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.
"SQL Server has been most beneficial for our client’s workload."
"The stability is very good. The performance is excellent."
"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 most valuable aspect of Azure is the flexibility you have for all the services and solutions it offers, even if you use IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS, you have the option to only pay for the services you use."
"The solution offers very good upgrades and updates regularly."
"It is so huge and so powerful. The best thing is the possibilities of things that you can actually do with it. If you do it right, you can work or host your stuff a lot cheaper than traditionally. Its security is good, and it also reduces the strain on internal IT."
"There are plenty of functions available that we have used extensively. It is a complete platform of services."
"The solution does a lot of coding and customization, and can go live quickly."
"They have their own instances where you can host your database."
"Provides good performance and regular release of new features."
"This product is much better than most of the other products in this categaory as far as financial capabilities."
"There are two main features that we find very valuable. One is the interface and the new user experience. That's really, really helpful for the end-user. The second is the HANA database itself because it speeds up the process. In other solutions, like Oracle, there is a lot of redundancy that slows things down."
"The Fiori interface is the most valuable feature. It's one of the highlights that they offer. The in-memory of S4 is very fast."
"The HANA database is a valuable feature"
"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."
"The tool's installation is easy. I rate it an eight out of ten."
"I would like to see it more easily accessible."
"Azure calculator could be improved, there are issues with login synchronization."
"It can be cheaper, which might simplify things a bit."
"I have found Microsoft Azure has many components to use and it's very difficult to understand every component."
"I would like to see more automation and AI with the cloud to help the clients understand more about their clients, their history data, and their predictive analytics. This would help them better manage their clients."
"You eventually end up with a large collection of 'bits' all working together, I find it hard to be able to create a logical 'box' and put all the 'bits' that need to be in that box / application into the one place."
"Microsoft Azure needs to improve its user interface. New developers and teams have difficulty understanding its lifecycle."
"The interface is not easy to use. I'd like to see them develop a better interface, more graphical information about the resource and the consumer."
"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."
"Over the last three to four years, I haven't encountered significant issues with SAP S/4HANA. While occasional system bugs are normal in software, the overall experience has been positive. As a business partner, it stands out as a reliable ERP solution."
"The AI aspect of SAP S4HANA can be improved."
"S4HANA is expensive. It costs much more than SuccessFactors."
"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."
"The pricing is a little bit high."
"The platform's front-end user interface needs improvement compared to other applications."
"We had some storage and legacy migrations problems with SAP S4HANA on AWS."
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, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Amazon AWS, Pivotal Cloud Foundry and Salesforce Platform, 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.