Market Perspectives

SAP Is Exemplary and a Leader in Data Platforms Value Indexes

Written by Ventana Research | Feb 3, 2023 1:00:00 PM

We are happy to share some insights about SAP drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We recently published three Ventana Research 2023 Data Platforms Value Indexes, which evaluate technology vendors and products that provide individual and combined analytic and operational data platform support. At Ventana Research, we continue to believe that, for most use cases, there is a clear choice between analytic and operational data platforms to best meet your organization’s needs. We developed three technology assessment and buyers’ guides to focus on overall data platform requirements as well as specific analytic data platform and operational data platform use cases.

In all of our Value Indexes, we utilize a structured research methodology built on evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria and derived from RFP responses and a vendor selection process for analytics and business intelligence. For each of the Value Indexes, we evaluated SAP and other vendors in seven categories: five relevant to the product — Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability — and two related to the vendor — TCO/ROI and Validation. To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and on data derived from our market research, including our Benchmark Research on Analytics and Data.

SAP is well-known for its operational applications and analytics tools. The SAP HANA in-memory, column-oriented, relational database management system has been available in the market for over a decade and supports both operational and analytic applications. SAP offers the SAP HANA platform, as well as SAP HANA Cloud, SAP HANA Database and SAP HANA Cloud, data lake.

In the overall Data Platforms Value Index, SAP was categorized as an Exemplary Vendor, ranking fifth overall in this Value Index evaluation. It ranked sixth in Product Experience, where it was designated a Value Index Leader in Adaptability. It ranked fourth in Customer Experience and was a Value Index Leader in the TCO/ROI category. Its overall performance was impacted by its lower rankings in Reliability and Manageability, which represent 30% of the weighting in the overall Value Index.

Our assessment finds that SAP could perform better in the area of business administration, which was reflected in its eighth-place Manageability ranking. In Reliability, where it ranked ninth, it could potentially improve by examining scalability notifications and metrics.

In the Analytic Data Platforms Value Index, SAP was also categorized as an Exemplary Vendor, ranking fifth overall in this Value Index evaluation. It ranked fifth in ProductExperience, where it was designated a Value Index Leader in Adaptability. It ranked fifth in Customer Experience and ranked best in the TCO/ROI category.

SAP was also categorized as an Exemplary Vendor in the Operational Data Platforms Value Index, ranking fifth overall in this Value Index evaluation. It ranked seventh in Product Experience, where it was designated a Value Index Leader in the Adaptability category. It ranked fourth in Customer Experience and was a Value Index Leader in the TCO/ROI category.

This assessment was based on SAP’s data platform products generally available as of September 30, 2022.

Organizations should evaluate their data platform requirements for operational and analytic workloads to ensure the existing products and vendors are meeting their needs. If their current data platforms are not satisfying those requirements, they should consider whether SAP can help meet their needs.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of data platforms in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Click below to read the individual reports:

Data Platforms Value Index

Analytic Data Platforms Value Index

Operational Data Platforms Value Index