Amazon EMR vs SAP Business Warehouse comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and SAP are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.0, while SAP is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 3.7% mindshare in CDW, compared to SAP’s 2.6% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Amazon EMR

Read 25 Amazon EMR reviews

4,458 Views
1,739 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

SAP Business Warehouse

Read 26 SAP Business Warehouse reviews

3,035 Views
1,791 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Amazon EMR

SAP Business Warehouse

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Amazon EMR and SAP Business Warehouse are prominent solutions in the big data and analytics market. While Amazon EMR offers a cost-effective cloud-based approach, SAP Business Warehouse excels in integration and analytical capabilities, giving SAP Business Warehouse a slight upper hand in business data management.

Features: Amazon EMR provides advanced scalability, integration with Hadoop and HDFS, and cost-efficient cloud services using EC2 and S3. Its strengths include rapid processing speeds and substantial data storage. SAP Business Warehouse integrates seamlessly with SAP ERP, handling complex data and offering robust transformation tools tailored for financial, HR, and procurement needs.

Room for Improvement: Amazon EMR has a steep learning curve for beginners and an outdated support interface. Desired improvements include better monitoring, reduced job start times, and enhanced cost control. SAP Business Warehouse needs improved visualization tools and simpler report-building capabilities for non-developers, alongside better real-time data processing and expanded non-SAP integration options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon EMR is renowned for its effective public cloud deployment and generally positive support, though technical support consistency is an area of concern. SAP Business Warehouse requires complex hybrid environment setups, with support quality varying, as some users report inconsistencies.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon EMR's pricing is based on resource usage, allowing scalability without extra licensing costs, though unmanaged costs can be substantial. Its ROI is generally favorable according to user feedback. SAP Business Warehouse’s pricing is complex, based on company revenue, with high licensing costs that deter smaller businesses. While ROI is positive for companies transitioning from on-premise solutions, it remains costly.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon EMR vs. SAP Business Warehouse Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR vs. SAP Business Warehouse

September 2026

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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

Amazon EMR

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

13th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Hadoop (3rd)

SAP Business Warehouse

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

15th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 3.7%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 2.6%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Amazon EMR	3.7%
SAP Business Warehouse	2.6%
Other	93.7%

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

reviewer2043696

Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Data pipelines have simplified complex transformations and provide faster insights for users

The features at Amazon EMR that I have found most valuable are fully customizable functions. I am using Amazon EMR for data transformation, where we load the data. The entire ETL process is encompassed within it. The first thing is the egress part, where we pull the data from various sources, which include our main core databases, the systems that include Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, and Postgres. We bring data from all these sources and use Amazon EMR specifically to combine all this data, clean the data, and combine it at a particular level. We bring everything to a particular level to make it more production-ready, and we simplify the data because every system has its own problems. We are using it to clean the data and transform the data in such a way that the end-user can get the insights faster.

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VishnuReddy2

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The stability of the product has been great overall."

"Amazon makes it about as easy as it can be to dip a toe in those waters."

"We are using applications, such as Splunk, Livy, Hadoop, and Spark. We are using all of these applications in Amazon EMR and they're helping us a lot."

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."

"It has a variety of options and support systems."

"The project management is very streamlined."

"Amazon EMR provides out-of-the-box functionality because we can deploy and get Spark functionality over Hadoop."

"We are using Amazon EMR to clean the data and transform the data in such a way that the end-user can get the insights faster."

More Amazon EMR pros

"All our processes such as funds management, grant, payroll transactions are processed automatically through this system and BW helps to collect the data for analytic needs of the department users and board members."

"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."

"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is that it's a seamless integration platform. A valuable feature in the tool is the monitoring alert that makes you aware of what process chain has failed. There's no manual monitoring required if you have configured an alert system, so the process chain can run in the background, and you can get alerts about it. The functionalities I find good in SAP Business Warehouse are alerting and monitoring. If you have configured the tool and have integrated it with SAP Solution Manager, then it's a good product to use."

"I like that it integrates to open-source."

"The warehouse is the solution's most valuable feature."

"BW is our bread and butter."

"My advice would be if you have a data block and if you really want a big solution on the reporting side of it with slicing and dicing, definitely go ahead with BW when it comes to SAP related data."

"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."

More SAP Business Warehouse pros

Cons

"Amazon EMR is continuously improving, but maybe something like CI/CD out-of-the-box or integration with Prometheus Grafana."

"There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."

"The dashboard management could be better. Right now, it's lacking a bit."

"We don't have much control. If we have multiple users, if they want to scale up, the cost will go and increase and we don't know how we can restrict that price part."

"One of the lacking features is good web support."

"The product must add some of the latest technologies to provide more flexibility to the users."

"The initial setup was time-consuming."

"There were times where they would release new versions and it seemed to end up breaking old versions, which is very strange."

More Amazon EMR cons

"SAP Business Warehouse could improve by having more out-of-the-box use cases to cover more business types or operations."

"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."

"People are getting frustrated as they have to spend lots of time - 10 minutes to 15 minutes - generating the report."

"The solution could offer better connectivity with other databases."

"The advanced structuring can be complicated and the interface is not very intuitive."

"So far, the initial setup process in our company has not been easy enough for us to understand."

"What I'd like improved in SAP Business Warehouse is its setup. It could be more flexible, and it could be a configuration-based setup."

"The way the data is stored is kind of rigid in SAP BW as a product. It could be more flexible so that when we are designing a solution, we can design our own data structures and try to improve performance."

More SAP Business Warehouse cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a small fee for the EMR system, but major cost components are the underlying infrastructure resources which we actually use."

"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten. It can be expensive since it's a managed service, and if you are not careful, you can run into unexpected charges. You can make a mistake that costs you tens of thousands of dollars. That's happened to us twice, so I'm sensitive to it. We're still trying to work on that. Our smallest client probably spends a hundred thousand dollars yearly on licensing, while our largest is well over a million."

"The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."

"There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."

"The cost of Amazon EMR is very high."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"You don't need to pay for licensing on a yearly or monthly basis, you only pay for what you use, in terms of underlying instances."

"Amazon EMR's price is reasonable."

More Amazon EMR pricing and cost advice

"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."

"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."

"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."

"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."

"The solution is quite expensive."

"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."

"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Construction Company

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

12%

Construction Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	15

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?

I would rate the price for Amazon EMR, where one is high and ten is low, as a good one.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?

I feel some lack of functionality in Amazon EMR. I have thoughts on what would be great to see in the product, such as AI/ML features or additional options.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Amazon EMR?

I find it easy to integrate Amazon EMR with other AWS services like S3 or EC2 for data processing needs. I would rate this review as eight out of ten.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SAP Business Warehouse?

I am using SAP Business Warehouse in my organization for data warehousing as well as an ETL tool. Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward. Integration with SAP ER...

See all answers

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

SAP BW4HANA vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 5% of the time

SAP Business Data Cloud vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR

October 2026

Download Amazon EMR product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP Business Warehouse

October 2026

Download SAP Business Warehouse product report

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce

No data available

Overview

Amazon EMR simplifies big data processing by offering integration with popular tools. It's scalable and cost-efficient, enabling fast processing while managing infrastructure effortlessly. It's designed for users aiming to streamline data workflows and leverage its batch processing capabilities effectively.

Amazon EMR is a managed service that provides robust features for big data processing. It integrates seamlessly with S3, EC2, Hive, and Spark to facilitate sophisticated data transformation tasks and infrastructure management. It allows organizations to run data lakes, Spark, and Hadoop clusters effortlessly, offering flexibility with on-demand execution and extensive scalability. The platform is valued for its strong processing speed and comprehensive security features, making it ideal for complex data engineering projects. It supports both batch processing and real-time workflows, designed to eliminate hardware management while maintaining cost efficiency and stability.

What are the key features of Amazon EMR?

Cluster Management: Offers intuitive control and configuration of clusters
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with S3, EC2, Spark, and more
Scalability: Provides flexible scaling to meet data demands
Batch Processing: Allows efficient handling of large data sets
Cost Efficiency: Minimizes costs with managed service offerings

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Processing Speed: Fast performance for data processing tasks
Security: Built-in features ensure data protection
Infrastructure Simplification: Eliminates hardware management needs
Flexibility: Adapts to changing data loads with ease
Affordability: Offers economic processing power

Amazon EMR is implemented by industries such as healthcare and tech processing for complex data tasks like building data lakes or financial data processing. It supports AI-driven analytics and data engineering projects, integrating with SageMaker for predictions and maintaining workflows in public health applications, allowing professionals in different fields to manage data pipelines, resource utilization, and job execution efficiently.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

SAP Business Warehouse integrates real-time data access via HANA, with Microsoft Excel and SAP ERP for enhanced data transformation and reporting. Known for its speed and hybrid features, it meets diverse data governance needs.

SAP Business Warehouse is designed to streamline data access and transformation with its integration capabilities. Its speed and efficiency are complemented by advanced reporting features and a robust authorization model. Users benefit from drag-and-drop reporting and alert systems that enhance operational efficiency. Despite its strengths, improvements are necessary in user friendliness, data integration, and reporting speed. Users require better trend analysis tools, increased visualization capabilities, and a more flexible configuration to optimize use. Real-time data access remains an area for development.

What features define SAP Business Warehouse?

HANA Integration: Enables real-time data access
Excel and ERP Integration: Seamless interaction with popular tools
Advanced Reporting: Delivers high-quality reporting capabilities
Hybrid Functionality: Offers versatile use cases
Drag-and-Drop: Simplifies reporting and analysis tasks
Authorization Model: Ensures secure data handling

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Operational Efficiency: Enhanced by alert and monitoring tools
Data Governance: Robust models meet diverse needs
Centralized Data: Comprehensive data storage and access
Decision-Making Support: BI tools inform strategic planning

SAP Business Warehouse plays a crucial role in industries like finance and supply chain, leveraging data warehousing, ETL processes, and powerful BI applications to enhance decision-making with tools like Business Objects, Tableau, and Power BI. It serves as a central data repository, facilitating extensive reporting and analysis capabilities.

SAP

Sample Customers

Yelp

Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR vs. SAP Business Warehouse

September 2026

Free Report: Amazon EMR vs. SAP Business Warehouse

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