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

6th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

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

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.2%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 2.3%, up from 1.0% 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	6.2%
SAP Business Warehouse	2.3%
Other	91.5%

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

AnandTiwari

CTO at New Turn Technologies

Has consistently supported integration across diverse environments and streamlined deployment processes

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics could improve their pricing structure. They currently have two separate pricing tiers: full log and partial log. I suggest they implement a single price and reduce charges on logs. They could implement a cap with some free tier or price tier based on the GBs of log collected. This would help customers use Azure more effectively. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is an excellent product because it includes both SIEM and orchestration capabilities with playbooks, but the log management part is very costly. Regarding future improvements, I would appreciate more application connectors for integration, particularly for on-premise based solutions. Many customers still maintain on-premise infrastructure, so having more integration possibilities for these environments would be beneficial.

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VishnuReddy2

Consulting Enterprise Architect at R2V2.ai

Have encountered complexity with programming language while working on large-scale data integration and have experienced improved governance and reporting

The only complexity I find with the product is the programming language; people find it harder, but once you know the language, it's not that difficult. Regarding the future of SAP Business Warehouse, I would to see added features that simplify the product very well now. They are coming up with a terminology called SAP BDC where they are consolidating their tools, SAP Data Sphere for integration and SAP BW for the ETL and warehousing parts, and SAP Analytics Cloud. They are packaging these three features and calling it Business Data Cloud; they are fully coming on the cloud. We have to wait and watch; they have been speaking about BW/4HANA for quite some time now, but the customers or clients I work with are not finding great interest and it was seen as a candidate for evaluation. I have seen people looking at the latest technologies who are already on cloud who started building from scratch on cloud, such as Snowflake or Databricks, which can process very huge amounts of data and also address unstructured data, where SAP lags behind in cases where there is a need to bring in unstructured data. I have worked with SAP Data Intelligence, which earlier used to be called SAP Data Hub. The unstructured data is not greatly handled in SAP at this point in time.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use Azure Synapse Analytics in many different areas and industries, so I like that you can administrate and create pipelines for difference sources of data and later integrate and deploy it to other internal areas, such as separate dashboards for financials, and so on."

"I like how Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics integrates with other Microsoft solutions."

"The stability is pretty good."

"Azure Synapse combines the strengths of SQL technologies for effective enterprise data management."

"They are very reliable and cost-effective."

"The features I find most valuable in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics are comprehensive because they have combined almost five to six components into one single bundle."

"The product provides a seamless and adaptable approach to data processing and analytics."

"I like its performance. It is well-structured and offers a lot of practical options. Because of the visual design of the product, it is very easy to find icons and other visual elements. It took me more than two weeks to understand how it works. I had an intensive training session to understand it, which was enough. It was not hard to understand how it works."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics pros

"In terms of stability, comparatively, the solution is quite stable."

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

"The solution has functionality that makes it easy for end-users to readily extract data directly from Business Warehouse into Excel and carry on their analysis on their own."

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

"SAP Business Warehouse is a scalable solution."

"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 real-time information is great."

"With the technical support, the response has been pretty good from the SAP side."

More SAP Business Warehouse pros

Cons

"I would like to see more ready-to-use products from Synapse. Right now, everything seems a bit futuristic without much modern use."

"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."

"There is a limit on the number of concurrent queries to around 125 for Azure Synapse."

"Documentation could be improved."

"Scalability is a little laggy or jittery. Sometimes, when jobs are running in production, it might show some faults, and recovering from such scenarios becomes a bit problematic or time-consuming."

"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics can improve by adding more flexibility to the reports. Having more visible structures based on the area, region and country would be beneficial."

"It's a complicated product."

"They should provide a less expensive version with a smaller setup for small businesses. Currently, its price is quite high for entry-level or small businesses. In terms of integration, new connectors are always welcomed."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics cons

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

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

"The problem with BW, and the factor that differentiated it from the original BW, is that you only get limited functionality with your runtime license. So, you have to pay extra for extracting data."

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

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

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

"I get all the information quickly, but it is one day old."

"So far, the initial setup process in our company has not been easy enough for us to understand."

More SAP Business Warehouse cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"All of the prices are available online."

"I would rate the ROI a nine out of ten, where one is zero value and ten is 100% value."

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

"My company pays for the license and I am not sure about the price."

"The solution is expensive at the enterprise level."

"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."

"The price of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics can vary. Other solutions are typically fixed prices and a fixed cost regardless of usage, but this solution is based on usage or consumption."

"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

"The solution is quite 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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

13%

Retailer

10%

Energy/Utilities Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	29
Midsize Enterprise	18
Large Enterprise	56

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
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?

Pricing only.

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 pricing for SAP Business Warehouse is on the expensive side. I am not sure about the current costing model as such. In my experience on cloud, I did not use BW HANA Cloud. I used the cloud prod...

What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?

Snowflake vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Comparisons

Compared 20% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 8% of the time

Teradata vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 6% of the time

AWS Lake Formation vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Competitors

Databricks vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 18% of the time

BigQuery vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 18% of the time

SAP BW4HANA vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 10% of the time

Snowflake vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 9% of the time

SAP Business Data Cloud vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 8% 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