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Oracle Big Data Appliance vs SAP BW4HANA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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

Oracle Big Data Appliance
Ranking in Data Warehouse
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP BW4HANA
Ranking in Data Warehouse
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Oracle Big Data Appliance is 2.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BW4HANA is 3.4%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BW4HANA3.4%
Oracle Big Data Appliance2.6%
Other94.0%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1031826 - PeerSpot reviewer
Analytics Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Platinum partnership leverages advanced storage and fosters seamless data integration
Areas of Oracle Big Data Appliance that can be improved include the pricing perspective because nowadays they have competition. We have so many technologies that have come to the market for less than even one-fourth or one-fifth of the Oracle price. For my side, the last time I worked with Oracle was in '21, '22. The price is a challenge that they have to look after. From the storage and data management perspective, I cannot recall anything that they have to improve, but they have to improve the visualization part significantly because they offer Oracle BI, which is an extremely not-matured application.
Ritesh Durvasha - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Has supported efficient data processing and streamlined reporting for large-scale sales operations
The capability to handle a large amount of data and perform ETL operations is most valuable. Additionally, sending data out of SAP BW4HANA through Open Hub, which is a free service, is another valuable feature. In contrast, many other products charge for sending data out of their systems, such as Data Sphere or BDC, which charge premium service fees. Regarding advanced analytic tools in SAP BW4HANA, users can directly connect to Analysis for Office without additional charges. It's convenient as users don't have to download data into Excel since it's already connected to the system. From an integration capabilities perspective, it's easy to connect to SAP systems, though integration with non-SAP systems presents more challenges.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This is a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy."
"The best thing about the product is that the end-user can build the reports by themselves without really knowing anything about databases."
"Big Data responds to my needs."
"The most valuable feature is that it can be used in conjunction with Spark memory processing, and our processing time has gone to 20 minutes from what used to be two or three hours on the mainframe."
"Because Big Data Appliance allows me to have a single source of truth, it means I have clean data that can be monetized and leveraged to gain more insights with real-time reports from the dashboard."
"The best feature of Oracle Big Data Appliance, from a price perspective for the storage, is because they have technology called the ZFS technology; it offers huge storage with a decent price."
"We could work on large unstructured datasets from different parts of the world on Facebook and Twitter to get better insights."
"The solution seamlessly integrates with SAP products."
"The solution's performance is really good. Also, it's easy to operate, easy to administer, and relatively simple to install."
"One significant advantage of SAP BW/4HANA is the direct integration with the SAP HANA database, providing seamless access to real-time analytics. Additionally, it enables real-time data integration. We don't need to rely on historical data alone; we can provide reporting and features based on real-time information."
"My advice for anybody who is considering SAP BW4HANA is that it's a very stable product, and if you are looking at a huge volume of data that you want to process daily or any similar kind of task, then this is definitely a good solution."
"The UI is completely new, beautiful, and user-friendly. There are some other helpful features like global filters and advanced tools. We can perform custom calculations easily From a technical perspective, the performance has been enhanced and optimized for a limited number of flows. The content settings are more advanced, and there are so many other features that I can't name them all."
"It is the way forward if an organization is already in the SAP ecosystem."
"The features I find most valuable in SAP BW4HANA include the minimal modeling optics, where earlier in the BW System we had a lot of modeling objects for things like virtualization and data staging, but in SAP BW4HANA they have simplified everything, allowing us to design data by using minimal objects combined into a single object."
"The system has always been stable."
 

Cons

"We need to display the results on our website. I think there is another product that joins with it to give you the possibility."
"It seems like the deployment of repositories has become more difficult in later versions of the product rather than easier."
"We had to pursue several performance tuning measures to bring up the system to scale."
"From a technical perspective, Big Data Appliance could be improved with more innovation in the AI and machine-learning parts instead of relying on Cloudera."
"Areas of Oracle Big Data Appliance that can be improved include the pricing perspective because nowadays they have competition; we have so many technologies that have come to the market for less than even one-fourth or one-fifth of the Oracle price."
"The product should be simplified for the average user."
"They have taken out a few BW functionalities when they redesigned this. The way of multi-dimensional thinking and star schema got a little bit lost. It may be because of the cost, but certain functionalities that were previously implemented from the BW side should come back again in the whole product. It is a young product. It is version 2.0. In time, I'm pretty sure they will come back again because otherwise, it limits the potential of the product, and I have to do a lot of modeling towards that direction. For me, the analytics focus is too much. It is not cube-oriented in that way, so its functionality is limited. It is not really technically limited in the back end; it is more limited in the front end. It has a data-mining mindset for SQL developers. The navigational attributes should be easy. It needs to be built in models. I see the data mark cube or understanding that the composite provider needs to be models in a cube coming back. The multi-dimensional star schema approach and the reporting need to be done as well as possible to leverage the star scheme below. This is definitely not understood by many consultants and even composite providers for star schema. They always think in terms of flat tables, which is limiting. You need to build the right dimensions, objects, and so on. If you can build this in BW4HANA, then you have this understanding that BW4HANA is not forcing you in this direction, but it should force you a bit better in this direction. Maybe a few elements which were in use in BW should come back again. It would help the community to determine the direction to build on the cube. You can have maybe 50 elements, and then you can expand it to what you need by leveraging navigation. So far, this functionality is a little bit limited in the tool, and it is not thought through, but I think it will come. They should also be adding more capabilities for the transformation between different objects. In BW, this is currently limited, especially towards composite providers. It is a bit complex basically in the building. You have to have a lot of knowledge as well as know how to do it better because it is a bit different from BW. There is not too much expertise currently in the consulting markets. Many are trying to build something, but it may be based on their knowledge of what they have from the BW and HANA side. You have to find the right mix from both of them at this time. We also have HANA Native. These are our two different sync sources basically, and we have approaches to connect nicely, but it is hard to manage your team because a lot of coaching is required."
"We cannot integrate with third-party tools like Python or advanced integration options. You can't fine-tune tables within BW or generate specific views or reports."
"The licensing cost could be made better."
"The dashboard should be simplified and made easier for exploration and decision making."
"Real-time processing isn't BW/4HANA's strongest point."
"Regarding SAP support, I have raised many support tickets but did not receive adequate support. It took more than months to get responses."
"Not a ten because it's expensive and its ecosystem is not very open."
"SAP BW/4HANA can generally be less flexible than other tools, depending on how it is set up."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Oracle's prices are too high compared to others in the market."
"SAP BW/4HANA is expensive."
"The SAP HANA application still hasn't been leveraged to the fullest extent, but it's a five-year enterprise license."
"It's a little expensive compared to Microsoft Azure."
"The cost and licensing depends on how the customer is going to use the solution."
"The cost of ownership is higher. It's resource-intensive, and naturally, that increases costs."
"In general, it's quite expensive."
"The tool is affordable."
"The price is high and currently only affordable for large organizations."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
9%
Construction Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Oracle Big Data Appliance?
Areas of Oracle Big Data Appliance that can be improved include the pricing perspective because nowadays they have competition. We have so many technologies that have come to the market for less th...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Big Data Appliance?
The typical use case for Oracle Big Data Appliance, which my clients use, is usually that the customer who has an Oracle application uses it because they can leverage the storage part. I don't need...
What needs improvement with SAP BW4HANA?
For improvement, I think AWS for HANA could be better, but it is an on-premise solution. SAP is asking us to move to one client approach and suggested moving to data warehouse cloud, which should h...
What is your primary use case for SAP BW4HANA?
My use cases involve the client I am working with, who already has a BW ON HANA system, and we are currently migrating and redeveloping things in SAP BW4HANA; they are decommissioning the BW On HAN...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP BW/4HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Caixa Bank
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle Big Data Appliance vs. SAP BW4HANA and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.