Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAP Business Warehouse comparison

Microsoft and SAP are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Microsoft is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.1, while SAP is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.4. Microsoft holds a 6.5% mindshare in CDW, compared to SAP’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...

Read 92 Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics reviews

7,013 Views
3,039 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SAP Business Warehouse

Read 25 SAP Business Warehouse reviews

678 Views
398 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...

SAP Business Warehouse

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and SAP Business Warehouse compete in the data management category. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is favored due to cost-effective pricing and broader deployment options, though SAP Business Warehouse excels in integration within the SAP ecosystem.

Features: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is known for its integration capabilities, scalability, and robust analytics functions, including pipeline creation and monitoring. SAP Business Warehouse stands out for its integration with SAP ERP, supporting structured data reporting and facilitating Excel use for end users.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics requires enhanced user-friendliness, AI, and machine learning advancements, alongside better governance and non-Azure integration features. SAP Business Warehouse could benefit from a simplified user interface, setup, and improved connectivity with non-SAP systems to lessen visualization tool dependencies.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers flexible deployment across public and hybrid cloud models with generally responsive customer service. SAP Business Warehouse is primarily on-premises, benefiting those in SAP environments, though user feedback indicates a need for more intuitive support and faster response times.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics provides competitive, consumption-based pricing models, beneficial for companies moving from traditional infrastructure to reduce capital expenses. SAP Business Warehouse's revenue-based pricing is complex and costly, potentially limiting for smaller enterprises despite recognized ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. SAP Business Warehouse Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. SAP Business Warehouse

February 2025

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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

Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

2nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SAP Business Warehouse

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

14th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.5%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 1.2%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Renee Hoon

Data Platform Specialist at Sasol

Scalable performance tuning and optimization for finance and supply chain jobs

We run our finance and supply chain jobs using SQL BW, and we visualize our data loads on Power BI. We are using SQL Data Warehouse for data warehousing In terms of cost savings, we don't need specialization in skills as advanced as Teradata. We used to pay extensive licensing fees for Teradata,…

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JavedKhan1

SAP Security/GRC Manager at Tata Consultancy

Offers powerful analytics and integration capabilities but requires improved upgrade processes

SAP Business Warehouse could have been better. There is room for improvement from a technical perspective. So, from a technical perspective, when we are upgrading a Business Warehouse server or we are migrating from one place to another, the capability required for this upgradation has many manual activities. It took us around a month to streamline our server. Let’s say there are some transaction codes. Transaction code is a set of programs, and when you want to run a program from the backend, you need to hit the transaction code. It is called a T-code. So during the upgrade, many transaction codes get affected, and as a security consultant, it is my responsibility to recheck those transaction codes which are affected. Sometimes more than 100 codes may get affected, sometimes 500, and sometimes more as well. So, it takes a hell lot of time to integrate them again. That is a limitation or defect within the SAP Business Warehouse. SAP Business Warehouse should come up with proper solutions. Upgradation is an automatic activity. It should happen by itself. We just need to initiate it, and the backend SAP server is automatically upgraded. But it should handle the transactional code as well. They should not get absolutely, and any authorization object should not get deleted from the transaction codes. So, that functionality SAP Business Warehouse should come up with.

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

"Azure elasticity allows us to scale as much as we want, and it is pay-as-you-go, so we can scale up as we need to."

"The solution can scale."

"The useability, the user interface, is very user-friendly."

"The most valuable feature is the scalability."

"The most valuable aspect of this Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is its consolidation of technical support from Microsoft, and its ability to securely host large quantities of data within the cloud environment. The overall ability to manage and maintain Big Data within the cloud provides a heightened level of efficiency, reliability, and support from Microsoft. This results in a superior user experience and an increased level of value for the end user."

"The MPP (Massively Parallel Processing) architecture helps to make things a lot faster."

"-"

"It's scalable; you can scale up and scale down."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics pros

"Having the integration with the reporting tool which is provided by SAP is great."

"The most useful feature has been he ability to feed data into multiple systems in various formats."

"Having the back-end data set with the right information is the best qualification for this solution."

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

"Out-of-the-box reports are very useful."

"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the integration with SAP ERP."

"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."

"The key element in this solution is its rapid response. If you have a question about prices, buyers, customers, providers, or services, you need the answer in a minute or two. That's the key benefit for us that a solution like BW gives us."

More SAP Business Warehouse pros

Cons

"The initial setup has a bit of a learning curve."

"An area for improvement in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is its user interface. You can use it for analytical purposes, but its platform should be a little bit more user-friendly. Another small point for improvement in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is its stability. It's good currently, but it could still be improved. Microsoft is combining different tools and technologies into one solution, so in the future, I'm expecting to see even more improvement in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next version of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is the drag-and-drop feature. If you're doing some integrations where you can write Scala or you have SPARK programming or SQL, or you're combining different programming, the process should be seamless, and you should be able to drag and drop in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. When doing reporting in the solution, you should also be able to drag and drop. There should be connectors available and a drag-and-drop feature available in the user interface of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, so you won't have to worry about how all processes would work together. You need to be able to drag and drop even from the backend, and having this feature will make the solution more user-friendly."

"It would be beneficial to take the top vendors and identify some kind of straightforward action to work with them. Instead of having to employ a separate vendor tool to be able to move this, it would be nice to be able to go through Microsoft."

"One potential area for improvement could be the availability of an on-premises data lake implementation, as the product is currently only implemented in a cloud environment."

"The support and price could improve."

"Its stability is an issue. They have been releasing a version every six months to one year, which means that there are many versions available, and clients are not up to speed on the latest one that they're offering. From a stability point of view, they could do better. They're still upgrading their Synapse Analytics workspace, and it is not that stable. Its scalability can also be better."

"I would like to see them provide the ingestion of images."

"The performance and data consistency need to be improved."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics cons

"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."

"The solution should be more open to the cloud."

"What I'd like to improve in SAP Business Warehouse is its data structure, that's a little bit rigid. It could be a bit more flexible, so you can design your data structure and improve performance when creating a solution. Currently, the way data is stored in SAP Business Warehouse is rigid."

"It takes more work to get the data, including reporting on that data, because some coding is required, and a significant level of transformation is needed when using SAP Business Warehouse."

"You can start quickly but, when you have to get a little more detailed, when you have to change something, when you have to solve problems, it's not that easy. It's easy to start but evolving is not that easy."

"Areas for improvement in SAP Business Warehouse include enhancing scheduling and monitoring tools, as well as improving communication about hidden features to make them more accessible to users."

"There is room for improvement from a technical perspective."

"SAP Business Warehouse could integrate better with other ETL tools."

More SAP Business Warehouse cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm not sure of the exact cost, however, it is around $100,000 a year."

"The licensing fees for this solution are on a pay-per-use basis, and not very expensive."

"The pricing is quite reasonable in comparison to other products."

"It requires a less expensive version because currently, not every customer is able to buy it. If it could have a smaller setup that doesn't require so many resources, it would be helpful, and we would be able to use it in more cases. We are a small country, and most of our customers are quite small businesses."

"Its price could be better. It was a school project, and I got it for free. If I try to pay through my company, it is a little bit more expensive as compared to Oracle."

"There's no license required for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. the model is more of a use-based system. You got to pay for computing power and disk storage. Everything has different units and is kept backed up. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics uses storage units(SU). This is how everything's computed for cost."

"We only have to pay for what we use in the solution. It's easy for the customers. It's not more than some companies, not more than 300 to 400 users. They do not need to buy other license products, such as SAP B1, or analytics tools in the market, such as Tableau."

"We chose the serverless option for the database which has saved us a lot of money. Our costs are approximately £600 per month."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics pricing and cost advice

"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"The solution is quite expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

52%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?

Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?

The product is easy to use, and anybody can easily migrate to advanced DB.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?

We use an enterprise-level subscription for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. I would rate our satisfaction with the price around five, as I have not focused much on cost aspects presently.

See all answers

What do you like most about SAP Business Warehouse?

Out-of-the-box reports are very useful.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Business Warehouse?

The solution is quite expensive. We paid a yearly subscription fee.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?

Over a period, we realized that the license and maintenance costs were quite expensive. Every day, we had to run the background job ODS. Eventually, we moved away from SAP Business Warehouse and bo...

See all answers

Comparisons

SAP BW4HANA vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 16% of the time

Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 14% of the time

Snowflake vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 12% of the time

Teradata vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Competitors

Amazon Redshift vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 26% of the time

Snowflake vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 24% of the time

Teradata vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 20% of the time

More SAP Business Warehouse Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

March 2025

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics report

Download Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP Business Warehouse

March 2025

Download SAP Business Warehouse product report

Also Known As

Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics

No data available

Overview

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is an end-to-end analytics solution that successfully combines analytical services to merge big data analytics and enterprise data warehouses into a single unified platform. The solution can run intelligent distributed queries among nodes, and provides the ability to query both relational and non-relational data.

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is built with these 4 components:

Synapse SQL
Spark
Synapse Pipeline
Studio

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Features

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics has many valuable key features, including:

Cloud Data Service: WIth Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics you can operate services (data analytics, machine learning, data warehousing, dashboarding, etc.) in a single workspace via the cloud.
Structured and unstructured data: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics supports both structured and unstructured data and allows you to manage relational and non-relational data - unlike data warehouses and lakes that tend to store them respectively.
Effective data storage: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers next-level data storage with high availability and different tiers.
Responsive data engine: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics uses Massive Parallel Processing (MPP) and is designed to handle large volumes of data and analytical workloads efficiently without any problems.
Several scripting languages: The solution provides language compatibility and supports different programming languages, such as Python, Java, Spark SQL, and Scala.
Query optimization: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics works well to facilitate limitless concurrency and performance optimization. It also simplifies workload management.

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Benefits

Some of the benefits of using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics include:

Database templates: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers industry-specific database templates that make it easy to combine and shape data.
Better business insights: With Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics you can expand discovery of insights from all your data and apply machine learning models to all your intelligent apps.
Reduce project development time: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics makes it possible to have a unified experience for developing end-to-end analytics, which reduces project development time significantly.
Eliminate data barriers: By using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, you can perform analytics on operational and business apps data without data movement.
Advanced security: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics provides both advanced security and privacy features to ensure data protection.
Machine Learning: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics integrates Azure Machine Learning, Azure Cognitive Services, and Power BI.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics users who are currently using the solution.

PeerSpot user Jael S., who is an Information Architect at Systems Analysis & Design Engineering, comments on her experience using the product, saying that it is “Scalable, intuitive, facilitates compliance and keeps your data secure”. She also says "We also like governance. It looks at what the requirements are for the company to identify the best way to ensure compliance is met when you move to the cloud."

Michel T., CHTO at Timp-iT, mentions that "the features most valuable are the simplicity, how easy it is to create a dashboard from different information systems."

A Senior Teradata Consultant at a tech services company says, "Microsoft provides both the platform and the data center, so you don't have to look for a cloud vendor. It saves you from having to deal with two vendors for the same task."

Microsoft

Reporting, analysis and interpretation of business data are crucial to preserve and enhance the competitive edge of companies by optimizing processes and enabling them to react quickly and in line with market needs. SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) provides tools and functions that enable companies to attain these goals. In SAP BW, you can integrate, transform, and consolidate relevant business information from productive SAP applications and external data sources. SAP BW provides you with a high-performance infrastructure that helps you evaluate and interpret data. Decision makers can make well-founded decisions and identify target-orientated activities on the basis of the analyzed data.

SAP

Sample Customers

Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe,

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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. SAP Business Warehouse

February 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. SAP Business Warehouse

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