We compared Microsoft Azure and SAP S4HANA on AWS based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Microsoft Azure is praised for its scalability, versatility, reliability, and wide range of services, with positive feedback on customer service and support. Users report a substantial return on investment with reasonable pricing. SAP S4HANA on AWS offers robust performance, seamless scalability, excellent integration capabilities, and comprehensive analytics, with exceptional customer support. The system provides competitive pricing, cost-effective setup, and favorable ROI, but users highlight the need for improvements in integration, reporting, analytics, interface, and performance.
Features: Microsoft Azure offers valuable features such as scalability, versatility, reliability, and a wide range of services. In comparison, SAP S4HANA on AWS stands out with its robust performance, seamless scalability, excellent integration capabilities, user-friendly interface, and comprehensive analytics.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for Microsoft Azure is considered commendable, with users mentioning the ease and simplicity of the installation process. On the other hand, SAP S4HANA on AWS offers cost-effective setup with a straightforward and user-friendly licensing process., Microsoft Azure has shown substantial ROI by providing cost savings, increased efficiency, and improved scalability. Its diverse services and tools allow for successful project implementation and management. SAP S4HANA on AWS offers favorable ROI with significant cost savings, improved operational efficiency, seamless system integration, enhanced data analysis capabilities, and improved decision-making abilities.
Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure users have identified areas that need improvement, while feedback for SAP S4HANA on AWS highlights the need for enhanced integration capabilities, reporting and analytics functionalities, a more user-friendly interface, and improved performance and stability.
Deployment and customer support: The user reviews for Microsoft Azure indicate varying timeframes for establishing a new tech solution, with some users mentioning a three-month deployment period and an additional week for setup. Other users suggest that deployment and setup may refer to the same period. On the other hand, the user feedback for SAP S4HANA on AWS also mentions different timeframes for deployment and setup, but emphasizes the importance of evaluating the context in which these terms are used., Microsoft Azure's customer service receives positive remarks for their responsiveness and expertise, with users appreciating the prompt and helpful assistance provided. SAP S4HANA on AWS also provides exceptional customer service, with reliable and efficient support that users highly appreciate.
The summary above is based on 50 interviews we conducted recently with Microsoft Azure and SAP S4HANA on AWS users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"My experience with technical support so far is very good."
"The portal makes it easier to work with the solution."
"I think the single sign-on functionality and the ease with which you can deposit things on the cloud have been valuable. Azure has very robust security functionalities and authentication features, which come with mobility, along with backup and credential checks."
"The incorporation of several kinds of storage, such as SSD Premium, enhanced the performance of machines."
"The solution has enabled us to provide advanced indicators and analytics to the client on their data."
"The platform's user-friendliness eliminates the need for lengthy training periods, enabling swift navigation for new users."
"The data factory feature."
"Azure's Data Lake services are decent. I like AKS, and API Management is relatively straightforward to use. The security and SIEM options Azure offers are good. All the infrastructure services are easy to use and set up."
"The HANA database is a valuable feature"
"SAP has an auto-scaling feature, but Azure doesn't."
"I appreciate the reliability and performance of SAP S/4HANA on AWS. It demonstrates high integration and stability, making it a widely used choice in various industries, including manufacturing, such as factories, carmakers, and battery production. It effectively covers a broad spectrum of business areas, which is beneficial."
"The most valuable feature of SAP S4HANA on AWS is that when developed on a new structured system it can be configured."
"Provides good performance and regular release of new features."
"The most valuable feature of SAP S4HANA is Fiori. It allows users to access information quickly and easily, without having to navigate through unnecessary screens or transactions. Additionally, the ability to retrieve data more efficiently is helpful. Furthermore, the pre-delivered videos and functionalities within the solution allow for easier application building."
"This product is currently the leading product within this category."
"We have found the retail business features to be the most valuable."
"The interface for configuring the environment is not very intuitive. Certain things are at different places, and it is not easy to navigate. They should have a more transparent licensing model. Currently, Microsoft's licensing is a bit clunky, and it keeps changing depending on the type of subscription you have. Different features are included, and sometimes, it is very hard to figure out the right licensing. So, the commercial aspect of the licensing can be improved, and they can make it easier to understand all the features that are included."
"It would be helpful if Azure provided more information on the various add-ons to give people an understanding of what they are used for, and how they're applied by other companies or businesses."
"Customer services and support should be improved. If a user faces challenges in accessing Microsoft Azure, the support team takes time—it could be 24 to 48 hours—to resolve them. We need solutions in four to five hours. And there are business-critical issues where we need an immediate resolution."
"From a security perspective, there is always something that can be improved as we serve our customers."
"There are multiple DevOps solutions and tools available in Microsoft Azure, but most of the time they are either in the build mode, meaning you don't get complete support for them because they are either making changes, or changing the names of the particular services. Sometimes, services vanish from the portal. We are not able to see that. I think they actually change the names of the services."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"It could be more flexible. If you look at all Mircosoft products, they are not up to the mark. For example, Azure Ready doesn't provide the same kind of access a domain administrator has and the kind of flexibility that they have when using Active Directory. Microsoft support could be better. Their service could also be better. For example, specific policies for templates suddenly become unavailable. When I checked, they said that certain things might be withdrawn based on customer feedback. This happened once or twice, and it wasn't available at all for five days, it just went down."
"I would like to see all of the cloud providers be more compatible with each other."
"The tool should undergo an overall improvement, including support. Data sharing should also be faster."
"The solution needs a warehouse management feature. Right now, there's a built-in WM, but they don't have an EWM extended warehouse management built-in, in S/4HANA. It's a separate product. So if they can add that, that would be great."
"The initial setup could be easier. It's complex."
"The documentation isn't clear enough."
"This solution is very resource-intensive, including high memory and CPU utilization."
"The GUI is age-old, the pricing is too high for hardware and older customizations are not working consistently."
"The product could use more capabilities in the areas of robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, but these improvements are already on the way."
"I would like scalability to be improved in the future for faster performance."
Microsoft Azure is ranked 1st in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 299 reviews while SAP S4HANA on AWS is ranked 7th in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 35 reviews. Microsoft Azure is rated 8.4, while SAP S4HANA on AWS is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Microsoft Azure writes "Promotes clear, logical structures preventing impractical configurations and offers seamless integration ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SAP S4HANA on AWS writes "With good documentation in place, the solution offers good technical support to its users". Microsoft Azure is most compared with Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Alibaba Cloud and Google App Engine, whereas SAP S4HANA on AWS is most compared with Google Cloud, SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Amazon AWS and Alibaba Cloud. See our Microsoft Azure vs. SAP S4HANA on AWS report.
See our list of best Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) vendors.
We monitor all Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
SAP S/4HANA is a system for managing relational databases. The in-memory system, as well as the columnar structure, results in retrieving the data with better performance than RDBMS systems.
You can deploy it in AWS or in Azure. Here is a brief comparison:
Azure dedicates specific virtual machines and bare metal servers to run SAP HANA. SAP HANA applications run on an SAP application. With Azure, you have an entire SAP application (VM) layer that includes servers, storage, and network configuration. You can deploy resources from 36 Intel with memory of 768GB to 480 Intel processors with 24TB of memory. Finally, you can combine AP and non SAP data. You can apply advanced data services, such as analytics and AI.
Aws
Azure
Supported use cases
Production, non-production
Production, non-production
Supported resources
Up to 48TB of memory
Up to 12TB
Licensing
Pay per use BYOL
subscription
Services
Single and multi-node architecture. Load balancing, instance provisioning.
Load balancing, clustering, Active Directory, and the HANA database.
SAP S/4HANA on AWS provides infrastructure services. AWS has the advantage of making SAP HANA available, cost-effective, and fault-tolerant. With AWS you can configure a single EC2 to host SAP HANA with EBS storage and your chosen operating system. Another option is to use multi-AZ to deploy primary and secondary nodes, using one for production and another for non-production.
You have two main options: First, BYOL (Bring your own license). It supports native HANA applications, S/4HANA, Business Suite on HANA, and you can have OLAP memory up to 100 TB. Second, the express edition, which is free to use for in-memory databases, but keep in mind you’ll have to stay under 32 GB.
Conclusions
Which is best will depend on your use cases. Azure in my opinion offers better performance for big data and AI workloads. AWS provides more reliability and redundancy.