data Warehouse
Embedded Database Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP HANA12.8%
SQLite13.6%
Oracle Database In-Memory12.2%
Other61.400000000000006%
Embedded Database
 

Featured Reviews

Ritesh Durvasha - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Has supported efficient data processing and streamlined reporting for large-scale sales operations
The capability to handle a large amount of data and perform ETL operations is most valuable. Additionally, sending data out of SAP BW4HANA through Open Hub, which is a free service, is another valuable feature. In contrast, many other products charge for sending data out of their systems, such as Data Sphere or BDC, which charge premium service fees. Regarding advanced analytic tools in SAP BW4HANA, users can directly connect to Analysis for Office without additional charges. It's convenient as users don't have to download data into Excel since it's already connected to the system. From an integration capabilities perspective, it's easy to connect to SAP systems, though integration with non-SAP systems presents more challenges.
Bassem Mohammed - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Application Manager at TBTD
Integrated business processes have improved real-time analytics and financial performance
Whether I or my customers utilize SAP HANA's real-time analytics depends on the data needed to be displayed, and then choosing how to transfer the data to the analytic object, data source, or database to be displayed in the reports. It may be near real-time, real-time, or running batch every day. There are tools for integration between third-party systems, such as OData or APIs from SAP to get in or push data to other systems. Support for both structured and unstructured data helps organizations unify data sources depending on the needed data to be displayed. There are many ways to store it for report displays, but structured data will be better than unstructured data.
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
9%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise30
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise64
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with SAP BW4HANA?
For improvement, I think AWS for HANA could be better, but it is an on-premise solution. SAP is asking us to move to one client approach and suggested moving to data warehouse cloud, which should h...
What is your primary use case for SAP BW4HANA?
My use cases involve the client I am working with, who already has a BW ON HANA system, and we are currently migrating and redeveloping things in SAP BW4HANA; they are decommissioning the BW On HAN...
What are the biggest benefits of using SAP HANA?
Based on my work with SAP HANA, the biggest benefit that it can bring to your business is total data management. This product is by SAP - a company that serves almost all needs a client may have co...
Is SAP HANA’s customer and technical support reliable?
We have been using SAP HANA for a fairly short period of time and have only taken advantage of their customer support. So far, we have not had issues that required specialized help from technical s...
Is SAP HANA difficult to set up and start using?
SAP HANA is fairly easy to set up, however, I do not think a complete beginner can do it. You certainly need some preparation - either you need to have experience with similar solutions, or with ot...
 

Also Known As

SAP BW/4HANA
SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance, HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Unilever, NHS 24, adidas Group, CHIO Aachen, Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited
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