Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAP Business Warehouse comparison

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. SAP Business Warehouse

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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

5th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

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 October 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.3%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 2.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics	6.3%
SAP Business Warehouse	2.1%
Other	91.6%

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Joy Maitra

Sr. Technical Architect at Hexaware Technologies Limited

Has supported data pipeline development but still requires better integration and support

The best feature of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is the notebook functionality; it provides a very good interface, and we can easily do our experiments, POCs, and check things before migration or deployment to higher environments such as from development to SIT and then production. The deployment process is also much smoother. Driving data-driven insights in my organization depends upon the preparation of the data. If your data is not good, then insights won't be good, and Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics helps in preparing your data, so it is very helpful. I find Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics' native data lake support beneficial.

Read full review

Srini-Dhanaraj

Founder & CEO at imfine.club

The solution enables seamless connection, but it is expensive, and the information is one day old

Out-of-the-box reports are very useful. The product provides a seamless connection between the SAP operation system and the data warehouse. It also moves the data from the operating system to the data warehouse in a 3D format. The report generation is easy. It’s a drag-and-drop process. People who want to do a project need not reinvent the wheel. Everything is designed, built, and delivered out of the box. All we have to do is interact with the customers to understand the kind of reports they need and check whether they are already available in the out-of-the-box report. If they are available, we just have to enable them and give the URLs to the customers. The Integration between the SAP operating system and data warehouse is excellent. The UI is good.

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 is pretty good."

"Its seamless integration with Azure services is most valuable. If somebody wants to use all Azure services, it is the best solution."

"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers significant visibility, which helps us understand our usage more clearly."

"The product works well with other Azure products."

"The most important feature for me is the integration with PolyBase."

"The solution's best feature is its predictive analytics."

"Fills the gap between big data and classic data warehouses."

"The best thing about it is that it has integration at multiple places. It can talk to more than 90 types of data sources, which is one good thing about it."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics pros

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

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

"The most valuable feature of SAP Business Warehouse is its hybrid functionality, allowing users to leverage both SQL-based data warehouse capabilities from HANA and feature-based data warehousing from BW."

"The features that I have found most valuable are its capabilities to connect to Excel and to slice and dice."

"Predominantly, our company uses SAP Business Warehouse for reporting purposes across various departments, especially for managers to gain a quick understanding of their current standing and make informed decisions."

"The most valuable feature of SAP Business Warehouse is transformation, where I extract data from different sources, particularly the raw data. Then I do some transformations and store that in a format that allows me to do reporting easily."

"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is its ability to feed data into new, multiple systems in various formats. It can open its data to any system over gateway services or a portal or application that needs to consume and analyze data."

"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

"From an infrastructure standpoint, I believe it can be more secure in terms of availability."

"I would like to see version control implemented into the data warehouse."

"I would like to see better integration with Active Directory, because we have had problems, and we still do."

"Synapse Analytics' performance slows down if you don't get your distribution right because it gets queued and goes into a single node."

"One area for improvement could be better integration with Power BI, as well as data integration with BW."

"Indicating what areas need improvement in this solution is a difficult question because the organizations that I am working for are really new in this area. However, an even better more simple interface, or perhaps an extension of a connector app store solution, would be helpful."

"The initial setup is complex."

"It's pay as you go, so you never know what your bill is going to be beforehand, and that's scary for customers. If you have someone who makes a mistake and the program's a loop that is running all night, you could receive a very expensive bill."

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."

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

"I would like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users."

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

"They should reduce the product’s installation package size for easier downloading."

"In the next release, my suggestion would be to have user-friendly interfaces and performance issues be addressed."

"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."

"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."

More SAP Business Warehouse cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive at the enterprise level."

"You have to be very careful with one specific service inside Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics which is called the Sequel Data Warehouse Dedicated. It is very reliable and performs well, but it's expensive. You need to define the tier well because you can choose between several tiers and you have to define which suits your needs and not overperform the tier because it's quite expensive."

"Our license is very expensive"

"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is a moderately priced solution."

"The computer and storage costs are totally separate which allows you to work independently or manage costs."

"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is an expensive solution and there is a license needed to use it. My company has an enterprise license."

"We have a licensing cost to pay."

"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."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The solution is quite expensive."

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

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

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

"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."

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

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868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

12%

Retailer

10%

Energy/Utilities Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	29
Midsize Enterprise	18
Large Enterprise	55

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	15

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...

What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?

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

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

I find the pricing of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics reasonable; compared to AWS Glue or Databricks, it is reasonable.

What do you like most about SAP Business Warehouse?

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

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

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

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...

Snowflake vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Comparisons

Compared 19% of the time

Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 10% of the time

SAP BW4HANA vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 7% of the time

BigQuery vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Competitors

Databricks vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 30% of the time

BigQuery vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 26% of the time

Snowflake vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 10% of the time

More SAP Business Warehouse Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Download Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics product report

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics report

SAP Business Warehouse

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

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. SAP Business Warehouse