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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    SAP BW/4HANA

    Score8.3 out of 10
    N/ASAP BW/4HANA is a next-generation data warehouse solution. It is specifically designed to use the advanced in-memory capabilities of the SAP HANA platform. For example, SAP BW/HANA can integrate many different data sources to provide a single, logical view of all the data. This could include data contained in SAP and non-SAP applications running on-premise or in the cloud, and data lakes, such as those contained in the Apache Hadoop open-source software framework. With SAP BW/4HANA,…N/A

    Microsoft SQL Server

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft SQL Server is a relational database.

    $1,418

    Per License

    Pricing
    SAP BW/4HANAMicrosoft SQL Server
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Subscription
    $1,418.00
    Per License
    Enterprise
    $13,748.00
    Per License
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    SAP BW/4HANAMicrosoft SQL Server
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    SAP BW/4HANAMicrosoft SQL Server
    Considered Both Products
    SAP
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    53 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    92%
    Delivers good value for the price
    11 Answers
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    45 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    53 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    39 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    11 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    45 Answers
    Features
    SAP BW/4HANAMicrosoft SQL Server
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of SAP BW/4HANA and Microsoft SQL Server
    Feature
    SAP BW/4HANA
    9.2
    4 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Microsoft SQL Server
    -
    Ratings
    Multi-User Support (named login)9.74 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)9.74 Ratings00 Ratings
    Single Sign-On (SSO)9.74 Ratings00 Ratings
    Location-Based Data Governance8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Modeling
    Comparison of Data Modeling features of SAP BW/4HANA and Microsoft SQL Server
    Feature
    SAP BW/4HANA
    9.7
    4 Ratings
    0% above category average
    Microsoft SQL Server
    -
    Ratings
    Data model creation9.74 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Exploration
    Comparison of Data Exploration features of SAP BW/4HANA and Microsoft SQL Server
    Feature
    SAP BW/4HANA
    9.0
    3 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Microsoft SQL Server
    -
    Ratings
    Visualization9.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Warehouse
    Comparison of Data Warehouse features of SAP BW/4HANA and Microsoft SQL Server
    Feature
    SAP BW/4HANA
    8.5
    4 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Microsoft SQL Server
    -
    Ratings
    High-Volume Data Processing9.74 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Warehouse Management10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Administrative Automation7.53 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self-Optimization7.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    SAP BW/4HANAMicrosoft SQL Server
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Amazon RDS
    Score8.1 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Cloudera Enterprise Data Hub
    Score9 out of 10
    SingleStore
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Oracle Exadata
    Score9.8 out of 10
    SAP IQ
    Score5.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    SAP BW/4HANAMicrosoft SQL Server
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.7
    (12 ratings)
    7.9
    (107 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    9.7
    (5 ratings)
    7.6
    (17 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.7
    (7 ratings)
    7.9
    (26 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (6 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    Data Sources
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (5 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    SAP BW/4HANAMicrosoft SQL Server
    Likelihood to Recommend
    SAP
    SAP BW/4HANA is certainly an excellent choice when it comes to setting up a data warehousing platform within a landscape of existing SAP systems ecosystem for realizing quick time to value and ROI over the long term. Many non-SAP analytics tools such as Power BI , Qlik also now offer connectors to leverage SAP BW/4HANA data as additional options to deploy third party visualization tools which make it a more open ended platform of choice. But with the future roadmap of SAP and industry in general being focused towards cloud based offerings (SAC and Datasphere) infused with AI capabilities one has to make a judicious choice among these depending on the use case, capabilities of platforms and existing systems landscape and the overall long term IT strategy. SAP BW/4HANA may not be a good platform of choice if starting a native greenfield data warehousing implementation with cloud first approach which would require data integration across SAP and Non-SAP sources and one should consider other SAP cloud offerings which however still have some time to reach a level of maturity as SAP BW/4HANA has reached over the years.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Microsoft SQL is ubiquitous, while MySQL runs under the hood all over the place. Microsoft SQL is the platform taught in colleges and certification courses and is the one most likely to be used by businesses because it is backed by Microsoft. Its interface is friendly (well, as pleasant as SQL can be) and has been used by so many for so long that resources are freely available if you encounter any issues.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    SAP
    • With ODP based extraction, SAP BW/4HANA does well to integrate the data from various source systems like S4HANA , S4C.
    • With composite providers having the ability to integrate HANA calculation views, we are able to make the best of use of both application layer and data base layer(HANA) for mixed modelling scenarios.
    • with data tiering optimization higher data volume are effectively handled as we have the option to control the amount of data that is being stored in HOT , Warm and cold storage. With data volume grows over the year, DTO comes in handy solution to automatically move the delta to appropriate area based on temporature.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    • Easy to configure and use with Visual Studio and Dot Net
    • Easy integration with MSBI to perform data analysis
    • Data Security
    • Easy to understand and use
    • Very easy to export database and tables in the form of SQL query or a script
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    SAP
    • Better integration with HANA layer with BW/4HANA application
    • Flexibility to provide more secure API's to interact with non-sap Data bases
    • Integration with Gsheets as well like Excel(AFO) and introduce better reporting integration with various reporting tools.
    • Evolution to provide better data lake , data brick options like in BDC
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition has a high cost but is the only edition which supports SQL Always On Availability Groups. It would be nice to include this feature in the Standard version.
    • Licensing of Microsoft SQL Server is a quite complex matter, it would be good to simplify licensing in the future. For example, per core vs per user CAL licensing, as well as complex licensing scenarios in the Cloud and on Edge locations.
    • It would be good to include native tools for converting Oracle, DB2, Postgresql and MySQL/MariaDB databases (schema and data) for import into Microsoft SQL Server.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    SAP
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    We understand that the Microsoft SQL Server will continue to advance, offering the same robust and reliable platform while adding new features that enable us, as a software center, to create a superior product. That provides excellent performance while reducing the hardware requirements and the total cost of ownership of our solution.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    SAP
    SAP BW/4HANA requires specialized skillsets around data warehouse modeling and the access to data, however the modeling capabilities are intuitive and have now become accessible to both SAP and non-SAP data warehouse specialists. This new model allows for Interchangeable skillsets and access to a broader pool of experts throughout the industry, as well as easier access to data.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    SAP
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Its does not have outages.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    SAP
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    SSAS data cubes may some time slow down your Excel reports.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    SAP
    SAP Max Attention and general support for SAP BW/4HANA is broadly available. Truth to be told, MaxAttention has a premium cost but brings great engineers. So this being an enterprise capability and extremely critical, we did not consider cost as the main factor since support works well. Just keep that in mind when making your selection.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    SAP
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    It was good
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    SAP
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    very hands on and detailed training
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    SAP
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    SAP
    SAP BW / 4HANA and SAP IQ are both used for warehouse; with quick consultations for business analysis and that allows us to obtain dashboards and KPIs efficiently. SAP IQ is columnar and SAP BW / 4HANA immemorial. SAP BW / 4HANA was selected for the response speed of the queries since it saves the information in cache.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    [Microsoft] SQL Server has a much better community and professional support and is overall just a more reliable system with Microsoft behind it. I've used MySQL in the past and SQL Server has just become more comfortable for me and is my go to RDBMS.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    SAP
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    SQL server does handle growing demands of a mid sized company.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    SAP
    • SAP BW/4HANA has been immensely helpful in eliminating alternate silos of data creation by business users thereby ensuring data integrity and consistency across the organization. The focus is now more on data analysis as opposed to data preparation in spreadsheets saving users hours of laborious manual work in collating data.
    • We have been able to quickly integrate and leverage data from multiple SAP systems into SAP BW/4HANA to drive holistic decision making within the organization including streamlining the month end close process using BPC.
    • Excel friendly reporting tools such as Analysis for Office have made it much easier for user adoption and training making change management much easier and change the culture within the organization.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
    • Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
    • Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SAP BW/4HANA Screenshots

    Screenshot of Next generation data warehousing with SAP BW/4HANA.Screenshot of SAP BW/4HANA user cockpit.Screenshot of Geolocation analytics in SAP BW/4HANA.Screenshot of Data modeling in SAP BW/4HANA.Screenshot of Modern user experience in SAP BW/4HANA.Screenshot of Monitor the performance of your business in real-time with SAP BW/4HANA.