Microsoft Azure vs SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud comparison

Microsoft and SAP are both solutions in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5, while SAP is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.0. Microsoft holds a 9.0% mindshare in ISI, compared to SAP’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure

Read 324 Microsoft Azure reviews

25,540 Views
14,302 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

Read 25 SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud reviews

2,093 Views
1,926 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

Microsoft Azure and SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud are both leading solutions in the cloud computing market. Azure's strength lies in its versatility and extensive global infrastructure, making it a compelling choice for businesses seeking a flexible cloud environment. Conversely, SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud stands out for its deep integration capabilities specifically tailored for SAP applications, providing an edge for enterprises dependent on the SAP ecosystem.

Features: Microsoft Azure provides comprehensive integration with various programming languages and frameworks, extensive global data centers enhancing customer proximity, and a robust PaaS platform. It also includes reliable distributed caching and scalability, addressing the needs of large organizations and developers. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud excels in offering a secure, managed environment for SAP workloads with seamless SAP application integration, which is vital for organizations with significant SAP investments.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure could enhance its pricing transparency, improve debugging tools and integration capabilities for non-Microsoft platforms. Additionally, security in multitenant settings and complex cost estimates need attention. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud requires improvement in customization flexibility, cost management, and data center localization. Enhancing update and configuration flexibility would also benefit users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure is praised for its deployment ease due to extensive documentation and public cloud reach. However, its customer service quality can vary, although business-tier support is often reliable. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud focuses on strong SAP-specific deployment support, which is generally effective but potentially expensive, offering integrated deployment dedicated to SAP suite challenges. This suggests a balance between Azure's broader support and SAP's dedicated enterprise support.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure offers competitive pricing with flexible pay-as-you-go options, yet costs may rise with increased use and complex pricing models can lead to unexpected expenses. Its ROI is strengthened by eliminating physical infrastructure needs and enabling scalable cost-efficient solutions. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud provides substantial SAP-integrated value, albeit at higher costs with annual contract structures and additional integration fees, making it favorable for large enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Azure vs. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure vs. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

April 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

Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

324

Ranking in other categories

PaaS Clouds (1st)

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

12th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 9.0%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is 1.3%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure	9.0%
SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud	1.3%
Other	89.7%

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

Featured Reviews

Syed Abid

Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra

Versatile integrations and reliable customer satisfaction elevate cloud service experience

For Microsoft Azure improvement, they need to enhance their support system. The first level of support should be improved in terms of quality and response time. They need more technical support at the first level, as there are currently only one or two technical people among five to ten staff members at this level. They should ensure that the first level support is more technical because we normally provide services to technical users ourselves. When an issue arises, it usually escalates to the second or third level. When facing first level support, they may have limited knowledge and only collect screenshots to forward to their seniors. They should ensure that the first level support is aligned with L2 and L3 to better assist us, especially since we mention in the ticket that our issues are related to specific problems and require that sort of support.

Read full review

Salman Mukhtar Baig

SAP Technical Manager at VS Furniture Middle East

Cloud access has improved reporting and sales operations across global locations

I cannot say anything about what areas of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud could be improved or enhanced because so far, we are happy with this implementation. We are not facing any problem, or I cannot say that this can be improved. Although SAP keeps improving themselves day by day, we cannot say that SAP needs to improve anything. One thing which we face, not as a problem, is the pricing. SAP pricing is a bit higher day by day. Before, it was not too much higher, but I don't know why they are increasing their price. They should see this thing, so other customers, such as SMBs customers or small and mid-sized customers, can also avail this thing. Otherwise, we don't have any problem. First, there is the limitation. If you are a SAP user, you don't feel any problem with the limitation because if you know how to use the product, you can easily implement this thing. Otherwise, if you don't know the business process or how to integrate and implement, it could be a problem. We have a limitation, but we developed some add-ons for this. So we fulfilled these requirements.

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 most valuable features of this solution are the value for money and flexibility."

"I appreciate that everything is basically shift forward from a security standpoint."

"It very quickly provisions servers, infrastructure, and apps on the fly and complies with security requirements and data safety."

"The best feature is it's easy to integrate with other Microsoft solutions."

"The monitoring features are very good."

"Depending on the project requirements, I would recommend using Azure."

"Azure has helped in the setup of operations with minimal environments for developing a proof of concept, and the POC is the most useful and charming feature to get a minimal valuable product for all deployments, while customer satisfaction increased the performance of sales and customer requirements were optimized."

"It comes with a lot of ready-made studies that we can connect with other existing Microsoft applications, for example, Office, Outlook, Chatline, and OneDrive, and everything is behind the scenes running with Azure, making it easy to build the connectors."

More Microsoft Azure pros

"The solution is online and provides a real-time information feature, which makes a huge difference to the business, especially in reviews and meetings."

"The real-time data processing and the ability to track all leasing processes and contracts are particularly valuable."

"This is a product that I recommend for others."

"It has significantly streamlined our operations."

"One of the features that I've found most useful is that It's very simple. They take care of the technical aspects of the data, installations, patches."

"This solution is as good as any other S/4HANA SAP solution, and the continuous support we get is very valuable."

"Traditionally, SAP worked with Oracle databases, but SAP is getting rid of the other databases and promoting its own. SAP will stop support for other databases around 2026, so everyone is moving to SAP S/4HANA for the performance and because it's the preferred database for SAP. S/4HANA has new features from the front-end or application feature perspective. The idea is to move toward future-ready technology."

"It is a scalable solution if you have a good cloud infrastructure."

More SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud pros

Cons

"Pricing is one area where Azure has room for improvement. There should be some due consideration. Azure has solved some issues with pricing from the development team's standpoint, but it is still quite costly. They should also offer a trial period for the individual platform solutions. I think that would be pretty handy for the developers."

"While integrating services from different vendors, the perceived costs are high, with occasional confusion about specific charges, especially in data transfer scenarios between regions."

"The dashboard of Microsoft Azure could be better."

"I would say an improvement could be allowing for more external, third-party tools."

"The pricing in our region can be a bit high."

"The cost of the product is too high. It would be ideal if they could lower it a bit for their customers."

"There was a time when the solution was updated on their side and all of our functions stopped working."

"The services from AWS are much more clearly separated. I'm not the best friend of Microsoft Azure."

More Microsoft Azure cons

"This product is not mature enough at this point in time."

"The SAP products are complicated to deploy anywhere."

"They should probably offer more cloud services. Most of the cloud infrastructure providers we have make everything pretty transparent, you know what you're getting, you have all these metrics and measurements and everything in the dashboard. Here you have to go through the contracting negotiations and all those things."

"The only thing that could be improved is the cost."

"The licensing model for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud has changed, and it is not entirely clear for final customers. Instead of named users, they now have to calculate FUEs."

"The stability needs to be improved to be able to handle large amounts of data."

"The only thing that could be improved is the cost."

"The solution is scalable from an infrastructure point of view. However, it becomes more complex over time because technology is changing so fast."

More SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."

"Their licensing costs might be a little bit lower, compared to AWS, but I'm not sure. I think we get licenses, especially on long-term projects, on a yearly basis. It could be cheaper."

"Most of the pricing from Microsoft is reasonable."

"The pricing is better than AWS."

"The cost-benefit equation for Azure is very good, particularly for small applications. However, Microsoft should do much, much more to improve how costs are communicated and how to forecast them. The Azure Pricing Calculator is not useful."

"Azure's pricing could be more competitive. Some clients mentioned that they are considering switching to AWS because of the price."

"It is competitive with other public cloud providers, and its price is very close to different cloud providers. There is not a noticeable difference between different cloud providers. Otherwise, it would be a risk for them to have services that were much more expensive than their competition. They're pretty much neck to neck on pricing."

"Its price should be optimized so that we can use more features."

More Microsoft Azure pricing and cost advice

"The price is on little bit higher. For SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, we see roughly five crores per annum."

"The price is expensive compared to the competition."

"It's very, very expensive."

"The price is high compared to other databases, which is why HANA is still not widely used. Some enterprises prefer Sybase, Oracle, or other traditional databases because HANA is a little pricey. Cost is one factor SAP needs to work on to make it more competitive with other databases. Otherwise, they'll never be able to develop a mass customer base."

"The product itself is relatively expensive."

"Our pricing is based on a yearly contract."

"I rate the product's price a five out of ten."

"SAP may not be the most cost-effective option, but it does offer a comprehensive set of tools and features. When you have the right information, structure, and dashboard in place, it can provide excellent value. Additionally, competition with Oracle might be a factor to consider."

More SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud pricing and cost advice

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it_user8586

Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Aug 14, 2013

Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison

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Answers from the Community

Harraj Saraon

Financial Guidelines Specialist at Nestle

Sep 21, 2021

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC): how to migrate to Microsoft Azure?

Hi, It could be easy as Azure is one of the partners of SAP HEC. Please contact your SAP HEC technical account manager who can guide you on this.

2 out of 3 answers

Evgeny Belenky

Director of Community at PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)

Aug 3, 2021

Hi @Abdul-Rasool, @RamakrishnanRamanathaiah and @Ramakrishna Potluri. It seems you should be able to provide some assistance to @Harraj Saraon with this question.

Read full answer

Michael-Bell

Vice President of Sales at Coforge

Aug 5, 2021

@Harraj Saraon, did you get your answer?

Read full answer

See all 3 answers

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

University

Manufacturing Company

13%

Construction Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	140
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	151

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	16

Questions from the Community

Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?

IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...

See all answers

Which is better - SAP Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure?

One of the best features of SAP Cloud Platform is that it is web-based and you can log in from anywhere in the world. SAP Cloud Platform is suitable for companies of any size; it works well with bo...

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How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?

I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud?

SAP HANA Cloud can be quite costly compared to other solutions. The high licensing costs make it an expensive option, particularly for smaller customers. However, they offer solutions for mid-sized...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud?

The usual use cases for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud that I work with include many tools. At the time of the integration, SAP made it very easy for the integration. The key point is that now we have a...

See all answers

Comparisons

Amazon AWS vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 8% of the time

Google Firebase vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 7% of the time

Alibaba Cloud vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 6% of the time

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 6% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Competitors

Amazon AWS vs SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

Compared 17% of the time

SAP S4HANA on AWS vs SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

Compared 12% of the time

Media Temple IaaS Cloud vs SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

Compared 10% of the time

BT IaaS vs SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

Compared 8% of the time

More SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure

April 2026

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Buyer's Guide

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

April 2026

Download SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud product report

Also Known As

Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure

No data available

Overview

Microsoft Azure is a versatile cloud platform known for its scalability, flexibility, and ease of use, offering comprehensive solutions like virtual machines, identity management, and data storage with robust security measures and global data centers.

Azure provides a straightforward setup with dynamic scaling and seamless integration with existing tools. Its robust security, compliance with privacy laws, and global data center presence make it a trusted choice for enterprises. With features supporting DevOps, IoT, AI/ML, and hybrid cloud environments, Azure facilitates efficient cloud migration and modernization, enhancing operational efficiency.

What are some of the key features of Microsoft Azure?

Scalability: Adjust resources automatically to meet demand.
Flexibility: Support for hybrid cloud setup and smooth integration with existing tools.
Virtual Machines: Extensive support for VMs to run various workloads.
Active Directory: Robust identity and access management services.
Data Storage: Diverse storage options for different data management needs.
Security Measures: Comprehensive security protocols and compliance support.

What benefits and ROI should users consider when evaluating Microsoft Azure?

Cost Efficiency: Managed services that reduce operational costs.
Reliability: High availability with global data center coverage.
Ease of Migration: Facilitates transition from on-premises solutions to the cloud.
Operational Efficiency: User-friendly interface and extensive training resources.

Organizations primarily use Azure for infrastructure services, application hosting, and data management across industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail. Resellers deploy cloud services for clients in private, public, and hybrid clouds, supporting enterprise applications and digital transformation projects.

Microsoft

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud offers robust integration and real-time data processing for digital transformation, supporting diverse industries through flexible, efficient, and scalable cloud solutions tailored to enhance performance and decision-making.

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is designed for businesses aiming to migrate their SAP ERP systems to the cloud, facilitating digital transformation across sectors such as manufacturing and sales. With seamless integration, real-time data processing, and minimal downtime, it supports improved IT infrastructure management and strategic decision-making. Known for its superior performance in C-level reporting and finance solutions, its in-memory capabilities allow rapid access to precise reports. Global accessibility enhances efficiency, offering users flexible, personalized services and effective data integration in a cost-efficient infrastructure.

What are the key features of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud?

Robust BTP Modules: Supports digital transformation with seamless integration.
In-Memory Capabilities: Enables rapid, accurate data access and processing.
Quarterly Upgrades: Ensures the platform remains state-of-the-art with automated updates.
Virtual Modeling: Facilitates intuitive finance solutions and strategic planning.
Monitoring Services: Provides enhanced operational insights for IT management.

What benefits should users expect in reviews?

Cost-Efficient Management: Reduces costs with streamlined resource utilization.
Enhanced Performance: Elevates data-driven decision-making with real-time analysis.
Global Accessibility: Improves efficiency with easy access to cloud-hosted operations.
Flexible Infrastructure: Adapts to diverse industry needs with personalized services.
Seamless Data Integration: Simplifies processes through effective data handling.

In industries like manufacturing, sales, and logistics, SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is implemented for cloud-hosted operations that streamline order-to-cash processes and enhance real-time data analysis. Companies benefit from reduced costs and efficient server management while facilitating enterprise resource planning. The solution's proficiency in improving IT infrastructure accessibility and strategic data handling makes it a preferred choice for businesses aiming for digital transformation.

SAP

Sample Customers

BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.

FC Bayern Munich, Reuters News Agency, MEMEBOX

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure vs. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

April 2026

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