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Amazon EMR 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.8
Amazon EMR offers cost savings and ROI benefits, with some users experiencing up to 20% cost reduction and high returns.
Sentiment score
4.9
Users find Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse effective in managing data, integrating tools, with ROI potential despite indirect tracking.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.9
Amazon EMR customer service varies, with generally responsive support despite reported delays and occasional gaps in integration assistance.
Sentiment score
6.8
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse support is generally positive with responsive service, though some suggest enhancements in speed and Azure expertise.
I would rate the technical support from Amazon as ten out of ten.
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
We get all call support, screen sharing support, and immediate support, so there are no problems.
Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
They help with billing, cost determination, IAM properties, security compliance, and deployment and migration activities.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
They are responsive and get back to us.
Service Desk Administrator at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would rate my experience with technical support around six on a scale of 1 to 10 because I have not had a particular experience with technical support.
CEO at Smart Data-Driven Solutions
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Amazon EMR efficiently scales for businesses, offering customizable cluster options to manage diverse data sizes and enterprise demands.
Sentiment score
7.3
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is scalable with SQL benefits, but may lag behind Snowflake in large data handling.
Scalability can be provisioned using the auto-scaling feature, EC2 instances, on-demand instances, and storage locations like block storage, S3, or file storage.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
We go from a couple of users to tons of users all the time, and it scales and handles things really well.
Service Desk Administrator at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
I give the scalability an eight out of ten, indicating it scales well for our needs.
Architecture at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
As a consultant, we hire additional programmers when we need to scale up certain major projects.
Associate Director at Sequentis
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon EMR is praised for stability and reliability, with high ratings due to its configurability and robust features.
Sentiment score
8.1
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is stable, reliable, handles large volumes well, with occasional speed issues on vast datasets.
Regular updates, patch installations, monitoring, logging, alerting, and disaster recovery activities are crucial for maintaining stability.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is stable for us because it is built on SQL Server.
Architecture at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EMR users face challenges with customization, stability, onboarding, cost optimization, task speed, and demand enhanced integration and security.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse needs better tool integration, scalability, compatibility, frequent updates, competitive pricing, and enhanced error messaging.
The cost factor differs significantly. When you run Spark application on EKS, you run at the pod level, so you can control the compute cost. But in Amazon EMR, when you have to run one application, you have to launch the entire EC2.
Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I have thoughts on what would be great to see in the product, such as AI/ML features or additional options.
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
There is room for improvement with respect to retries, handling the volume of data on S3 buckets, cluster provisioning, scaling, termination, security, and integration between services like S3, Glue, Lake Formation, and DynamoDB.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
Addressing the cost would be the number one area for improvement.
CEO at Smart Data-Driven Solutions
It would be better to release patches less frequently, maybe once a month or once every two months.
Associate Director at Sequentis
When there are many users or many expensive queries, it can be very slow.
Computer engineer at a engineering company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EMR pricing is variable, potentially costly, but users can manage expenses with strategic resource and instance management.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse offers competitive pricing, suitable for large enterprises, but can be costly for high-performance needs.
Cost optimization can be achieved through instance usage, cluster sharing, and auto-scaling.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
I would rate the price for Amazon EMR, where one is high and ten is low, as a good one.
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is very expensive.
Architecture at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EMR offers scalable, cost-effective big data management with integration, flexibility, security, and seamless Hadoop and Spark processing.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse boosts data loads, integrates with Power BI, and offers scalable BI with minimal costs.
Amazon EMR helps in scalability, real-time and batch processing of data, handling efficient data sources, and managing data lakes, data stores, and data marts on file systems and in S3 buckets.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
The features at Amazon EMR that I have found most valuable are fully customizable functions.
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Amazon EMR provides out-of-the-box functionality because we can deploy and get Spark functionality over Hadoop.
Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The columnstore index enhances data query performance by using less space and achieving faster performance than general indexing.
BI/Data Warehouse Analyst at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees
There's a feature that allows users to set alerts on triggers within reports, enabling timely actions on pending applications and effectively reducing waiting time.
Associate Director at Sequentis
Its scalability is impressive as it scales up and down really well.
Service Desk Administrator at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EMR
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (3rd), Cloud Data Warehouse (13th)
Microsoft Parallel Data War...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (9th)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2043696 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Data pipelines have simplified complex transformations and provide faster insights for users
The features at Amazon EMR that I have found most valuable are fully customizable functions. I am using Amazon EMR for data transformation, where we load the data. The entire ETL process is encompassed within it. The first thing is the egress part, where we pull the data from various sources, which include our main core databases, the systems that include Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, and Postgres. We bring data from all these sources and use Amazon EMR specifically to combine all this data, clean the data, and combine it at a particular level. We bring everything to a particular level to make it more production-ready, and we simplify the data because every system has its own problems. We are using it to clean the data and transform the data in such a way that the end-user can get the insights faster.
reviewer2254953 - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Desk Administrator at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Virtual machines have handled large data and supported growth but pricing still needs improvement
I believe the product is pretty fast. When I have used it, it is handy. The integration with other Azure products is good and integrates well. Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse's security measures help ensure our sensitive data protection during analysis through measures such as encryption. Its scalability is impressive as it scales up and down really well. We go from a couple of users to tons of users all the time, and it scales and handles things really well. One of the major benefits with this product is that it's Microsoft, which is one of the best ones, and it's just plug and play.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Construction Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise22
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?
I would rate the price for Amazon EMR, where one is high and ten is low, as a good one.
What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?
I feel some lack of functionality in Amazon EMR. I have thoughts on what would be great to see in the product, such as AI/ML features or additional options.
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon EMR?
I find it easy to integrate Amazon EMR with other AWS services like S3 or EC2 for data processing needs. I would rate this review as eight out of ten.
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

Amazon Elastic MapReduce
Microsoft PDW, SQL Server Data Warehouse, Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, MS Parallel Data Warehouse
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yelp
Auckland Transport, Erste Bank Group, Urban Software Institute, NJVC, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Tata Steel Europe
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EMR vs. Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.