Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAP Business Warehouse comparison

Microsoft and SAP are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Microsoft is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.7, while SAP is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.0. Microsoft holds a 5.8% mindshare in CDW, compared to SAP’s 2.4% 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 98 Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics reviews

5,978 Views
3,826 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SAP Business Warehouse

Read 26 SAP Business Warehouse reviews

1,866 Views
1,064 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: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. SAP Business Warehouse

June 2026

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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

15th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 5.8%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 2.4%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics	5.8%
SAP Business Warehouse	2.4%
Other	91.8%

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 find the serverless tool to be the most valuable feature ."

"The features we've found most valuable for data warehouses is extracting data, SSIS packages, and the DBs."

"The usability has been excellent, it offers good integration, the product works well with other Azure products, the initial setup is very convenient, it is scalable, and we have found the solution to be stable."

"I like the simplicity of the integration of the data and the variety of the language you can use to integrate that."

"For those working in the retail sector, this product can capture all the transactional data throughout a company's stores, process them, and put them into the Azure Synapses."

"This definitely falls into one of the top three or top four solutions and platforms in the world."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the ease of administration."

"Compared to hosting a Microsoft setup on premise, if you use Azure Synapse, the return on investment is very high because you get rid of your hardware and licensing, move to a subscription-based pay-as-you-use model, reduce operational costs, optimize more, diminish capital expenditure by moving to an OpEx model, and simplify overall management."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics pros

"Technical support is very good, and we were very satisfied with their level of support when we needed it."

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

"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."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the advanced structuring of data capabilities, as you can get different structures of data to suit your needs."

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

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

"The customer support is wonderful. If your technical team is stuck somewhere, they are there to help."

More SAP Business Warehouse pros

Cons

"The major pro of Synapse is the service, and the major con is that when you decide to move out of Synapse, you would have to rewrite the entire thing, whereas, with Snowflake, it would be just simple migration to different cloud providers."

"I don't have a direct relationship with the technical support when I have a problem. They aren't very good."

"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."

"As far as improvements to the product, I think the Data Factory integration should be enhanced to be properly implemented because right now it is still lagging behind other vendors like Informatica."

"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics can improve by increasing the size of the files that we can load on the platform."

"The macro functions, though useful, are not totally user-friendly. Some people have difficulties in learning them."

"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."

"For improvement, I would like to see more connectors and better integration for Hadoop."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics cons

"I'm not sure if our issue is related to BW or the Analysis Office. However, we're having performance issues in terms of time. It takes a long time to generate the report."

"A few things which are missing include the visualization of reports. That's where your costs and licensing become heavy. When it comes to this database compared Microsoft Warehouse, it's an expensive solution."

"The advanced structuring can be complicated and the interface is not very intuitive."

"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."

"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."

"There are a lot of things that could be improved especially in terms of data cleansing, data management, data lineage, etc. The solution needs to offer more flexibility in terms of formulas and the query designer."

"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."

"From a support perspective, SAP Business Warehouse is quite a complex module."

More SAP Business Warehouse cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution could improve by having better costing information."

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

"It goes by the usage, and there are some limits. Synapse goes by particular pricing, and it is expensive. Both Azure Synapse Analytics and Snowflake are pretty expensive. They don't have standard pricing. They deal with each customer differently."

"There is a cost calculator available online that allows you to input your entire scenario, and it will get back to you with information on what the costs are going to be."

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

"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."

"We normally pay between $300 and $500 per month, which is quite expensive for how much we actually use it, performance- and usage-wise. They have a cheap version and an expensive version, and our usage usually falls in the middle ground, which makes it not as cost-effective as it could be."

"This is a cost-effective product."

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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

12%

Construction Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	29
Midsize Enterprise	18
Large Enterprise	59

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...

See all answers

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

I think the licensing cost for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is very high, but I have a local system to support that, so I don't consider that in the near future.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?

I am hoping that in the future Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics may have AI support.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SAP Business Warehouse?

I am using SAP Business Warehouse in my organization for data warehousing as well as an ETL tool. Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward. Integration with SAP ER...

See all answers

Comparisons

Snowflake vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 19% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 6% of the time

Teradata vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Competitors

Snowflake vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 16% of the time

BigQuery vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 13% of the time

Databricks vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Business Data Cloud vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BW4HANA vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 7% of the time

More SAP Business Warehouse Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

June 2026

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics report

Download Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP Business Warehouse

May 2026

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 integrates data warehousing and big data analytics seamlessly. It provides scalability and user-friendly features for efficient, real-time reporting and data management.

Azure Synapse Analytics is designed for seamless data integration, allowing users to scale their operations effectively while providing extensive analytics capabilities. It supports both traditional data warehousing and big data solutions with real-time reporting through an interactive interface that integrates well with Power BI. The platform's serverless flexibility optimizes cost while ensuring robust security, leveraging users' familiarity with SQL technologies. Scalability allows processing of large datasets efficiently, empowering companies to connect disparate data sources and support industry-specific needs. Despite its strengths, Synapse users often seek improved governance, schema management, and technical support. Enhanced integration with Microsoft and third-party tools, along with better data loading capabilities, are also desired.

What are the key features of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?

SQL Pooling: Provides a dedicated SQL pool for scalable data processing.
Massively Parallel Processing: Architecture that enhances efficiency for big data workloads.
Pipelines: Streamlines data orchestration and workflow automation.
Real-Time Reporting: Delivers quick insights by processing data in real time.
Power BI Integration: Seamlessly connects with Power BI for advanced data visualization.
Serverless Flexibility: Optimizes cost management by allowing on-demand resources.

What benefits and ROI should be considered in reviews of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?

Scalability: Efficiently handles expanding data loads.
Cost Management: Serverless architecture provides cost-efficient resource usage.
Security Features: Ensures data protection and compliance.
Data Integration: Connects various data sources for unified analytics.
SQL Familiarity: Leverages common SQL skills for ease of use.

Azure Synapse Analytics is extensively implemented across sectors like healthcare, finance, marketing, and government. Organizations use it to build data pipelines, perform analytics modeling, and facilitate reporting. It supports data transformation, migration, and orchestration, enhancing business intelligence and decision-making capabilities by efficiently handling big data and connecting disparate data sources.

Microsoft

SAP Business Warehouse integrates real-time data access via HANA, with Microsoft Excel and SAP ERP for enhanced data transformation and reporting. Known for its speed and hybrid features, it meets diverse data governance needs.

SAP Business Warehouse is designed to streamline data access and transformation with its integration capabilities. Its speed and efficiency are complemented by advanced reporting features and a robust authorization model. Users benefit from drag-and-drop reporting and alert systems that enhance operational efficiency. Despite its strengths, improvements are necessary in user friendliness, data integration, and reporting speed. Users require better trend analysis tools, increased visualization capabilities, and a more flexible configuration to optimize use. Real-time data access remains an area for development.

What features define SAP Business Warehouse?

HANA Integration: Enables real-time data access
Excel and ERP Integration: Seamless interaction with popular tools
Advanced Reporting: Delivers high-quality reporting capabilities
Hybrid Functionality: Offers versatile use cases
Drag-and-Drop: Simplifies reporting and analysis tasks
Authorization Model: Ensures secure data handling

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Operational Efficiency: Enhanced by alert and monitoring tools
Data Governance: Robust models meet diverse needs
Centralized Data: Comprehensive data storage and access
Decision-Making Support: BI tools inform strategic planning

SAP Business Warehouse plays a crucial role in industries like finance and supply chain, leveraging data warehousing, ETL processes, and powerful BI applications to enhance decision-making with tools like Business Objects, Tableau, and Power BI. It serves as a central data repository, facilitating extensive reporting and analysis capabilities.

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

June 2026

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

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. SAP Business Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.

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