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Infobright DB vs SAP BW4HANA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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

Infobright DB
Ranking in Data Warehouse
20th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (34th)
SAP BW4HANA
Ranking in Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Infobright DB is 2.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BW4HANA is 3.6%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BW4HANA3.6%
Infobright DB2.1%
Other94.3%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

it_user708987 - PeerSpot reviewer
MySQL DBA at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Excellent reporting server that is compatible with MySQL
We ran into some quirks that Infobright had. We interacted with Infobright's support and were able to resolve them. There still are issues with data replication - Infobright is currently for one server (unless you buy the Infobright appliance). This would mean that redundancy is something you need to implement yourself.
HP
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
Support and pricing challenges overshadow user expertise
In SAP BW4HANA, I have worked in modeling, extraction, and reporting. I have experience with different tools including Power BI, BEx tools, Web Intelligence reports, and SSC. The best features include the ability to create data sources directly on tables, and perform mapping without creating info objects. It directly maps to target fields and source fields. There is no info cube concept, only ODS concept. We can create BEx queries in HANA itself, not as a separate tool. The modeling and reporting processes are easier to accomplish.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A valuable feature was the use of a columnar database for large, ever-growing, big datasets."
"ICE helped us improve the speed for the “group-by” query by 10x."
"Infobright gave us the ability to avoid significant changes in our data structure and just use Infobright like BigDataMySql."
"It has very amazing smart grid query feature for very fast aggregate queries across millions of rows"
"The high compression and the relatively fast load for a free product."
"It is very straightforward and easy to work with."
"Infobright allowed us to reduce the number of moving parts and complexity that we had while providing good performance to produce our reports."
"The performance of ad hoc aggregation queries is superior to any RDBMS that I have used and I have used them all."
"The ability to instantly pull data is the most valuable feature."
"The solution is easier to maintain than traditional SAP products."
"The product is stable."
"Its direct approach is the most valuable. You get more real time and capabilities than BW."
"Technology-wise, it is a very robust tool."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"Out of the box, this solution has a lot of standard features."
"The most valuable feature is the dashboard."
 

Cons

"After all the re-work to our product to remove as much reliance on Infobright, and the extra hardware costs we had to absorb, there was definitely a negative return on investment."
"MPP, distributed processing!!! And better integration with Hadoop."
"When running a complex subquery, the system hangs without giving the user any response."
"Only the data from the columns that reached 2GB will actually decrease. Other columns below 2GB in size do not leave the disk."
"There was no scalability at all. Infobright didn't permit any changes in tables."
"On the contrary, we have switched back to the MS SSAS Tabular Model, because of pricing policy."
"There still are issues with data replication - Infobright is currently for one server (unless you buy the Infobright appliance)."
"We didn’t purchase the Enterprise Edition because it was too expensive for a product that wasn’t going to replace our main DWH database (Oracle), but was, somehow, only an addition for it."
"The solution does occasionally get a few bugs, but this is typical for any product."
"The solution is not easy to implement. It requires a lot of learning at the beginning."
"The licensing cost could be made better."
"I don't see SAP actively supporting the solution now...a better support from SAP would be appreciated."
"There's one area where the other vendors have an upper edge, which is the data lake. I think SAP is trying to figure out whether to stick with IQ, their own data lake solution, or push customers toward customer-preferred vendors, like Azure Data Lake, AWS, or any other provider."
"Pricing would be a good improvement. A lot of customers think that it's very expensive and especially support is very expensive."
"Other competitors provide better solutions that are more up to date with current technology."
"The solution is not scalable. It does not have a data streaming feature as well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our pricing was based on server instances and it was actually very cheap compared to Oracle. I guess you get what you pay for."
"The product is free if we have the ECC license."
"It's a little expensive compared to Microsoft Azure."
"The tool is affordable."
"We started as early birds from the SAP side. We got this entire suite for free. I cannot really talk about the price because we didn't have to pay anything."
"The cost and licensing depends on how the customer is going to use the solution."
"We have a broad licensing arrangement, which is expensive but worth it for sizeable businesses."
"SAP BW/4HANA is expensive."
"As an investment, the solution is very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
14%
Retailer
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about SAP BW4HANA?
One significant advantage of SAP BW/4HANA is the direct integration with the SAP HANA database, providing seamless access to real-time analytics. Additionally, it enables real-time data integrati...
What needs improvement with SAP BW4HANA?
The integration with AI/ML in SAP BW4HANA is currently very limited, which is definitely an area that needs improvement. The second area for improvement is integration with third-party systems, whi...
 

Also Known As

Infobright
SAP BW/4HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

REZ-1, SonicWALL, IntegriChain, Fuseforward International Inc., Polystar, Live Rail, Mavenir Systems, JDSU Partners, Bango
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Find out what your peers are saying about Infobright DB vs. SAP BW4HANA and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.