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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
25th
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
10th
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 May 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Kovair Data Lake is 1.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BW4HANA is 3.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BW4HANA3.2%
Kovair Data Lake1.5%
Other95.3%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

LuizKazan - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Solutions at Embratel
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.
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

"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."
"We like that it is an SAP product, so we can easily connect with the SAP ERP system."
"The solution is based on SAP ERP, so there's some business content already included. For customers who use SAP ERP, SAP BW4HANA is a good choice for their DW implementation."
"It is a very stable solution."
"The most valuable feature is the dashboard."
"I like the tool's robustness and security."
"You can do hierarchical alert slicing and dicing out-of-box, which is not available in other solutions. I haven't come across that in Oracle or any other software provider."
"The solution seamlessly integrates with SAP products."
"It is the way forward if an organization is already in the SAP ecosystem."
 

Cons

"Maybe the chat conversation feature could be improved."
"The solution is expensive. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Kovair Data Lake could enhance its ETL and data capabilities."
"I would like to see easier connectivity with other tools."
"SAP BW/4HANA can generally be less flexible than other tools, depending on how it is set up."
"The initial setup is quite complex. We are a worldwide team, we need quite a few people to manage this solution."
"So far, this functionality is a little bit limited in the tool, and it is not thought through, but I think it will come."
"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."
"If I want to have good reporting, then I have to buy a separate license. I have to pay for separate things; that's quite irritating."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"The tool is affordable."
"The solution is expensive."
"The price is high and currently only affordable for large organizations."
"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."
"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."
"For some, the rates offered by SAP can be costly while for others it may seem cheap. The price ultimately depends on how you have negotiated your contract with SAP."
"As an investment, the solution is very expensive."
"Price wise, this solution is on the higher side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
11%
Retailer
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise30
 

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

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: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.