Azure Stream Analytics Reviews

We use this solution to access vulnerabilities and realtime issues that we have in Windows and Linux and for diagnostic analyzation we wanted to do for our middleware product. We have multiple data ingestion types. 

Our team also analyze the data using data visualization tools like Power BI and Tableau. Our main task is to get diagnostic metrics from the products that we are using. Based on the metrics, we send an alert if any product has run out of space. For audit purposes, we create dashboards for management and compliance.

The integrations for this solution are easy to use and there is flexibility in integrating the tool with Azure Stream Analytics.

We would like to have centralized platform altogether since we have different kind of options for data ingestion. Sometimes it gets difficult to manage different platforms. 

I have been using this solution for two years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. 

They have detailed help documentation which is very useful. When we have contacted support, they have responded in a timely manner. 

I would rate them a four and a half out of five. 

I have also worked with Apache Airflow. We choose to use Azure Stream Analytics because we wanted to access the realtime compliancy of our product. 

If your application crashes, you can incur a data loss. We wanted to check proactively so that our system is maintained and fixed soon after that crash happens. We wanted to assess the utilization of the system and create dashboards in order to visualize those compliancy checks.

The initial setup is straightforward. It takes one or two minutes. 

There are different tiers based on retention policies. There are four tiers. The pricing varies based on steaming units and tiers. The standard pricing is $10/hour. 

In order to use this solution, one should have a proper understanding of Azure fundamentals and what kind of different data storage solutions they provide. In order to have the solution working correctly, you need data ingestion, data delivery and a data destination. 

It has features and functionality to integrate with all the tools that are available in the market, not only Azure solutions.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We have a lot of Internet-of-Things stream data from various machines and IoT edge devices. We stream the data and use it for future data analytics, like machine learning or predictive analytics, so we need some dashboarding done on a Power BI report. And to do that, we have to process this vast telemetry stream data, and that's why we use Azure Stream Analytics.

I like the way the UI looks, and the real-time analytics service is aligned to this. That can be helpful if I have to use this on a production service. So this particular Azure Stream Analytics absolutely fits into that. Also, using it requires very few clicks. The UI is set up so that I don't need to spend much time on this. The way that Stream Analytics manages workloads is also good.

Sometimes when we connect Power BI, there is a delay or it throws up some errors, so we're not sure. We try to resolve it on an issue-by-issue basis. For some reason, Microsoft Power BI and Azure Stream Analytics have connection issues, but I can't say what the problem is at a product level. 

I've been using Azure Stream Analytics for about a year and a half.

At this point, it's too early to say whether Stream Analytics is stable. I'm not sure how stable it will be going forward. So far, I haven't had any issues.

We have internal Azure tech support that takes care of this, so we haven't had a need to go outside and contact Microsoft.

The documentation is clear, so we could follow it and set Stream Analytics up. In some of the new areas of the software, you require some hands-on help and some support, but for any internal deployment, we have an Azure support team. They help us with that, so it's not a challenge. 

From a pricing perspective, I don't have a clear understanding of how the streaming units are built. It takes me a long time when a price report comes in at the end of the day. I spend a lot of time on this. The way the reports break down the charges is very confusing. So that is something that has to be improved. There is a clear, concise reporting structure for other Azure services — the full subscription, Azure Public Cloud service, etc.—but the streaming unit billing part of Stream Analytics confuses me all the time.

Nevertheless, the features are decent, so I continue to use it. Still, it takes me a lot of time when I have to approve specific invoices at the end of the month. But overall, the price is fair because it charges per streaming unit. The price is reasonable. It is what you would expect, given the kinds of features it has. 

I rate Azure Stream Analytics eight out of 10. It's hard to fully evaluate a product after just one and a half years, so from that perspective, I say 8. Everything has some room for improvement. If my manager asks me to rate myself, I probably wouldn't say a perfect 10. If you tell me that Stream Analytics is done and there won't be any updates in the future then I can let you know if it's a 10. This is a great product that works better than most of its competitors. If someone is using Event Hub, they should go with Azure Stream Analytics instead. Stream Analytics is more cost-effective than AWS Kinesis. Both are excellent products, but I am more comfortable with this in terms of the features and the improved ROI. And if you're working IoT, this is the solution to use. 

I use the solution in my company for real-time analytics on IoT data.

Azure Stream Analytics was not meeting our company's expectations because it was tedious to change the job, write queries, or if I needed to change something, I needed to stop the entire stream processing to change the job so that the changes could take effect. The aforementioned reasons were concerning, but I think that many of the issues related to the product have been resolved with the help of Microsoft Fabric.

The only challenge was that the streaming analytics area in Azure Stream Analytics could not meet our company's expectations, making it a component where improvements are required.

I have been using Azure Stream Analytics for two and a half years. My company has a partnership with Microsoft.

It is a stable solution.

Azure Stream Analytics is a scalable solution.

My company deals with small, medium, and enterprise-sized customers for the product.

The solution's technical support is good. As soon as Microsoft's product team gets involved with the product, the support that our company receives from Microsoft is good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

I also use Microsoft Fabric.

Azure Stream Analytics is easy to deploy. Other than the streaming analytics part, the rest of the areas in the product were fine. Templates were available in the product for the deployment process. The product's deployment process and connectivity were smooth. Scaling options in the product are good.

The solution can be deployed in a couple of minutes.

The product's price is at par with the other solutions provided by the other cloud service providers in the market.

Against Azure Stream Analytics, I had considered products like Amazon Kinesis and Google Cloud Dataflow.

Azure Stream Analytics for anomaly detection was something that was not meeting our company's expectations, but the new tool within Microsoft Fabric for real-time analytics is really good for even Azure Stream Analytics as it allows me to get alerts and use data activators, so I can take instantaneous actions. Regarding anomaly detection, it is much easier and faster with the availability of an SQL database, which is a real-time database. Within Microsoft Fabric, there is a component called real-time analytics, which consists of multiple tools like Eventstream, KQL database, and data activator.

Speaking about Microsoft Fabirc's features that were valuable for processing large volumes of data in real-time, I would say that our company is able to process a terabyte of data daily in real-time. The scaling part of the is outstanding, and the connectivity between the components is smooth. For the overall experience provided by Microsoft Fabric, I rate the tool a ten on ten if I specifically consider real-time analytics. Within Azure Stream Analytics, real-time analytics was not good, but in Microsoft Fabric, it is.

The product's integration capabilities have always been good since I could integrate multiple sources and ingest data.

Though my company has a maintenance team, the product does not need to be maintained as such. It is when we receive alerts in our company that we check the product. Dedicated maintenance or support is not required for the product.

Learning to use the product is a straightforward and easy process. I find AWS to be a bit confusing compared to Azure Stream Analytics.

Compared to Azure Stream Analytics, Amazon Kinesis, and Google Cloud Dataflow, I find Microsoft Fabric to be the best.

I rate Microsoft Fabric a ten out of ten.

I rate Azure Stream Analytics as seven to seven and a half out of ten.

We mainly use this product for real-time data injection and reporting purposes.

We find the query editor feature of this solution extremely valuable for our business.

Also, the multiple window types that are available in this solution, are extremely helpful.

The solution doesn't handle large data packets very efficiently, which could be improved upon.

We would also like more variation in the output types that this solution can produce.

We have been using this solution for three or four years.

The stability of this solution was problematic initially, but it has improved as later versions have been released, and is now very good.

We have found this product to be easily scalable.

The initial setup of this solution is very easy, and the deployment takes place instantly.

The licensing for this product is payable on a 'pay as you go' basis.  This means that the cost is only based on data volume, and the frequency that the solution is used.

This solution is easy to use and has good fault tolerance, so I would recommend it to other organizations.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We have different kinds of IoT devices placed in different countries including the UK, US, and others. They are configured with our IoT hub and we get the logs from them accordingly.  We have these logs connected with the Stream Analytics suites and Microsoft Power BI. Whatever updates and other activity is happening on the devices are streamed into Azure and Power BI so that we can see them.

If we find any error messages then we have to check the health of the corresponding IoT devices, databases, and configuration.

This gives us a real-time monitoring system that we can use to analyze the health of our IoT devices. Previously, when something was not working properly then we would receive messages in our email using the TeamWork application. Now, instead of checking email, we receive an alert ping that we can hear, which allows us to evaluate how well the machine is doing. We can check the performance and other relevant metrics.

In general, it gives us more visibility in terms of what is going on. We used to receive between 10,000 and 20,000 emails per week, which was hectic for us to calculate and keep track of. Since implementing Azure, we have been able to monitor things very easily. Not only does it create an interval for the logs but it reduces the number of duplicates.

We have not eliminated the messages that come in as email, as high-priority messages are still delivered in that manner. For example, if there is a power shut-down then we will be notified via email. This is set up in case we miss these types of messages in the BI platform.

The most valuable features are the IoT hub and the Blob storage. All of the logs and other data that we are getting can be stored in Blobs.

The interface is user-friendly.

There may be some issues when connecting with Microsoft Power BI because we are providing the input and output commands, and there's a chance of it being delayed while connecting.

I have been using Azure System Analytics for just more than one year.

This product is stable but if our VM goes down then we are not able to get a proper instance update. When this happens, we need to kill these instances. Situations like this only happen rarely.

The scalability is based on the requirements. If the requirements are high then highly-scalable machines are needed. If it is more manageable then it is cheaper. I think that scaling is really about the cost.

We have a development team and an operations team that is working with Azure Steam Analytics. There are seven or eight people in the operations team. The customer also has access to the platform if they require it.

If you raise a ticket with technical support then they will contact you within 24 hours. However, we have not faced many issues, so we haven't had much involvement with them.

There is a diagnostic tool available in Azure and you can check to see if you have any issues on your end. If there are problems then you can contact support for assistance.

Overall, I think that the support is very helpful.

Since transitioning from our email-only solution, we have been able to set the interval that we use to retrieve logs from the devices.

We did not use a similar product before this one for the same purpose. The company has been using Azure since before I joined, although they had used AWS for other tasks. At this company, I have not had the opportunity to work on AWS.

I have not completed a deployment for production purposes. Rather, I have performed a setup for training with Azure and an IoT simulator. In this case, we just check the logs during my practice session. My role in the operation was to lead the management team.

The training deployment that I completed was user-friendly and anyone can easily do it. Even as part of the operations team, I was able to capture the details and complete the deployment really quickly.

The only difficulty that I faced was connecting with the different machines in the outside layer, such as BI or Kibana. Depending on the application I was connecting with, there were issues with it.

The deployment was done by our development team, and they are responsible for the maintenance as well. Because it is a platform as a service, Azure takes care of almost everything.

I am not familiar with the details of the investment. This is something that is handled completely by the product owner. This would be my manager or the Delivery Manager.

The cost of this solution is less than competitors such as Amazon or Google Cloud. If we only use one hour then we are only charged for one hour. It is very easy and some products are more expensive.

Azure Stream Analytics is something that we were able to easily learn. It doesn't take much programming sill, so I feel that it is easy to start using.

Other than the problem with delays in connecting to Microsoft BI, Kibana, or other monitoring tools, I don't have any other issues with this product.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We are using Azure Stream Analytics for small to medium size streaming datasets where you would like to flag patterns from the stream. It works well or pairs well with IoT edge scenario use cases that are on Azure. If you have exceptional conditions, such as a sensor being way off the average for the last one to five hours, then you can flag a scenario. It works well with the IoT infrastructure that Azure provides.

We didn't end up using Azure Stream Analytics in production, or for a client, we implemented it. However, Azure Stream Analytics is something that you can use to test out streaming scenarios very quickly in the general sense and it is useful for IoT scenarios. If I was to do a project with IoT and I needed a streaming solution, Azure Stream Analytics would be a top choice.

The most valuable features of Azure Stream Analytics are the ease of provisioning and the interface is not terribly complex.

Azure Stream Analytics could improve by having clearer metrics as to the scale, more metrics around the data set size that is flowing through it, and performance tuning recommendations.

I have been using Azure Stream Analytics for approximately three months.

Azure Stream Analytics is stable.

Azure Stream Analytics can improve the scaling and the connectivity to external datasets.

We are not using this solution extensively and we do not plan to increase usage.

The level of support quality depends on how much you purchased.

I rate the support from Azure Stream Analytics a four out of five.

Positive

The initial setup of Azure Stream Analytics was straightforward. It has a quick startup time and is easy to start.

I did the implementation of Azure Stream Analytics for my client. We have the developer setting the solution up and once it's in production, your infrastructure team can monitor it just like any other solution. Since it's Azure, it has a lot of metrics that allow you to be proactive to flag an issue if there is one.

I have seen a return on investment with Azure Stream Analytics. If you're not doing terribly complex scenarios, this is a quick and fast way to have your streaming pipeline set up. You won't have to invest a lot into its deployment because it's the cloud. You are not paying any upfront capital.

I rate the price of Azure Stream Analytics a four out of five.

I have evaluated other solutions, such as Databricks

Azure Stream Analytics it's good for proofs of concept and for scenarios that are not too complex. It's promising in the future, but if you start to scale out, you might want to consider other scaling solutions, such as Databricks.

Got it. And do you see a return on investment with this one?

I rate Azure Stream Analytics a nine out of ten.

This solution is connected with our Microsoft license. We use the E3 license, which also includes the software and analytics. We bought it and we are trying to get the best we can from the software. For now, we have some analytics, what's happening, and one of our guys looks at it and prepares reports or maybe requests some additional interventions.

It is mostly for analysis so that when something happens we can analyze it and do something about it.

Our biggest pain point is our housekeeping. We have lot of systems, we must do a lot of configurations and, because of the number of systems is not a simple part of the job, we may forget something. This solution is something which reminds us of what should we do, what stuff is most critical, what we should work on.

We would like to have something that includes the desktops, and perhaps the main system, so we can protect our systems before a threat happens.

My experience with it is that it is stable. The stability is okay and we are satisfied with it.

Our system has approximately 700 servers and a lot of other components and we are satisfied with it at this level.

We went with it because we had it. We had the opportunity to use it and started to do so. Before that, we had several areas where we wanted to improve our status. This is a tool we can check with from Microsoft and, for now, it is good for us.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor is that the product is user-friendly. A lot of tools that are rated highly in industry reviews have complicated configurations. We would like something which is friendly enough for its administrator to use, to configure. Another criterion is price. We look for solutions we can afford. We read a lot of free white papers and try to find partners that have favorable write-ups. We use the software and do a phone conference where we can discuss further questions which are important to us.

Our firm works in the former Yugoslavia: Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. The prices are different in these markets. Of course, we always want to have the lowest price but that doesn't mean price is the main factor when buying something. It is one of them, for sure. Maybe we cannot afford the most sophisticated tool there is, so price is important, but not the most important thing when we buy something.

We use Microsoft Analytics in the security department to try to raise the level of security analysis and security in general. We have implemented a lot of tools. We also have Nexpose for threat analytics, among others. Microsoft Analytics is just one of them and we implemented it because we already had it.

We tried to buy something for the desktop level. We also have systems like anti-virus, anti-malware, but these are all systems which only partly cover the threats which are now mainstream. So we would like to have a tool we can use that is faster, maybe with predictive analytics.

We have a mixed system. We also use IBM AIX in addition to the Microsoft platform. That means that ATP works successfully with Microsoft for us. If you want to implement it, the benefits are greater if you have a Microsoft in the surrounding systems.

Implementation is always easy. The hard part is then when you must have to use it, when you must work with it. An important part is education, this shouldn't be neglected.

I would rate Azure Analytics at eight out of 10. It gives us what we need, we are satisfied with the results.

Our primary use case involves using the app centre to retrieve lifeline data. However, the lifeline is not retrievable from the app centre due to recent changes, so we get it from Azure.

The life cycle, report management and crash management features are great. 

The product could be improved by providing more detailed analytics. For example, a graph to identify the past, present and current users. Additionally, UI and UX testing could be supported on this solution.

We have been using this solution for approximately 3 years on-premises.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. We can add users when needed. Over 50 employees, including developers and QA managers use this product in our company.

We do not have any experience with customer service and support.

I cannot comment on the initial setup process because my manager set it up.

I am unsure of what the licensing costs are for this solution.

I rate this solution a six out of ten because we do not use it very often. I believe this solution has a good user interface but the solution could be improved by providing better graphics and including support for UI and UX testing.