Hadoop vs SAP HANA

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Our analysts compared Hadoop vs SAP HANA based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Big Data Analytics Tools, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Hadoop Software Tool
SAP HANA Software Tool

Product Basics

Apache Hadoop is an open source framework for dealing with large quantities of data. It’s considered a landmark group of products in the business intelligence and data analytics space, and is comprised of several different components. It functions on basic analytics principles like distributed computing, large data processing, machine learning and more.

Hadoop is part of a growing family of free, open source software (FOSS) projects from the Apache Foundation, and works well in conjunction with other third-party products.
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SAP HANA is the in-memory database for SAP’s Business Technology platform with strong data processing and analytics capabilities that reduce data redundancy and data footprint, while optimizing hardware and IT operational needs to support business in real time. Available on-premise, in the cloud and as a hybrid solution, it performs advanced analytics on live transactional data to display actionable information.

With an in-memory architecture and lean data model that helps businesses access data at the speed of thought, it serves as a single source of all relevant data. It integrates with a multitude of systems and databases, including geo-spatial mapping tools, to give businesses the insights to make KPI-focused decisions.
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Product Insights

  • Scalability: Hadoop's distributed computing model allows it to scale up from a single server to thousands of machines, each offering local computation and storage. This means businesses can handle more data simply by adding more nodes to the network, making it highly adaptable to the exponential growth of data.
  • Cost-Effectiveness: Unlike traditional relational database management systems that can be prohibitively expensive to scale, Hadoop enables businesses to store and manage vast amounts of data at a fraction of the cost, thanks to its ability to run on commodity hardware.
  • Flexibility: Hadoop is designed to efficiently process large volumes of data of different types, from structured to unstructured. This flexibility allows organizations to harness the power of big data without the constraints of a predefined schema, making it easier to make data-driven decisions.
  • Fault Tolerance: Hadoop automatically replicates data to multiple nodes, ensuring that the system is highly resilient to hardware failure. If a node goes down, tasks are automatically redirected to other nodes to ensure continuous operation, minimizing downtime and data loss.
  • Processing Speed: With its unique storage method based on a distributed file system that maps data wherever it is located on a cluster, Hadoop can process large volumes of data much more quickly than traditional systems. This speed makes it ideal for applications that require processing terabytes or petabytes of data, such as analyzing customer behavior patterns.
  • Efficient Data Processing: Hadoop's MapReduce programming model is designed for processing large data sets in parallel across a distributed cluster, which significantly speeds up the data processing tasks. This efficiency is crucial for performing complex calculations and analytics on big data in a timely manner.
  • Community Support: Being an open-source framework, Hadoop benefits from a vast community of developers and users who continuously contribute to its development and improvement. This community support ensures that Hadoop stays at the forefront of big data processing technology, with regular updates and a wide range of compatible tools and extensions.
  • Data Locality Optimization: Hadoop moves computation closer to data rather than moving large data sets across the network to be processed. This approach reduces the time taken to process data, as it minimizes network congestion and increases the overall throughput of the system.
  • Improved Business Continuity: The fault tolerance and high availability features of Hadoop ensure that businesses can maintain continuous operations, even in the face of hardware failures or other issues. This reliability is critical for organizations that depend on real-time data analysis for operational decision-making.
  • Enhanced Data Security: Hadoop includes robust security features, such as Kerberos authentication, to ensure that data is protected against unauthorized access. This security framework is essential for businesses that handle sensitive information, providing peace of mind that their data is secure.
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  • Database Management: Reduces operational complexity through the use of a single database that allows data to be stored without a predefined structure. Provides data structure flexibility to application developers. Joins this data with many other data types with full interoperability. 
  • Build Business Solutions: The Business Function Library delivers pre-built functions that developers link at the database kernel level to build powerful business solutions. 
  • Geo-spatial Analysis: Stores spatial data and enables geographical data processing to drive location-specific business application development. 
  • Deploy Anywhere: Deploy on-premise, multi-cloud or go hybrid. Set up on traditional servers, pre-configured appliances, the HANA Enterprise Cloud or partner clouds including AWS and Microsoft Azure. Extend on-premise solutions to the cloud smoothly during any phase of the project. 
  • Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning: Supports transactional processing through machine learning and data analysis in real time. Take action before or as events happen to improve results and boost productivity. 
  • Smart Data Access: Connect virtually to remote, externally supported databases. Stores only the metadata of the database objects as a virtual table in the local database schema. Access data from the remote database in real time, irrespective of its location. 
  • Reduced Cost of Ownership: Mitigates hardware costs through a reduced data footprint made possible by a compression algorithm and lean data structure. 
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  • Distributed Computing: Also known as the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), this feature can easily spread computing tasks across multiple nodes, providing faster processing and data redundancy in the event that there’s a critical failure. Hadoop is the industry standard for big data analytics. 
  • Fault Tolerance: Data is replicated across nodes, so even in the event of one node failing, the data is left intact and retrievable. 
  • Scalability: The app is able to run on less robust hardware or scale up to industrial data processing servers with ease. 
  • Integration With Existing Systems: Because Hadoop is so central to so many big data analytics applications, it integrates easily into a number of commercial platforms like Google Analytics and Oracle Big Data SQL or with other Apache software like YARN and MapR. 
  • In-Memory Processing: Hadoop, in conjunction with Apache Spark, is able to quickly parse and process large quantities of data by storing it in-memory. 
  • Hadoop MapR: MapR is a component of Hadoop that combines a number of features like redundancy, POSIX compliance and more into a single, enterprise grade component that looks like a standard file server. 
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  • Data Integration: Captures any type of data — structured or unstructured — from database transactions, applications and streaming data sources. Ingests part of a data set or the complete data set into its native architecture for ready access. 
  • Capture and Replay: Record complex database transactions and then replay them on another device. Test on a non-production system while using production transactions, on a hosted instance, or in the cloud. 
  • Graph Data Processing: Combines its built-in graph engine with the in-memory relational database. Makes graph processing of relational tables easy to learn and use. 
  • SAP HANA Cockpit: Configure and manage HANA instances and applications through a single console interface. Easily schedule all backup jobs and monitor the system for immediate visibility of potential blockers. Integrate with other applications for workload management and security. 
  • Flexible Querying: Choose from a variety of semantics structures to query data in the database memory through a flexible algorithm. 
  • In-memory Architecture: Analyze insights in real time to monitor business KPIs and generate forecast trends. Access data quicker than with conventional databases via its in-memory database. 
  • Data Compression: Compresses data by up to 11 times and stores it in columnar structures for high-performance read and write operations. Saves storage space and provides faster data access for search and complex calculations. 
  • Parallel Processing: Performs basic calculations, such as joins, scans and aggregations in parallel, leveraging column-based data structures. Processes data quicker for distributed systems. 
  • Real-time Analysis: Queries transactional data directly as it is added in real-time. Leverages its inbuilt data processing algorithm to read and write data to a column storage table at high speeds. Acquire total visibility over information while it is being analyzed and make on-the-spot, incisive decisions. 
  • Role-based Permissions: Maintain data integrity across the organization — assign data access based on each team member’s role. 
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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 474 reviews
Great User Sentiment 1173 reviews
85%
of users recommend this product

Hadoop has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 85% when considering 474 user reviews from 3 recognized software review sites.

86%
of users recommend this product

SAP HANA has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 86% when considering 1173 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

4.3 (101)
4.2 (345)
4.3 (244)
4.6 (19)
n/a
4.3 (328)
4.2 (129)
4.3 (481)

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Scalability: Hadoop can store and process massive datasets across clusters of commodity hardware, allowing businesses to scale their data infrastructure as needed without significant upfront investments.
Cost-Effectiveness: By leveraging open-source software and affordable hardware, Hadoop provides a cost-effective solution for managing large datasets compared to traditional enterprise data warehouse systems.
Flexibility: Hadoop's ability to handle various data formats, including structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data, makes it suitable for diverse data analytics tasks.
Resilience: Hadoop's distributed architecture ensures fault tolerance. Data is replicated across multiple nodes, preventing data loss in case of hardware failures.
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Data Analysis: Around 92% of users who reviewed data analysis said that the tool analyzes and displays insights and trend forecasts of transactional data in real time to enable timely decision-making.
Data Processing: Approximately 91% of the users who discussed data processing said that the tool can query large amounts of data due to its in-memory architecture and data compression algorithm.
Data Integration: Around 87% of the users said that the solution migrates data efficiently from a wide range of SAP and non-SAP systems.
Support: Approximately 87% of the users who discussed support said that they are responsive, and online user communities and knowledge bases assist in faster resolution of issues.
Speed and Performance: Citing the tool’s fast runtime, around 76% of the users said that they can perform on-the-fly calculations at very high speeds.
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Complexity: Hadoop can be challenging to set up and manage, especially for organizations without a dedicated team of experts. Its ecosystem involves numerous components, each requiring configuration and integration.
Security Concerns: Hadoop's native security features are limited, often necessitating additional tools and protocols to ensure data protection and compliance with regulations.
Performance Bottlenecks: While Hadoop excels at handling large datasets, it may not be the best choice for real-time or low-latency applications due to its batch-oriented architecture.
Cost Considerations: Implementing and maintaining a Hadoop infrastructure can be expensive, particularly for smaller organizations or those with limited IT budgets.
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Pricing: Approximately 80% of the users who mentioned pricing said that the solution’s in-memory architecture demands large amounts of RAM, which adds to the cost.
Functionality: According to around 53% of the users who reviewed functionality, the solution needs to be more flexible and agile to perform complex calculations on large datasets.
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Hadoop has been making waves in the Big Data Analytics scene, and for good reason. Users rave about its ability to scale like a champ, handling massive datasets that would make other platforms sweat. Its flexibility is another major plus, allowing it to adapt to different data formats and processing needs without breaking a sweat. And let's not forget about reliability – Hadoop is built to keep on chugging even when things get rough. However, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Some users find Hadoop's complexity a bit daunting, especially if they're new to the Big Data game. The learning curve can be steep, so be prepared to invest some time and effort to get the most out of it. So, who's the ideal candidate for Hadoop? Companies dealing with mountains of data, that's who. If you're in industries like finance, healthcare, or retail, where data is king, Hadoop can be your secret weapon. It's perfect for tasks like analyzing customer behavior, detecting fraud, or predicting market trends. Just remember, Hadoop is a powerful tool, but it's not a magic wand. You'll need a skilled team to set it up and manage it effectively. But if you're willing to put in the work, Hadoop can help you unlock the true potential of your data.

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SAP HANA is a multi-model database and analytics platform that combines real-time transactional data with predictive analytics and machine learning capabilities to drive business decisions quicker. Most of the users who mentioned analytics said that, with its Online Analytical Processing(OLAP) and Online Transactional Processing(OLTP) capabilities, the tool analyzes data faster with predictive modeling and machine learning. Many users who reviewed data processing said that the tool has a lean data model due to its in-memory architecture and columnar storage capabilities, and, paired with its compression algorithm, can perform calculations on-the-fly on huge volumes of data. In reference to data integration, many users said that the platform connects seamlessly with both SAP and non-SAP systems, such as mapping tools like ArcGIS, to migrate data to a consolidated repository, though quite a few users said that integration with media files and Google APIs is tedious. Most of the users who reviewed support said that they are responsive, and online user communities and documentation help in resolving issues, whereas some users said that the support reps had limited knowledge. A majority of the users who reviewed its speed said that the platform has a fast runtime, though some users said that it requires high-performing hardware infrastructure to do so and that memory management might be tricky with large datasets. The software does have its limitations though. Being in-memory, the tool is RAM-intensive, which can add to the cost of ownership, though some users said that data compression reduces the database size and saves on hardware cost. A majority of the users who reviewed its functionality said that it needs to be more mature in terms of flexibility and agility, though some users said that with easy updates and maintenance, it is a robust solution and increases efficiency and productivity. In summary, SAP HANA serves as a single source of truth for analysis of large volumes of data and uncovering consumer insights through planning, forecasting and drill-down reporting. However, it seems more suited for large organizations with complex data types and analytics workflows because of its costly pricing plans.

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