I would recommend looking at all of the solutions currently available and then decide. I would not immediately suggest going for SAP NetWeaver.

Being able to transform the data according to my requirements is a crucial feature; the phasing layers are helpful to distinguish data with respect to a specific project; analytics and reporting are very feasible; and the distribution of reports to the end users is also very easy. However, connectors need to be simplified, and technical support needs to be improved. Thus, on a scale from one to ten, I would rate SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse at eight.

My advice is to follow the best practices without making amendments or changing more than 20% in the SAP environment. Following procedures and best practices adds value to the company because the ERP comes to the company to change the procedures. The attitude would be anyone choosing the ERP must follow the best practice and stick to the SAP rules.

We had the product deployed on-premises but nowadays I'm doing assisted recovery work, so we have moved to AWS cloud. 

I would rate this product a 10 out of 10.

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

We must have the knowledge to install or maintain the solution. From the technical point of view, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

My advice regarding SAP would be to build on top of the business content first and to push a maximum of availability there before looking to make adjustments for business needs. There is a lot of content and standard queries, many of which are unknown by the business before deployment. People think immediately about what they want instead of looking at what they are. It's worth exploring what's in the box because it covers a lot of business requirements. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.

New users will go on to probably S/4 HANA (SAP high-performance analytic appliance). Because SAP has come out with a variety of products the business choice depends on the size of the company, the number of users, strategy, etcetra.Businesses intending to go to the cloud can now consider  SAP analytics cloud solution also. 

But whether it's a small, medium, or large company, SAP has solutions for everyone. It depends then on the business strategy of the company, what the IT strategy is, and then the company's plans for growth. For example, they have to account for how many users they plan to have over the next few years. They have to be clear on how much they are willing to invest in the solution. 

It also makes a difference if they want to analyze big data or not and what future plans are.

On a scale from one to 10, I would you rate this product about 8.5 to 9.  

SAP has already improved with S/4 HANA, SAP Leonardo, and they've got several features in all those products that are much better.They have got Business Objects suite. They have upgraded visual intelligence, and a lot of other features like the digital storyboard, and the geospatial features. The new versions have already got a lot of things.

SAP keeps innovating. Every few months, they come out with something new. Companies need to assess what they would like to go in for.

I was successful in connecting MS-PowerBI to the Business Warehouse.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

SAP has now come out with BW4HANA as well as the HANA Cloud Platform. Companies looking to implement SAP can benefit by going to HANA straight away. Companies which have implemented SAP BW can also get on to HANA if they are looking to modernize their setup and for a solution which can handle large data volumes.

SAP has also come out with SAP Leonardo for companies looking to go digital. It is a Cloud based offering on HANA which incorporates technologies like Machine Learning, Block chain, Big Data and Internet of things (IOT). SAP have also come out with Analytics on the Cloud.

Depending on the organisation strategy, vision and resources available, one will need to assess and decide on the way to go.

Do not expect that it is cheap to implement a data warehouse based on SAP BW. You can start really fast if you left the first problems behind. The predefined content helps you very well in showing results after weeks. But at the end, when you are experienced with SAP BW and your business departments need more data and it is not in their data model(s), then you start with multi provider and the mess begins.