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Kovair Data Lake 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

Kovair Data Lake
Ranking in Data Warehouse
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP BW4HANA
Ranking in Data Warehouse
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Kovair Data Lake is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BW4HANA is 4.2%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

LuizKazan - PeerSpot reviewer
Ability to interact with teachers in real-time and manage lessons after class
The deployment process is very fast. We have prepared the product to be easily installed, and we have had successful cases where it could be implemented in less than a few weeks. Moreover, Around three or four people in a call center are involved in maintaining the solution. We have a project manager, a service manager, and at least two or three system analysts who handle the maintenance. If there are any issues, we can open a support ticket for them to address.
Csaba Grünblatt - PeerSpot reviewer
Performs all necessary data warehouse tasks and offers additional functionalities
SAP BW4HANA improved data reporting processes significantly. Performance on HANA database is good. Well-built data models ensure consistent and fast reporting. Reusable models enhance efficiency, even for SaaS services. In-memory computing, especially since HANA, has greatly improved performance in data analysis tasks. It eliminates the need for complex optimizations like creating indexes or aggregates. Queries that once took minutes now run in seconds, enabling real-time reporting, especially for SAP ECC on HANA. SAP BW4HANA's integration capabilities are streamlined with a simplified architecture and more virtual layers. You can directly load data into optimized layers, reducing the need for extra storage. The introduction of Open ODS Views allows for additional logic and master data inclusion, making integration faster and simpler. The learning curve for SAP BW4HANA is much faster now compared to ten years ago, thanks to abundant free resources like documentation, videos, blogs, and learning journeys provided by SAP. It is simpler to learn with these resources available compared to the past when you had to attend courses and rely on books. I would recommend SAP BW4HANA to users looking to implement it, especially if they want to keep their systems on-premise and already have SAP systems. Those with BW on HANA have two choices: BW4HANA or DataSphere, depending on their cloud strategy. If they are advanced in their cloud strategy and want to migrate off-premise, DataSphere is a good choice. However, for a robust solution on-premise or in a private cloud, BW4HANA is an excellent option. Overall, I would rate BW4HANA as a nine out of ten. It performs all necessary data warehouse tasks and offers additional functionalities. We use it traditionally, with complex transformations and models but with less emphasis on real-time processing and third-party sources.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the ability to interact with teachers in real-time and manage lessons after class."
"The tool's most valuable features for us are its combination of formatting, ETL, analytics, and storage capabilities."
"The product is stable."
"It provides the functions in a way that even a less technical person can do the modeling."
"The ability to instantly pull data is the most valuable feature."
"The UI is completely new, beautiful, and user-friendly. There are some other helpful features like global filters and advanced tools. We can perform custom calculations easily From a technical perspective, the performance has been enhanced and optimized for a limited number of flows. The content settings are more advanced, and there are so many other features that I can't name them all."
"We benefited from BW/4HANA's ability to utilize predefined content inside. We didn't need to start from scratch."
"We can get good visualization and less redundant data."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that the infrastructure is easy to understand."
"Out of the box, this solution has a lot of standard features."
 

Cons

"The solution is expensive. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Kovair Data Lake could enhance its ETL and data capabilities."
"Maybe the chat conversation feature could be improved."
"The cost of the product might be an area that might introduce some restrictions or limitations to customers, making it one of the aspects where improvements are required."
"The UI is not user-friendly."
"It's complicated to use. You need to spend a lot of time learning about it. The interface could be improved. It's not intuitive to build a data model and use their ETL tools."
"The product needs to improve with more performance and fewer data layers."
"From a technical perspective, it could be even more related to legacy systems. The connectivity requirement is quite high and requires systems that are up-to-date."
"They have taken out a few BW functionalities when they redesigned this. The way of multi-dimensional thinking and star schema got a little bit lost. It may be because of the cost, but certain functionalities that were previously implemented from the BW side should come back again in the whole product. It is a young product. It is version 2.0. In time, I'm pretty sure they will come back again because otherwise, it limits the potential of the product, and I have to do a lot of modeling towards that direction. For me, the analytics focus is too much. It is not cube-oriented in that way, so its functionality is limited. It is not really technically limited in the back end; it is more limited in the front end. It has a data-mining mindset for SQL developers. The navigational attributes should be easy. It needs to be built in models. I see the data mark cube or understanding that the composite provider needs to be models in a cube coming back. The multi-dimensional star schema approach and the reporting need to be done as well as possible to leverage the star scheme below. This is definitely not understood by many consultants and even composite providers for star schema. They always think in terms of flat tables, which is limiting. You need to build the right dimensions, objects, and so on. If you can build this in BW4HANA, then you have this understanding that BW4HANA is not forcing you in this direction, but it should force you a bit better in this direction. Maybe a few elements which were in use in BW should come back again. It would help the community to determine the direction to build on the cube. You can have maybe 50 elements, and then you can expand it to what you need by leveraging navigation. So far, this functionality is a little bit limited in the tool, and it is not thought through, but I think it will come. They should also be adding more capabilities for the transformation between different objects. In BW, this is currently limited, especially towards composite providers. It is a bit complex basically in the building. You have to have a lot of knowledge as well as know how to do it better because it is a bit different from BW. There is not too much expertise currently in the consulting markets. Many are trying to build something, but it may be based on their knowledge of what they have from the BW and HANA side. You have to find the right mix from both of them at this time. We also have HANA Native. These are our two different sync sources basically, and we have approaches to connect nicely, but it is hard to manage your team because a lot of coaching is required."
"The monitoring for the remodeling feature is very difficult to understand."
"In the next release, I would like to see their BI component introduced with a mobile version, as it is not currently present."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"As an investment, the solution is very expensive."
"It's a little expensive compared to Microsoft Azure."
"Price wise, this solution is on the higher side."
"For the on-premises version of the product, the solution offers a perpetual-based licensing model to its users. In general, SAP offers a monthly subscription-based licensing model to its users."
"The cost and licensing depends on how the customer is going to use the solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"The product is free if we have the ECC license."
"The SAP HANA application still hasn't been leveraged to the fullest extent, but it's a five-year enterprise license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Kovair Data Lake?
The tool's most valuable features for us are its combination of formatting, ETL, analytics, and storage capabilities.
What needs improvement with Kovair Data Lake?
The solution is expensive. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Kovair Data Lake could enhance its ETL and data capabilities.
What is your primary use case for Kovair Data Lake?
I primarily use Kovair Data Lake for data analytics use cases. This involves data cleansing and gaining business intelligence.
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP BW4HANA?
The certification cost is extremely high. I completed certification for $40,000. The certification cost for SAP BW4HANA in 2025 is expected to be one lakh forty thousand.
What needs improvement with SAP BW4HANA?
Integration needs improvement. In reporting, I am not comfortable with the creation of variables, and some calculations need improvement in BW queries.
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP BW/4HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

HSBC, NVIDIA, APPLIED MATERIALS, Allscripts, CISCO, Honeywell
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Kovair Data Lake vs. SAP BW4HANA and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
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