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.
"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."
"This service can merge and integrate well with all databases."
"Amazon Redshift is very fast. It has really good response times. It's very user-friendly."
"Setup is easy. It's a fast solution with machine learning features, good integration, and a good API."
"Changing from local servers to the cloud is very easy. It's so nice not to have to worry about physical servers."
"For the on-premises version of Amazon Redshift, we need to start from scratch. However, with the cloud version whenever you want to deploy, you can scale up, and down, and it has a data warehousing capability. Redshift has many features."
"Has a very user-friendly SQL editor and it's very easy to use the connectors."
"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."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"We've had a good experience with technical support in general."
"Synapse Analytics' best feature is its ability to process large files."
"I think the most valuable component is that pipelines are built into it and then the feature that you can mirror a cosmos BB for analytics."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics are how easy and quick it is to set up the linked services."
"The solution can scale."
"Its seamless integration with Azure services is most valuable. If somebody wants to use all Azure services, it is the best solution."
"The solution operates like a typical SQL Server environment so there is no alienation in terms of technical knowledge."
"Improvement could be made in the area of streaming data."
"There is some missing functionality and sometimes it's so difficult to work in. We need to convert these functionalities using VACUUM inside Amazon Redshift and then it causes some complexity."
"Planting is the primary key enforcement that should be improved."
"Redshift's GUI could be more user-friendly. It's easier to perform queries and all that stuff in Azure Synapse Analytics."
"Amazon Redshift could improve the user interface support."
"The technical support should be better in terms of their knowledge, and they should be more customer-friendly."
"Amazon should provide more cloud-native tools that can integrate with Redshift like Microsoft's development tools for Azure."
"The refreshment rate of data reaching Redshift from other sources should be faster."
"The need to improve a little bit in terms of user-friendliness."
"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."
"Integration with other products is an area that can be improved."
"An area for improvement in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is its user interface. You can use it for analytical purposes, but its platform should be a little bit more user-friendly. Another small point for improvement in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is its stability. It's good currently, but it could still be improved. Microsoft is combining different tools and technologies into one solution, so in the future, I'm expecting to see even more improvement in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next version of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is the drag-and-drop feature. If you're doing some integrations where you can write Scala or you have SPARK programming or SQL, or you're combining different programming, the process should be seamless, and you should be able to drag and drop in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. When doing reporting in the solution, you should also be able to drag and drop. There should be connectors available and a drag-and-drop feature available in the user interface of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, so you won't have to worry about how all processes would work together. You need to be able to drag and drop even from the backend, and having this feature will make the solution more user-friendly."
"The filing can be improved."
"In the future, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics could improve the performance, there are other solutions that are better, such as Databricks."
"Synapse Analytics is generally stable, but its performance can be slow when performing very large datasets."
"The product could be more feature-rich."
More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Pricing and Cost Advice →
Amazon Redshift is ranked 4th in Cloud Data Warehouse with 15 reviews while Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is ranked 3rd in Cloud Data Warehouse with 47 reviews. Amazon Redshift is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Amazon Redshift writes "Helps consolidate all of an organization's data into a single unified data platform". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics writes "Multifeatured, has better performance over other solutions, and lets users manage structured and unstructured information, but the platform needs to be more user-friendly". Amazon Redshift is most compared with Snowflake, AWS Lake Formation, Oracle Exadata, Vertica and Teradata, whereas Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is most compared with Snowflake, Azure Data Factory, SAP BW4HANA, Apache Hadoop and AWS Lake Formation. See our Amazon Redshift vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics report.
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