SAP HANA Cloud vs. Microsoft SQL Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SAP HANA Cloud
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
SAP HANA is an application that uses in-memory database technology to process very large amounts of real-time data from relational databases, both SAP and non-SAP, in a very short time. The in-memory computing engine allows HANA to process data stored in RAM as opposed to reading it from a disk which means that the data can be accessed in real time by the applications using HANA. The product is sold both as an appliance and as a cloud-based software solution.
$0.95
per month Capacity Units
Microsoft SQL Server
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database.
$1,418
Per License
Pricing
SAP HANA CloudMicrosoft 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 HANA CloudMicrosoft SQL Server
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsIncludes a one year free trial.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SAP HANA CloudMicrosoft SQL Server
Considered Both Products
SAP HANA Cloud
Chose SAP HANA Cloud
Main features is in memory database. SAP HANA Cloud is specifically good for Accounting and supply chain management.
Chose SAP HANA Cloud
We have been using Microsoft SQL for our database related tasks until we made a successful & much-needed transition to SAP HANA for good. With the level of complexities SAP HANA can handle & deliver it was our obvious choice.
Chose SAP HANA Cloud
As SAP HANA is built into memeory, the proformance of the product is hard to beat against it's rivals but that comes with a price. You can get away with using another product but you'll be losing out else where. For example in time/multiple systems and efforts to relplicate …
Chose SAP HANA Cloud
The customer has most of their investment in Microsoft databases. If SAP HANA was not available, we would have gone to getting data into a SQL server and creating APIs to access them inside SAP. But, with the help of HANA, we could avoid all those unnecessary things and get …
Chose SAP HANA Cloud
The choice of the SAP HANA solution was mainly determined by the choice of the new company ERP, which having been SAP, naturally led to the choice of its DB solution.
Chose SAP HANA Cloud
1. In memory functionality.
2. Data compression using columnar storage functionality.
3. Performance.
Chose SAP HANA Cloud
SAP HANA is a more modern database with capabilities which reach far beyond a classical database. We chose SAP HANA as it represents the future direction of SAP which aligns with our strategic direction. With the introduction of S/4 HANA, SAP HANA will remain the only …
Chose SAP HANA Cloud
SAP HANA is much better suited for SAP ERP connectivity.
Chose SAP HANA Cloud
SAP HANA uses the sheer power of in memory analytics based on columnar compression of data in the back-end resulting in an overall decreased footprint of the data resulting in a paradigm shift. The traditional RDBMS database would rely heavily on additional indexes to retrieve …
Chose SAP HANA Cloud
There are many alternatives to SAP HANA if we consider functionality. Most of them, just like HANA, have their own niche place of specialization. But SAP HANA is at the forefront when it comes to performance comparison in its area of expertise which is business intelligence and …
Chose SAP HANA Cloud
MS SQLServer is an alternative if the data foundation is not very big and a separate application layer or Excel can be used for reports.
Microsoft SQL Server
Chose Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server was our first choice as we are a Microsoft partner.
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Best Alternatives
SAP HANA CloudMicrosoft SQL Server
Small Businesses
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
SAP HANA CloudMicrosoft SQL Server
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(294 ratings)
9.6
(96 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(6 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Usability
9.1
(10 ratings)
9.9
(10 ratings)
Availability
3.6
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
3.6
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.4
(254 ratings)
7.9
(25 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(2 ratings)
9.0
(5 ratings)
Configurability
3.6
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
4.5
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
4.5
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
4.5
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
3.6
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
SAP HANA CloudMicrosoft SQL Server
Likelihood to Recommend
SAP
It is well organized. One can use it for the company's portfolio management. Various tasks can be done for managerial purposes. One can track the material from start to end product: for example, raw material, packing material & consumable material to formulated bulk and formulated drug product. This can help to manage spending as well as finding costing of the product.
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Microsoft
Microsoft SQL Server is a great RDBMS and meets all of our requirements. If you need a stable DB platform to support your line of a business application you'll be well served. Licensing costs are far cheaper, more portable and a lot more user friendly than Oracle. Product support and security patches from Microsoft are strong.
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Pros
SAP
  • Real-time reporting and analytics on data: because of its in-memory architecture, it is perfect for businesses that need to make quick decisions based on current information.
  • Managing workload with complex data: it can handle a vast range of data types, including relational, documental, geospatial, graph, vector, and time series data.
  • Developing and deploying intelligent data applications: it provides various tools for such applications and can be used for machine learning and artificial intelligence to automate tasks, gain insights from data, and make predictions.
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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
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Cons
SAP
  • Requires higher processing power, otherwise it won't fly. How ever computing costs are lower. Incase you are migrating to cloud please do not select the highest config available in that series . Upgrading it later against a reserved instance can cost you dearly with a series change
  • Lack of clarity on licensing is one major challenge
  • Unless S/4 with additional features are enabled mere migration HANA DB is not a rewarding journey. Power is in S/4
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Microsoft
  • The import/export process can be tricky to follow with lots of steps and could be better for importing flat files
  • Obtaining help from Microsoft is cumbersome and often other internet sources are better and quicker
  • The documentation is not great and again it's generally better to obtain help elsewhere if needed
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Likelihood to Renew
SAP
At this moment we are not focusing on SAP, however would love to in the future. This is primarily because of our limited ability to generate more revenue to fund for SAP partnerships and products. Our initial tryst with SAP Partneredge open ecosystem didn't go as planned and we have shelved that for now. Hope we can revive in the future
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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.
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Usability
SAP
In addition to the points described in the previous parts of the review, I believe that as I gain more experience with the product over time, I will be able to better describe my experience with this tool. Meanwhile, I can confirm that the possibilities presented to my organization by the change to SAP HANA, at the moment, have been very important to evolve the analytical and strategic field towards a new path.
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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.
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Reliability and Availability
SAP
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Its does not have outages.
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Performance
SAP
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
SSAS data cubes may some time slow down your Excel reports.
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Support Rating
SAP
One specific example of how the support for SAP HANA Cloud impacted us is in our efforts to troubleshoot and resolve technical issues. Whenever we encountered an issue or had a question, the support team was quick to respond and provided us with clear and actionable guidance. This helped us avoid downtime and keep our analytics operations running smoothly.
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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.
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In-Person Training
SAP
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It was good
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Online Training
SAP
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
very hands on and detailed training
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Implementation Rating
SAP
Professional GIS people are some of the most risk-averse there are, and it's difficult to get them to move to HANA in one step. Start with small projects building to 80% use of HANA spatial over time.
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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.
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Alternatives Considered
SAP
I have deep knowledge of other disk based DBMSs. They are venerable technology, but the attempts to extend them to current architectures belie the fact they are built on 40 year old technology. There are some good columnar in-memory databases but they lack the completeness of capability present in the HANA platform.
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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.
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Scalability
SAP
Limitation of training deliverable by organization
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Microsoft
SQL server does handle growing demands of a mid sized company.
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Return on Investment
SAP
  • ROI has always been high in terms of the functionality that it offers and the security features it comes with.
  • Managing large volumes of data in real-time is not an easy task, but it does it pretty well with faster data processing.
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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.
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