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Actian ParAccel vs Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Actian ParAccel
Ranking in Data Warehouse
26th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Parallel Data War...
Ranking in Data Warehouse
9th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Actian ParAccel is 1.8%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is 3.2%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse3.2%
Actian ParAccel1.8%
Other95.0%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

it_user263409 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Intelligence Consultant at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
​The stability needs work and the leader node should be removed, but we can deliver results faster.
The speed of the application It has delivered results to our customers faster than we were able to previously. The stability needs work. I've used it for two years. It wasn't stable. There are issues. No issues yet. Customer Service: It's good. Technical Support: It's good. SQL Server…
HassanFatemi - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at Smart Data-Driven Solutions
Has handled large volumes of data effectively but still needs cost flexibility
There could be improvements on the cost side of Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse because it is still considered to be quite expensive by a lot of users, and many companies are not interested in solutions with parallel data warehousing due to this expense. Addressing the cost would be the number one area for improvement. Additionally, I have not worked recently with it, so I don't know if this feature already exists, but if it doesn't, having an elastic feature that adjusts the service's power dynamically based on the workload would be beneficial instead of fixing the power at a specific level.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It has delivered results to our customers faster than we were able to previously."
"This solution helps the higher levels of the organization because they have better visibility of the whole company, which helps with decision making in terms of what should be improved or implemented."
"I'm very pro Microsoft because I think Microsoft products are highly intuitive and are widely used."
"I like Data Warehouse's data integrity features. Data integrity is what databases are made for as opposed to spreadsheets."
"Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse provides good firewall processing in terms of response time."
"It is not a pricey product compared to other data warehouse solutions."
"Data collection and reporting are valuable features of the solution."
"We have complete control over our data."
"It is a very stable database."
 

Cons

"The stability needs work."
"The product scalability needs improvement."
"Some compatibility issues occur during deployment, so we need to build the product from scratch for some features."
"The product does not have all of the features that the native products have."
"The solution is expensive and has room for improvement."
"Sometimes, the product requires rolling back to its previous version during a software update. This particular area could be enhanced."
"The patch releases are a concern. For a customer with tons of servers, frequent patches lead to required reboots, which interrupts business."
"I think that the error messages need to be made more specific."
"The only issue with the product is that the process is very slow when we have a huge amount of data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution is cost-effective."
"They offer an annual subscription. The pricing depends on the size of the environments."
"All the features that we use do not require any additional subscription or yearly fees."
"The tool could be expensive if we need to manage a lot of data."
"The solution's pricing is fairly decent for organizations with huge data sizes."
"I think the program is well-priced compared to the other offerings that are out in the market."
"Microsoft has an agreement with the government in our country, so our customers get their licensing costs from the Ministry. Whenever we work with any government, company, or government institute, which is mainly what we are doing, that license comes directly from the Ministry of Technology and Information."
"Technical support is an additional fee and is expensive."
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912,517 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise22
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
The pricing could be better; I think it actually just went up.
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
The basic use case for us is virtual machines. In real estate, we use it for our operations. They handle large data sets well, and the performance is good during those times.
 

Also Known As

ParAccel
Microsoft PDW, SQL Server Data Warehouse, Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, MS Parallel Data Warehouse
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon, The Royal Bank of Scotland, OfficeMax, MicroStrategy
Auckland Transport, Erste Bank Group, Urban Software Institute, NJVC, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Tata Steel Europe
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Teradata, Oracle and others in Data Warehouse. Updated: August 2026.
912,517 professionals have used our research since 2012.