SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a modular cloud ERP. Embedded with AI and analytics, it helps business run anywhere, in real time. SAP S/4HANA Cloud can be deployed either on premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid combination.
N/A
Microsoft SQL Server
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database.
$1,418
Per License
Pricing
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Microsoft SQL Server
Editions & Modules
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Custom Pricing
per month FUE users*
Subscription
$1,418.00
Per License
Enterprise
$13,748.00
Per License
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Microsoft SQL Server
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
No setup fee
Additional Details
* FUE = Full user equivalent, which allows flexible customer choice among: 1 Advanced user, 3 Core-users, or 30 self-service users per FUE. Minimum purchase is 35 FUEs.
Oracle is complicated and difficult and complex to maintain where as SAP S/4HANA Cloud is easy to maintain and user friendly interns of administration.
The SAP S/4HANA Cloud in-memory feature makes SAP S/4HANA Cloud much faster than previous storage based databases. Also, with storage based databases there is frequently a need to expand drives or add SAN drives which leads to extra expense. We selected SAP S/4HANA Cloud …
In my company, SAP S/4HANA Cloud works best for managing global operations, real-time financial consolidation, and automating supply chain processes. We rely on its AI-driven analytics to optimize procurement, logistics, and compliance in regulated industries. However, it’s not ideal for highly customized workflows, as the public cloud version limits deep modifications. Smaller teams also struggle with its complexity and costs. For businesses needing flexibility or lower overhead, alternatives like Oracle NetSuite might be a better fit. While powerful, S/4HANA Cloud requires significant investment in implementation and training, making it more suitable for enterprises with strong IT capabilities.
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.
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.
The cost of SAP as an ERP is quite high and the switching costs associated with ERP systems are even higher. That being said moving from one ERP to another only happens once in a great while for large organizations. Those switching costs include retraining, IT hardware requirements, outside consultants and more
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.
SAPs usability is great. If there is one ERP where one can adjust about anything there is to be adjusted, this is SAP. This sometimes also means having to maintain some extra master data, but this is to be expected and is well worth the extra effort. We wouldn't have it any other way!
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.
The technical support received by the ITT design teams and OS implementation team has been very useful in ensuring that the SAP ERP is well-tailored to our company's specific needs and operations. This coupled with the training materials, business process maps, and concept demos (sand-box demos) makes adoption easy on end-users.
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.
SAP requires a lot of internal and external resources to complete its successful implementation. The cloud version requires a deeper understanding of the different capabilities of the local systems (hardware) and the connection towards your local IT team. We found several problems on our systems that we couldn't foresee before the implementation and roll out.
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.
As I already mentioned, it automated our tasks such as Report creation, PR creation, and many others. That's the major advantage of the S/4 HANA cloud over our previous ERP. Its robust indication system and pre-analyzed data enabled ease of decision-making, which was not incorporated in our last software.
[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.
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.
