

SAS Data Management and SAP Business Data Cloud compete in the data management and analytics platform category. SAP Business Data Cloud seems to have the upper hand given its strong predictive analysis and integration capabilities in collaborative environments, making it a preferred choice for integrated analytics.
Features: SAS Data Management provides easy creation and scheduling of data flows, and robust ETL processes alongside comprehensive data integration tools. Additionally, its metadata management and data governance are highly regarded. SAP Business Data Cloud offers strong predictive analysis, user-friendly interfaces, and collaborative self-service environments, alongside planning functionalities that enhance business intelligence capabilities.
Room for Improvement: SAS Data Management faces challenges with costly licensing and complex configuration, along with limited non-ETL application cases and difficulties in external data access. SAP Business Data Cloud users point out expensive solutions, limited analytics features, and challenging integration with non-SAP systems. Its user interface could be improved with more visualization features, third-party connectivity, and Python scripting support.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAS Data Management is primarily deployed on-premises and in hybrid cloud environments, backed by a responsive technical team, though regional expertise varies. SAP Business Data Cloud, available on private and public clouds, benefits from structured support and strong cloud integration, although pricing restricts extensive rollouts and technical service effectiveness may vary by region.
Pricing and ROI: Despite yielding high ROI in specific sectors, SAS Data Management's expensive perpetual licensing is a barrier for smaller businesses, compounded by the product's complexity. SAP Business Data Cloud uses a subscription model with varied access levels, offering competitive ROI within SAP ecosystems, though both platforms face feedback on high costs with calls for more competitive pricing strategies.
We have saved a lot on the number of employees, and implementation time for the projects has reduced significantly since we started using the standard features of SAP Business Data Cloud.
Once the content is available, then it is a faster go-live with lesser cost in implementation, and that would give an ROI.
It will definitely reduce the need for more staff to handle this technology.
Reliable data plus less human intervention and less error result in a strong return on investment.
The technical support is a very well-organized service, with a lot of tools for me as a consultant and for the end user on how to contact SAP support and get issues solved.
For example, when I provide a set of instructions, they often simply ask me to implement those steps without checking whether they are applicable.
In SAP's policy, for the first couple of years, the product team is also part of the support team.
The support for SAS in Brazil is not the best one, but the support in Sweden is really good, as they visit the company and work to solve the issues.
The scalability of SAP Business Data Cloud has been strong, as it has handled growth in data volume, user demand, and reporting requirements without significant performance issues.
SAP Analytics Cloud can be used by a small company, and it can be used by a large corporate.
Since SAP has consolidated everything on one platform, there is ample room to expand as much as needed.
You have a chance to test it on your test tenant in small increments, so it should not break your productive reports and productive environment.
It has been reliable for reporting, analytics, and data integration activities.
This really allowed virtual access to data, which means there was no heavy replication of data involved, greatly improving performance.
On the other hand, it is perfectly fitting to the SAP environment, with seamless integration to all SAP modules, not only ERP but also SuccessFactors and other tools from the SAP family.
If SAP can come up with innovative options to reduce licensing costs, many customers would incline toward SAP Business Data Cloud.
If I compare the cost with SAP competitors, I find that when creating an enterprise data lake, if I don't use SAP Business Data Cloud and make it directly in the hyperscalers, it is pretty much cheaper than doing the same in SAP Business Data Cloud.
There is significant room for improvement, especially with regard to using a hybrid approach that involves both CAS and persistent storage.
SAS Data Management can be improved in terms of the learning curve.
If I compare the cost with SAP competitors, I find that when creating an enterprise data lake, if I don't use SAP Business Data Cloud and make it directly in the hyperscalers, it is pretty much cheaper than doing the same in SAP Business Data Cloud.
From a planning license perspective, SAC on that side is very expensive if you need developer features.
SAP Business Data Cloud is at a disadvantage when compared to tools like Talend or Informatica, which are cheaper and more capable.
From my experience, SAS Data Management is an expensive tool.
For SuccessFactors and S/4HANA Cloud, there are pre-built reports available which are commonly used by customers.
SAP Business Data Cloud has positively impacted my organization by federating SAP data, which is now available for all to use.
The main standout feature is BDC Connect, as it is very useful for sharing data without replicating to third-party tools such as Enterprise Databricks, Snowflake or even in the near future, Google BigQuery as well as Microsoft Fabric.
SAS Data Management stands out because of its data standardization, transformation, and verification capabilities.
The best features I appreciate about SAS Data Management tool are that it's easy to create the flows and schedule data, and the tables are not too big, making it easy to control the ETL process, including user access which is also easy to manage in SAS.
SAS Data Management's best feature is first, data reliability because SAS Data Management is a very trusted platform.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| SAP Business Data Cloud | 1.0% |
| SAS Data Management | 1.2% |
| Other | 97.8% |

| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 44 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 21 |
| Large Enterprise | 64 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 8 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 2 |
| Large Enterprise | 8 |
SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC) is a unified, intelligent data platform — part of the SAP Business AI Platform — that governs SAP and third-party data through a business data fabric. As an evolution of our industry-leading data, analytics and planning solutions, Business Data Cloud brings together Datasphere, Analytics Cloud, and Business Warehouse with a unified experience that delivers transformational insights across all lines of business. By harmonizing mission-critical data with the business processes and logic that give it meaning, SAP BDC delivers a trusted foundation for analytics and AI, empowering data teams and business leaders to make faster, more confident decisions.
What are the most important features of SAP Business Data Cloud?
What benefits or ROI should users look for in SAP Business Data Cloud?
SAP Business Data Cloud is a key component of SAP's vision for the autonomous enterprise. By unifying data connectivity, governance, semantic modeling, and analytics in a single cloud-native platform, SAP BDC eliminates fragmentation and complexity — serving as the connective tissue that ties your entire enterprise together and positioning organizations for long-term success in an AI-driven world.
SAS Data Management provides data integration, governance, and robust reporting tools. It connects to diverse data sources, ensuring quality management and enabling data analysis for technical and non-technical users.
SAS Data Management features flexible data flow creation, scheduling, and ETL control. It enhances data integration and metadata management with tools that support data standardization. Users benefit from its importing and exporting capabilities, connecting to multiple sources. It facilitates improved data quality management and offers a flexible language for diverse needs. Data visualization capabilities further support decision-making across industries, automating reports and data warehouses.
What are the key features of SAS Data Management?SAS Data Management helps industries like finance integrate diverse data sources for analytics and reporting. It is used for tasks such as financial reporting, credit risk analysis, and data cleansing. Through user-driven automation, it aids in aligning data warehouses and generating insightful visual outputs, making it ideal for analyzing structured data from sources like Excel and CSV files.
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