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.
"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 solution offers very good upgrades and updates regularly."
"The tool's most valuable aspect is the account management side. This involves tasks such as assigning credentials to different individuals, managing user accounts, and implementing Privileged Access Management."
"Its scalability is valuable. Depending on our requirements, we can add as many virtual machines as we want. We are able to get high availability for services. Services are always available, and they have the maximum uptime. If there is any issue with one of the services, another service is always available. It is pay-as-you-go. You don't have to spend any money upfront. You use the service and pay after one month or a couple of hours of use."
"It was very user-friendly when setting up the virtual machines and console. It was an easy task for my team to create virtual servers and start replications."
"We find Azure particularly beneficial when working with clients who are heavily invested in Microsoft solutions. It necessitates that we also leverage Azure for our solutions and services."
"The automated connectors to some of our critical enterprise systems are an important feature. These are very large, critical, global HCM systems."
"In terms of managing and configuring infrastructures, Azure is fairly good."
"We have found the retail business features to be the most valuable."
"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."
"Technical support is very good from SAP and AWS...Scalability is always available in the solution...With a stable environment, it should be running very nicely."
"The tool's installation is easy. I rate it an eight out of ten."
"I like that they are very familiar with our VM which makes it easy to use."
"SAP S4HANA on AWS is an easy-to-use solution."
"The product efficiently manages the data center without manual intervention."
"The product’s high availability is its best feature."
"There should be more language options for the Azure Functions apps. It supports programming languages, but there are only a few options. It could have more programming languages."
"We have reported some bugs we encountered, and it would be good if those bugs were resolved more quickly."
"The solution could improve by having more security features around my data and the platform."
"They are a bit closed on the customization side. If they open the customization then it will be very good."
"Microsoft Azure is so complicated inside. If you should do something internally, if you have to configure something, the opinion about Azure is that it is a little complicated inside. That's why the end users and clients are looking for help and why we help them configure and do anything inside of Azure. That is why we offer other tools to optimize the Azure environment."
"Could be more user friendly; security features should be improved."
"The subscriptions are complicated."
"The solution could use mutual segmentation for servers. It would be ideal if you could constitute something like five or 15 groups among the groups of different computers inside Azure."
"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."
"The manufacturing application system, it's not as user-friendly in S4HANA."
"S4HANA is expensive. It costs much more than SuccessFactors."
"The tool should undergo an overall improvement, including support. Data sharing should also be faster."
"There are a few complexities when it comes to licensing that could be simplified."
"The documentation isn't clear enough."
"The platform's front-end user interface needs improvement compared to other applications."
"The pricing is a little bit high."
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.