Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

SAP BW4HANA vs Teradata comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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

SAP BW4HANA
Ranking in Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Teradata
Ranking in Data Warehouse
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (6th), Backup and Recovery (20th), Data Integration (17th), Relational Databases Tools (7th), BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (10th), Marketing Management (6th), Cloud Data Warehouse (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of SAP BW4HANA is 4.5%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Teradata is 16.3%, up from 15.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Csaba Grünblatt - PeerSpot reviewer
Performs all necessary data warehouse tasks and offers additional functionalities
SAP BW4HANA improved data reporting processes significantly. Performance on HANA database is good. Well-built data models ensure consistent and fast reporting. Reusable models enhance efficiency, even for SaaS services. In-memory computing, especially since HANA, has greatly improved performance in data analysis tasks. It eliminates the need for complex optimizations like creating indexes or aggregates. Queries that once took minutes now run in seconds, enabling real-time reporting, especially for SAP ECC on HANA. SAP BW4HANA's integration capabilities are streamlined with a simplified architecture and more virtual layers. You can directly load data into optimized layers, reducing the need for extra storage. The introduction of Open ODS Views allows for additional logic and master data inclusion, making integration faster and simpler. The learning curve for SAP BW4HANA is much faster now compared to ten years ago, thanks to abundant free resources like documentation, videos, blogs, and learning journeys provided by SAP. It is simpler to learn with these resources available compared to the past when you had to attend courses and rely on books. I would recommend SAP BW4HANA to users looking to implement it, especially if they want to keep their systems on-premise and already have SAP systems. Those with BW on HANA have two choices: BW4HANA or DataSphere, depending on their cloud strategy. If they are advanced in their cloud strategy and want to migrate off-premise, DataSphere is a good choice. However, for a robust solution on-premise or in a private cloud, BW4HANA is an excellent option. Overall, I would rate BW4HANA as a nine out of ten. It performs all necessary data warehouse tasks and offers additional functionalities. We use it traditionally, with complex transformations and models but with less emphasis on real-time processing and third-party sources.
SurjitChoudhury - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers seamless integration capabilities and performance optimization features, including extensive indexing and advanced tuning capabilities
We created and constructed the warehouse. We used multiple loading processes like MultiLoad, FastLoad, and Teradata Pump. But those are loading processes, and Teradata is a powerful tool because if we consider older technologies, its architecture with nodes, virtual processes, and nodes is a unique concept. Later, other technologies like Informatica also adopted the concept of nodes from Informatica PowerCenter version 7.x. Previously, it was a client-server architecture, but later, it changed to the nodes concept. Like, we can have the database available 24/7, 365 days. If one node fails, other nodes can take care of it. Informatica adopted all those concepts when it changed its architecture. Even Oracle databases have since adapted their architecture to them. However, this particular Teradata company initially started with its own different type of architecture, which major companies later adopted. It has grown now, but initially, whatever query we sent it would be mapped into a particular component. After that, it goes to the virtual processor and down to the disk, where the actual physical data is loaded. So, in between, there's a map, which acts like a data dictionary. It also holds information about each piece of data, where it's loaded, and on which particular virtual processor or node the data resides. Because Teradata comes with a four-node architecture, or however many nodes we choose, the cost is determined by that initially. So, what type of data does each and every node hold? It's a shared-no architecture. So, whatever task is given to a virtual processor it will be processed. If there's a failure, then it will be taken care of by another virtual processor. Moreover, this solution has impacted the query time and data performance. In Teradata, there's a lot of joining, partitioning, and indexing of records. There are primary and secondary indexes, hash indexing, and other indexing processes. To improve query performance, we first analyze the query and tune it. If a join needs a secondary index, which plays a major role in filtering records, we might reconstruct that particular table with the secondary index. This tuning involves partitioning and indexing. We use these tools and technologies to fine-tune performance. When it comes to integration, tools like Informatica seamlessly connect with Teradata. We ensure the Teradata database is configured correctly in Informatica, including the proper hostname and properties for the load process. We didn't find any major complexity or issues with integration. But, these technologies are quite old now. With newer big data technologies, we've worked with a four-layer architecture, pulling data from Hadoop Lake to Teradata. We configure Teradata with the appropriate hostname and credentials, and use BTEQ queries to load data. Previously, we converted the data warehouse to a CLD model as per Teradata's standardized procedures, moving from an ETL to an EMT process. This allowed us to perform gap analysis on missing entities based on the model and retrieve them from the source system again. We found Teradata integration straightforward and compatible with other tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It provides the functions in a way that even a less technical person can do the modeling."
"We like that it is an SAP product, so we can easily connect with the SAP ERP system."
"The solution is easier to maintain than traditional SAP products."
"Technology-wise, it is a very robust tool."
"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."
"The solution is based on SAP ERP, so there's some business content already included. For customers who use SAP ERP, SAP BW4HANA is a good choice for their DW implementation."
"I like that it's quite quick."
"We can get good visualization and less redundant data."
"It has increased the speed of reporting."
"The flexibility in design is very good."
"​Parallel processing features have helped to easily dump any size of data and retrieve data with great performance."
"The data processing, clustering, and distributed computing are impressive."
"​We really enjoy the FastLoad, TPump, and MultiLoad features.​"
"Teradata's best feature is its speed with historical data."
"The key advantages are Performance when processing Terabytes of data and scalability."
"Teradata's capabilities enhance data management efficiency, support scalability, and contribute to faster query performance."
 

Cons

"Other competitors provide better solutions that are more up to date with current technology."
"In the next release, I would like to see their BI component introduced with a mobile version, as it is not currently present."
"The dashboard should be simplified and made easier for exploration and decision making."
"Not a ten because it's expensive and its ecosystem is not very open."
"The cost of the product might be an area that might introduce some restrictions or limitations to customers, making it one of the aspects where improvements are required."
"I would like to be able to design new reports in a future release."
"There's the complexity in migration from BW to BW/4HANA, especially with data migration."
"I cannot integrate it with my other tools. It's not possible to do something in the predictive analysis. Mobile reporting is also not available."
"The initial setup is complex because there are a lot of factors that come into play, including the amount of software and applications that require access."
"The setup is not straightforward."
"Sometimes the large injestion takes days to load data, and some of our stored procedures take two to three days."
"Apart from Control-M, it would be nice if it could integrate with other tools."
"They should add more connectors to different platforms."
"I would like more security and speed."
"There is some improvement required on OLTP level and some analytical function is missing."
"It could be a bit more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is affordable."
"For the on-premises version of the product, the solution offers a perpetual-based licensing model to its users. In general, SAP offers a monthly subscription-based licensing model to its users."
"We started as early birds from the SAP side. We got this entire suite for free. I cannot really talk about the price because we didn't have to pay anything."
"The product is free if we have the ECC license."
"The solution is expensive."
"Price wise, this solution is on the higher side."
"In general, it's quite expensive."
"SAP BW/4HANA is expensive."
"Make sure you have the in-house skills to design and support the solution, as relying on external sources is extremely costly and tends to lock you into specific platforms, tools, and paradigms."
"The initial cost may seem high, but the TCO is low."
"I am using the free version of Teradata."
"Teradata is a very expensive solution."
"The price of Teradata could be less expensive."
"Teradata is not cheap, but you get what you pay for."
"The tool costs about 30,000 euros a month, while Azure Synapse SQL only costs 10,000."
"​When looking into implementing this product, pricing is the main issue followed by technical expertise​."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
845,564 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user232068 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 5, 2015
Netezza vs. Teradata
Original published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-i-choose-net Two leading Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) architectures for Data Warehousing (DW) are IBM PureData System for Analytics (formerly Netezza) and Teradata. I thought talking about the similarities and differences…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Retailer
8%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SAP BW4HANA?
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 integrati...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP BW4HANA?
We have a broad licensing arrangement, which is expensive but worth it for sizeable businesses.
What needs improvement with SAP BW4HANA?
The interface could be more user-friendly, as we often need to do low-level coding to get things done.
Comparing Teradata and Oracle Database, which product do you think is better and why?
I have spoken to my colleagues about this comparison and in our collective opinion, the reason why some people may declare Teradata better than Oracle is the pricing. Both solutions are quite simi...
Which companies use Teradata and who is it most suitable for?
Before my organization implemented this solution, we researched which big brands were using Teradata, so we knew if it would be compatible with our field. According to the product's site, the comp...
Is Teradata a difficult solution to work with?
Teradata is not a difficult product to work with, especially since they offer you technical support at all levels if you just ask. There are some features that may cause difficulties - for example,...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SAP BW/4HANA
IntelliFlex, Aster Data Map Reduce, , QueryGrid, Customer Interaction Manager, Digital Marketing Center, Data Mover, Data Stream Architecture
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP BW4HANA vs. Teradata and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
845,564 professionals have used our research since 2012.