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.
"We find that it is easy to integrate with other Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft Office."
"With Microsoft Azure, we have a platform that lets us easily deploy applications to the cloud."
"The most valuable feature is the virtual machine."
"The solution offers very good upgrades and updates regularly."
"There are many different components such as SaaS, PaaS, and API so every month they are releasing a few hundred new features."
"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."
"We use the cognitive service, virtual machines, and customer DB. Microsoft Azure is also scalable and easy to install."
"The main benefit of Microsoft Azure is that it is cloud-based. We are using Microsoft Visual Studio for our code and it is tightly integrated with Microsoft Azure. Additionally, the solution is user-friendly."
"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."
"The system has the capacity to manage all these departments in a single box and they're all integrated."
"They have their own instances where you can host your database."
"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 most valuable features of SAP S4HANA on AWS are that it's simplified and the analytical capabilities are good."
"It's easy to use and user-friendly."
"This solution has one of the most modern databases and it is very stable."
"They are a bit closed on the customization side. If they open the customization then it will be very good."
"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."
"Its pricing should be better. In terms of features, I am yet to explore the whole solution, and the current features seem okay."
"The Azure Billing API could be so much better. It only provides billing metrics for a set duration."
"An issue I encountered was around the integration of Identity. I lost some important information and I would like to see improvements with this."
"I would like to see more databases on the cloud, what they call today Big Data should be there."
"The solution must improve its pricing."
"Price could always be better. The features come in quickly, so we're comfortable with the feature set that is available to us."
"Not just S4 but for SAP in general, the price is a little high because they have implemented a new licensing scheme on a number of connections. The price being too expensive is some of the feedback we get from our customers."
"The GUI is age-old, the pricing is too high for hardware and older customizations are not working consistently."
"I would like for them to have more integration with virtualization platforms."
"Doesn't have a common development environment."
"The platform's front-end user interface needs improvement compared to other applications."
"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 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 product can be very complex."
Microsoft Azure is ranked 2nd in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 40 reviews while SAP S4HANA on AWS is ranked 6th in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 27 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 Oracle Cloud Platform, Google Firebase, 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.