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.
"Feedback and error messages make much more sense in Azure than in AWS."
"Microsoft Azure is built for scalability."
"Good security, scalability, and elasticity."
"The best feature in Microsoft Azure is that I don't have to change computers. I don't have to upgrade or if something breaks or a hard drive crashes. The lack of a physical aspect is the major feature for me."
"Offers many data security features including securing network access."
"The solution provides multiple well integrated services which happen to work together seamlessly and provide flexibility and scalability for use cases all around the industry."
"Microsoft has a lot of partners in this area, and they have a lot of information available online, so it's easy to get support."
"The customer service and support are very good. When we raise a ticket, we quickly get feedback or someone assigned to help us identify the problem, which, 90% of the time, was on our end. I'm very happy with the support they provide."
"The product’s high availability is its best feature."
"Provides good performance and regular release of new features."
"We have approximately 1,000 people using the solution in my organization. The solution is scalable."
"The HANA database is a valuable feature"
"The tool's installation is easy. I rate it an eight out of ten."
"SAP has an auto-scaling feature, but Azure doesn't."
"The system has the capacity to manage all these departments in a single box and they're all integrated."
"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."
"They're already doing quite a bit. I'm not unsatisfied with anything that they're doing right now. They can maybe make the transitions a little smoother and improve its pricing. The pricing for the end-user packages is a bit high."
"We need more customization and support for doing so."
"Microsoft's technical support could be improved."
"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."
"We use Microsoft Server 2019 and 2016. And I didn't like the 2019 client, so we had to downgrade back to 2016. The main issue there was its monitoring system. Our client needed an alternative, and if they were using more Windows products, they also needed to make that downgrade."
"Microsoft Azure can be pretty advanced and difficult to understand. I would like it to be simplified. The licensing especially needs to be simplified."
"You don't get support from Microsoft very easily as compared to other solutions."
"Support could be improved. If you pay for a higher plan, it's okay, however, the lower plans don't offer as good of a service experience."
"The drawback of this tool versus an on-site tool is that you've got to upgrade the tool. The software is upgraded as it gets upgraded and you've got to be ready to change whatever processes and do whatever training you need to do."
"Businesses are particularly interested in process automation, mobile, and web applications. These are the areas that SAP S4HANA is and should be looking to improve on, especially in terms of streamlining processes and automating certain steps."
"SAP S4HANA on AWS could improve by having the entire solution available as a web solution. They only have Fiori right now, and it's a solution for certain modules, but not for all the modules that SAP currently has. We would like to see the GUI removed, it is not very good. We want it to be web-based."
"I would like scalability to be improved in the future for faster performance."
"This solution is very resource-intensive, including high memory and CPU utilization."
"The product can be very complex."
"Doesn't have a common development environment."
"CPU architecture is an area where the solution currently has some issues. Improvement in CPU architecture could improve the performance side and the adherence to the parameters set by SAP."
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), Pivotal Cloud Foundry 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.