We performed a comparison between Amazon Redshift and Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Amazon Redshift comes out on top in this comparison. It is easy to use and performs well. In addition Amazon Redshift is easier to set up than Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics.
"Amazon Redshift offers a relatively flexible structure...I rate the technical support a nine out of ten."
"The processing of data is very fast."
"It is very easy to dump data into the tool."
"The most valuable features of Amazon Redshift are that its fast and efficient. We have lots of TBs of data and it's very fast."
"Has a very user-friendly SQL editor and it's very easy to use the connectors."
"The valuable features are performance, data compression, and scalability."
"The main benefit is that our portal for end users is running in AWS, so we can easily connect it to other AWS services."
"Redshift's Excel features are handy. Redshift spectrum allows you to directly query the data on an Excel sheet. Now, SQL Server also allows this, but Redshift has many more features."
"We can have the dedicated SQL up and running within 15 minutes."
"We also like governance. It looks at what the requirements are for the company to identify the best way to ensure compliance is met when you move to the cloud."
"I like how Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics integrates with other Microsoft solutions."
"The solution can scale."
"Synapse Analytics' best feature is its ability to process large files."
"It's quite quick for querying, even with large datasets, and it's scalable. It's also flexible to use, so it's easy to update and get data quickly without wasting time."
"We find the serverless tool to be the most valuable feature ."
"Overall deployment and integration is pretty fast."
"In terms of improvement, I believe Amazon Redshift could work on reducing its costs, as they tend to increase significantly. Additionally, there are occasional issues with nodes going down, which can be problematic."
"Query compilation time needs a lot of improvement for cases where you are generating queries dynamically."
"In the solution, user-based access is quite hard. In general, certain permissions are difficult to manage."
"Redshift's GUI could be more user-friendly. It's easier to perform queries and all that stuff in Azure Synapse Analytics."
"Amazon Redshift does not have the capability to dynamically increase the VM file."
"Running parallel queries results in poor performance and this needs to be improved."
"AWS Snowflake has a very good feature for cloning databases. It makes it easy to clone a data warehouse, which is useful. I would like to see this feature in Redshift."
"For people who struggle with IAM or role-based management, the setup isn't easy."
"The initial setup has a bit of a learning curve."
"The only concern for us is the cost part. When it comes to the implementation and the support and maintenance, we see high-cost implications."
"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics can improve by increasing the size of the files that we can load on the platform. We have some files that are too large to be loaded and it would be a benefit to us if the limit was increased. Additionally, the way we use the tool for generating reports can be made better. They should add some drag-and-drop rules without the need of programming these rules using some programming language. It would be helpful if we did not need someone that was technically advanced to be able to do it with, such as someone with no IT background. Having a reporting tool without code would be great."
"We'd, of course, always like to pay less for the service if we can."
"I would like my team to be able to build pipelines that integrate with the Azure Data Factory."
"The major challenge that we're seeing with Azure Synapse is around security concerns. The way it is working right now, it has Managed VNet by Microsoft option, similar to the implementation of Azure Databricks, which may pose a concern for financial institutions. For managed environments, the banks have very strict policies around data being onboarded to those environments. For some confidential applications, the banks have the policy to encrypt it with their own key, so it is sort of like Bring Your Own Key, but it is not possible to manage the resources with Microsoft or Databricks, which is probably the major challenge with Azure Synapse. There should be more compatibility with SQL Server. It should be easier to migrate solutions between different environments because right now, it is not really competitive. It is not like you can go and install SQL Database in some other environment. You will have to go through some migration projects, which probably is one of the major showstoppers for any bank. When they consider Synapse, they not only consider the investment in the actual service; they also consider the cost of the migration process. When you scale out or scale down your system, it becomes unavailable for a few minutes. Because it is a data warehouse environment, it is not such a huge deal, but it would be great if they can improve it so that the platform is available during the change of configuration."
"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics could improve in usability. I have found the same issue with all Microsoft solutions."
"The linked services can be improved. We can create dynamic linked services to access a lot of databases but only those of the same type. For example, I can use the same linked services to access 11 SQL databases. However, if I have 11 SQL databases and five Oracle databases, I need two dynamic linked services. I cannot do it with only one linked service. The UI also needs to be improved. When I have used Azure Synapse for programming with PySpark, Scala, or .NET, for example, the UI has been unstable. If I open two notebooks for programming, one notebook will queue the session of the other."
More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Pricing and Cost Advice →
Amazon Redshift is ranked 4th in Cloud Data Warehouse with 61 reviews while Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is ranked 2nd in Cloud Data Warehouse with 86 reviews. Amazon Redshift is rated 7.8, while Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Amazon Redshift writes "Provides one place where we can store data, and allows us to easily connect to other services with AWS". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics writes "No competitors provide the entire solution to one place ". Amazon Redshift is most compared with Teradata, Vertica, Snowflake, AWS Lake Formation and Oracle Exadata, whereas Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is most compared with Azure Data Factory, SAP BW4HANA, Snowflake, Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse and Apache Hadoop. See our Amazon Redshift vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics report.
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