SAP Business Warehouse vs. Snowflake

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SAP BW
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
SAP Business Warehouse, or SAP BW (formerly SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse) is SAP's legacy data warehouse solution, now superseded by SAP BW/4HANA, and the SAP Data Warehouse Cloud which was launched in 2019. SAP BW versions up to 7.4 have reached end of maintenance. SAP BW 7.5 support is extended to align with SAP Business Suite with NetWeaver components. For existing customers maintenance is scheduled to continue through 2027, with extended support available through 2030.N/A
Snowflake
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
The Snowflake Cloud Data Platform is the eponymous data warehouse with, from the company in San Mateo, a cloud and SQL based DW that aims to allow users to unify, integrate, analyze, and share previously siloed data in secure, governed, and compliant ways. With it, users can securely access the Data Cloud to share live data with customers and business partners, and connect with other organizations doing business as data consumers, data providers, and data service providers.N/A
Pricing
SAP Business WarehouseSnowflake
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SAP BWSnowflake
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SAP Business WarehouseSnowflake
Features
SAP Business WarehouseSnowflake
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
SAP Business Warehouse
8.5
Ratings
3% below category average
Snowflake
-
Ratings
Multi-User Support (named login)9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Location-Based Data Governance6.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Modeling
Comparison of Data Modeling features of Product A and Product B
SAP Business Warehouse
8.7
Ratings
10% above category average
Snowflake
-
Ratings
Data model creation8.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Exploration
Comparison of Data Exploration features of Product A and Product B
SAP Business Warehouse
5.4
Ratings
2% above category average
Snowflake
-
Ratings
Visualization5.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Warehouse
Comparison of Data Warehouse features of Product A and Product B
SAP Business Warehouse
7.5
Ratings
2% below category average
Snowflake
-
Ratings
High-Volume Data Processing7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Warehouse Management9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Administrative Automation7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-Optimization5.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
SAP Business WarehouseSnowflake
Small Businesses
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.5 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cloudera Enterprise Data Hub
Cloudera Enterprise Data Hub
Score 9.0 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Oracle Exadata
Oracle Exadata
Score 10.0 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
SAP Business WarehouseSnowflake
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.9
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
SAP Business WarehouseSnowflake
Likelihood to Recommend
SAP BW is best for: 1. Large enterprises 2. Enterprises with 3+ legacy systems with entrenched users (politically difficult to merge) 3. Enterprises with employees who can understand both the technical capabilities of SAP BW and the needs of the business users - ability to speak both languages, otherwise the program could be unwieldy and potentially underutilized (it's not particularly inexpensive) SAP BW is less appropriate for: 1. Small enterprises 2. Enterprises who have well established, same location, CRM and UFS - the integration of data analysis will be easier and less expensive with other solutions 3. HANA
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If you need a quick query, snowflake is the way to go. It's super simple and scalable; we were struggling before with Azure, and with Snowflake, everything runs smoothly, and we have more control over our schemas and warehouses. Snowflake, in my opinion, is the next step when you want to scale your business and manage data. If your company is still small, there may be cheaper options.
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Pros
  • ETL, great at taking data from OLTP source, flat file, etc... Easy drag and drop for transformations.
  • Great reporting possibilities, easy to connect with BO, BPC, etc...
  • Great Master Data Management (MDM )for BPC - helps us maintain master data for BPC.
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  • Snowflake scales appropriately allowing you to manage expense for peak and off peak times for pulling and data retrieval and data centric processing jobs
  • Snowflake offers a marketplace solution that allows you to sell and subscribe to different data sources
  • Snowflake manages concurrency better in our trials than other premium competitors
  • Snowflake has little to no setup and ramp up time
  • Snowflake offers online training for various employee types
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Cons
  • Age of software is showing as it struggles with very large data modules, which were not as prevalent in its early years
  • Querying performance at times can be very slow
  • Support and development for BEx has been discontinued or hard to find.
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  • Add constraints for views and not just for tables
  • Do not force customers to renew for same or higher amount to avoid loosing unused credits. Already paid credits should not expire (at least within a reasonable time frame), independent of renewal deal size.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
SnowFlake is very cost effective and we also like the fact we can stop, start and spin up additional processing engines as we need to. We also like the fact that it's easy to connect our SQL IDEs to Snowflake and write our queries in the environment that we are used to
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Usability
It needs minimal trainings and can perform tasks of data management and reporting.
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The interface is similar to other SQL query systems I've used and is fairly easy to use. My only complaint is the syntax issues. Another thing is that the error messages are not always the easiest thing to understand, especially when you incorporate temp tables. Some of that is to be expected with any new database.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
We have had terrific experiences with Snowflake support. They have drilled into queries and given us tremendous detail and helpful answers. In one case they even figured out how a particular product was interacting with Snowflake, via its queries, and gave us detail to go back to that product's vendor because the Snowflake support team identified a fault in its operation. We got it solved without lots of back-and-forth or finger-pointing because the Snowflake team gave such detailed information.
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Alternatives Considered
SAP Business Warehouse scores higher in data warehouse functionalities for integration to SAP ERP and other SAP solutions such as SAP CRM, SAP APO, and SAP SRM. Standard SAP data source extractors which are available in SAP ERP can be used immediately for full or delta replication into SAP Business Warehouse. System governance in SAP Business Warehouse is top-notch with change management support for migration between system landscape from the development system to production system.
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Snowflake provides various features, such as integration with Python using Snowpark. The reporting feature that caters to your small reporting needs is Snowsight. The Snowflake data marketplace is where you can get multiple data for free and even some of the data which you can buy according to your needs. And the integration options with various tools like Sigma are add-ons.
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Return on Investment
  • It has helped cut down on parts shortages with the minimum stock flags.
  • People are able to track down parts easier because they can see where they were last used.
  • Our sales team has better visibility on lead times so they can accurately quote our customers.
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  • With separate compute and storage feature, the queries get executed quickly and it improves our overall productivity.
  • Earlier we were using a different product for analytical purposes, but with Snowflake's in-built analytical feature we are now able to save money.
  • Snowflake is cost efficient, features like auto suspend for compute resources helped to control the costs.
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ScreenShots

Snowflake Screenshots

Screenshot of Snowflake Installation