Amazon EMR vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon EMR and Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Data Warehouse solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Amazon EMR vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"We are using applications, such as Splunk, Livy, Hadoop, and Spark. We are using all of these applications in Amazon EMR and they're helping us a lot.""The initial setup is pretty straightforward.""The ability to resize the cluster is what really makes it stand out over other Hadoop and big data solutions.""It has a variety of options and support systems.""The initial setup is straightforward.""The solution is pretty simple to set up.""This is the best tool for hosts and it's really flexible and scalable.""Amazon EMR's most valuable features are processing speed and data storage capacity."

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"Synapse makes it easy to integrate and onboard data from other Microsoft and Azure sources. The interface is familiar because we were using Azure Data Factory before Synapse. It made the transition even easier because the Synapse interface is exactly the same.""-""One of the most valuable features of this solution is its ability to integrate well with other services offered by Azure.""We've had a good experience with technical support in general.""Synapse Analytics' best features are notebooks, pipelines, and monitoring.""This is a stable solution with many functionalities.""The solution's best feature is its predictive analytics.""Data can be stored any way you want in the data warehouse."

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Cons
"As people are shifting from legacy solutions to other technologies, Amazon EMR needs to add more features that give more flexibility in managing user data.""There were times where they would release new versions and it seemed to end up breaking old versions, which is very strange.""Amazon EMR can improve by adding some features, such as megastore services and HiveServer2. Additionally, the user interface could be better, similar to what Apache service provides, cross-platform services.""Modules and strategies should be better handled and notified early in advance.""The initial setup was time-consuming.""The problem for us is it starts very slow.""There is no need to pay extra for third-party software.""The most complicated thing is configuring to the cluster and ensure it's running correctly."

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"The initial setup process needs improvement. When you're moving to the cloud it takes a bit of time. It would be great if they could implement something that would make it faster.""Synapse Analytics' performance slows down if you don't get your distribution right because it gets queued and goes into a single node.""I would like to see them provide the ingestion of images.""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.""Non-structured data is unavailable with this product.""I would like to see better integration with Active Directory, because we have had problems, and we still do.""The filing can be improved.""The platform is not flexible, and the graphical user interface needs to be improved because the interface makes it hard for the end user to use it."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "You don't need to pay for licensing on a yearly or monthly basis, you only pay for what you use, in terms of underlying instances."
  • "The cost of Amazon EMR is very high."
  • "The price of the solution is expensive."
  • "Amazon EMR's price is reasonable."
  • "There is a small fee for the EMR system, but major cost components are the underlying infrastructure resources which we actually use."
  • "There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."
  • "Amazon EMR is not very expensive."
  • "The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."
  • More Amazon EMR Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The price of this solution could be improved."
  • "The pricing is okay. You can pay as you go."
  • "This solution starts at €1000.00 a month for just the basics and can go up to €300,000.00 per month for the fastest version."
  • "When we are not using this solution we can simply shut it down saving us costs, which is a nice advantage."
  • "The licensing fees for this solution are on a pay-per-use basis, and not very expensive."
  • "All of the prices are available online."
  • "Our license is very expensive"
  • "They are cost aggressive, and it integrates well with other Microsoft tools."
  • More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Amazon EMR is a good solution that can be used to manage big data.
    Top Answer:As people are shifting from legacy solutions to other technologies, Amazon EMR needs to add more features that give more flexibility in managing user data.
    Top Answer:Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different… more »
    Top Answer:It is a highly stable solution and it's easy to use.
    Ranking
    9th
    Views
    2,442
    Comparisons
    2,083
    Reviews
    12
    Average Words per Review
    346
    Rating
    7.8
    2nd
    Views
    19,142
    Comparisons
    9,225
    Reviews
    37
    Average Words per Review
    462
    Rating
    8.1
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Amazon Elastic MapReduce
    Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics
    Learn More
    Overview
    Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR) is a web service that makes it easy to quickly and cost-effectively process vast amounts of data. Amazon EMR simplifies big data processing, providing a managed Hadoop framework that makes it easy, fast, and cost-effective for you to distribute and process vast amounts of your data across dynamically scalable Amazon EC2 instances.

    Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is an end-to-end analytics solution that successfully combines analytical services to merge big data analytics and enterprise data warehouses into a single unified platform. The solution can run intelligent distributed queries among nodes, and provides the ability to query both relational and non-relational data.

    Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is built with these 4 components:

    1. Synapse SQL
    2. Spark
    3. Synapse Pipeline
    4. Studio

    Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Features

    Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics has many valuable key features, including:

    • Cloud Data Service: WIth Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics you can operate services (data analytics, machine learning, data warehousing, dashboarding, etc.) in a single workspace via the cloud.

    • Structured and unstructured data: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics supports both structured and unstructured data and allows you to manage relational and non-relational data - unlike data warehouses and lakes that tend to store them respectively.

    • Effective data storage: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers next-level data storage with high availability and different tiers.

    • Responsive data engine: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics uses Massive Parallel Processing (MPP) and is designed to handle large volumes of data and analytical workloads efficiently without any problems.

    • Several scripting languages: The solution provides language compatibility and supports different programming languages, such as Python, Java, Spark SQL, and Scala.

    • Query optimization: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics works well to facilitate limitless concurrency and performance optimization. It also simplifies workload management.

    Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Benefits

    Some of the benefits of using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics include:

    • Database templates: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers industry-specific database templates that make it easy to combine and shape data.

    • Better business insights: With Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics you can expand discovery of insights from all your data and apply machine learning models to all your intelligent apps.

    • Reduce project development time: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics makes it possible to have a unified experience for developing end-to-end analytics, which reduces project development time significantly.

    • Eliminate data barriers: By using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, you can perform analytics on operational and business apps data without data movement.

    • Advanced security: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics provides both advanced security and privacy features to ensure data protection.

    • Machine Learning: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics integrates Azure Machine Learning, Azure Cognitive Services, and Power BI.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics users who are currently using the solution.

    PeerSpot user Jael S., who is an Information Architect at Systems Analysis & Design Engineering, comments on her experience using the product, saying that it is “Scalable, intuitive, facilitates compliance and keeps your data secure”. She also says "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."

    Michel T., CHTO at Timp-iT, mentions that "the features most valuable are the simplicity, how easy it is to create a dashboard from different information systems."

    A Senior Teradata Consultant at a tech services company says, "Microsoft provides both the platform and the data center, so you don't have to look for a cloud vendor. It saves you from having to deal with two vendors for the same task."


    Sample Customers
    Yelp
    Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe, 
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company27%
    Wholesaler/Distributor18%
    Media Company18%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm23%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Educational Organization6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization31%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise72%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise53%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise39%
    Large Enterprise47%
    Buyer's Guide
    Amazon EMR vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EMR vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Amazon EMR is ranked 9th in Cloud Data Warehouse with 20 reviews while Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is ranked 2nd in Cloud Data Warehouse with 85 reviews. Amazon EMR is rated 7.8, while Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Amazon EMR writes "Provides efficient data processing features and has good scalability ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics writes "No competitors provide the entire solution to one place ". Amazon EMR is most compared with Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop, Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, Azure Data Factory and HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric, whereas Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is most compared with Azure Data Factory, Snowflake, SAP BW4HANA, Amazon Redshift and Oracle Exadata. See our Amazon EMR vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics report.

    See our list of best Cloud Data Warehouse vendors.

    We monitor all Cloud Data Warehouse reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.