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Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse vs SAP Business Warehouse comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Parallel Data War...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (9th)
SAP Business Warehouse
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (15th)
 

Featured Reviews

HassanFatemi - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at Smart Data-Driven Solutions
Has handled large volumes of data effectively but still needs cost flexibility
There could be improvements on the cost side of Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse because it is still considered to be quite expensive by a lot of users, and many companies are not interested in solutions with parallel data warehousing due to this expense. Addressing the cost would be the number one area for improvement. Additionally, I have not worked recently with it, so I don't know if this feature already exists, but if it doesn't, having an elastic feature that adjusts the service's power dynamically based on the workload would be beneficial instead of fixing the power at a specific level.
VishnuReddy2 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its scalability is impressive as it scales up and down really well, we go from a couple of users to tons of users all the time, and it scales and handles things really well."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"I'm very pro Microsoft because I think Microsoft products are highly intuitive and are widely used."
"The stability and ease of use of Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse are valuable features."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The interface is very user-friendly."
"Overall, I rate Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse a nine out of ten."
"With PDW’s Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) design, queries run in minutes instead of hours, and in seconds instead of minutes in comparison to Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) databases."
"The warehouse is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The real-time information is great."
"Having the integration with the reporting tool which is provided by SAP is great."
"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."
"The best features of SAP Business Warehouse that I am fond of are how this technology handles navigational attributes and the hierarchy; these are two interesting features."
"Having the back-end data set with the right information is the best qualification for this solution."
"The fact that it can integrate with Microsoft Excel is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its capabilities to connect to Excel and to slice and dice."
 

Cons

"When there are many users or many expensive queries, it can be very slow."
"I would like to see better visualization features."
"The only issue with the product is that the process is very slow when we have a huge amount of data."
"The performance could be improved because the query is slow if we don't optimize it. And even if we optimize it, sometimes it still runs very slow."
"They need to incorporate a machine learning engine."
"It could offer more development across the solution."
"The product must provide more frequent updates."
"​Concurrent queries are limited to 32, making it more of a data storage mechanism instead of an active DWH solution."
"The solution could offer better connectivity with other databases."
"We are very unhappy with technical support. First of all, they send their sales agents or pre-sales agents and most of them who don't know the solution as a properly trained tech would. We have an on-site SAP representative who is supposed to help us with our high priority and production issues, and they're not satisfactory to say the least."
"The visualization should be improved, as well as the dashboards and advanced analytics."
"SAP Business Warehouse could integrate better with other ETL tools."
"I would for sure like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users."
"The solution should be more open to the cloud."
"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."
"The big minuses are its not being user friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is fairly decent for organizations with huge data sizes."
"Microsoft has an agreement with the government in our country, so our customers get their licensing costs from the Ministry. Whenever we work with any government, company, or government institute, which is mainly what we are doing, that license comes directly from the Ministry of Technology and Information."
"They offer an annual subscription. The pricing depends on the size of the environments."
"All the features that we use do not require any additional subscription or yearly fees."
"The tool could be expensive if we need to manage a lot of data."
"Technical support is an additional fee and is expensive."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"I think the program is well-priced compared to the other offerings that are out in the market."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"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."
"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 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 moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"The solution is quite expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
The pricing could be better; I think it actually just went up.
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
The basic use case for us is virtual machines. In real estate, we use it for our operations. They handle large data sets well, and the performance is good during those times.
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?
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 Warehou...
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...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft PDW, SQL Server Data Warehouse, Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, MS Parallel Data Warehouse
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Auckland Transport, Erste Bank Group, Urban Software Institute, NJVC, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Tata Steel Europe
Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse vs. SAP Business Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.