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Azure Data Factory vs Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse comparison

 

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
7.3
Azure Data Factory enhances efficiency, centralizes data, reduces costs, and improves data analysis, offering significant financial and operational benefits.
Sentiment score
6.9
Most are satisfied with ROI, acknowledging its benefits, though improvements are possible, as it efficiently enhances backend operations.
Our stakeholders and clients have expressed satisfaction with Azure Data Factory's efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
Azure Data Factory support is responsive but varies in speed, with community resources and documentation aiding user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.8
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse support is responsive and expert, though users sometimes need online resources for faster solutions.
The technical support is responsive and helpful
The technical support from Microsoft is rated an eight out of ten.
The technical support for Azure Data Factory is generally acceptable.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Azure Data Factory excels in scalability, efficiently managing workloads for any size, despite higher costs than alternatives.
Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse excels in scalability, integration, and expandability, though improvements are needed for large data sets.
Azure Data Factory is highly scalable.
I give the scalability an eight out of ten, indicating it scales well for our needs.
As a consultant, we hire additional programmers when we need to scale up certain major projects.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Azure Data Factory is stable and reliable, but faces integration challenges and requires enhancements to compete with top competitors.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is praised for its stability, reliability, and quick issue resolution, despite time-consuming extensive dataset processing.
The solution has a high level of stability, roughly a nine out of ten.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is stable for us because it is built on SQL Server.
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Data Factory needs improved integration, better scheduling, enhanced UI, simplified pricing, more connectors, and responsive support.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse presents complexity, compatibility challenges, performance issues, high costs, and requires improved in-memory analysis and updates.
The inability to connect local VMs and local servers into the data flow is a limitation that prevents giving Azure Data Factory a perfect score.
There is a problem with the integration with third-party solutions, particularly with SAP.
Sometimes, the compute fails to process data if there is a heavy load suddenly, and it doesn't scale up automatically.
It would be better to release patches less frequently, maybe once a month or once every two months.
When there are many users or many expensive queries, it can be very slow.
The ETL designing process could be optimized for better efficiency.
 

Setup Cost

Azure Data Factory pricing is usage-based and cost-effective, but large data volumes can lead to increased expenses.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse's pricing varies by needs; Azure integration can be cost-effective, but technical support costs extra.
The pricing is cost-effective.
It is considered cost-effective.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is very expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Azure Data Factory provides seamless data integration, robust transformations, scalability, and strong SAP support, praised for its ease of use.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse offers performance, integration, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness for large data management and business intelligence.
It connects to different sources out-of-the-box, making integration much easier.
The platform excels in handling major datasets, particularly when working with Power BI for reporting purposes.
The interface of Azure Data Factory is very usable with a more interactive visual experience, making it easier for people who are not as experienced in coding to work with.
The columnstore index enhances data query performance by using less space and achieving faster performance than general indexing.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is used in the logistics area for optimizing SQL queries related to the loading and unloading of trucks.
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.
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Data Factory
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (1st), Cloud Data Warehouse (2nd)
Microsoft Parallel Data War...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (10th)
 

Featured Reviews

Joy Maitra - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates seamless data pipeline creation with good analytics and and thorough monitoring
Azure Data Factory is a low code, no code platform, which is helpful. It provides many prebuilt functionalities that assist in building data pipelines. Also, it facilitates easy transformation with all required functionalities for analytics. Furthermore, it connects to different sources out-of-the-box, making integration much easier. The monitoring is very thorough, though a more readable version would be appreciable.
StevenLai - PeerSpot reviewer
Strong scalable solution with streamlined metadata warehousing
We use it to build our data warehouse and databases, and everything in the back end It helps streamline our metadata warehousing process. As it is our only type of data warehouse and database, it serves as our source, destination, and staging area. This product has many features which are useful…
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Insurance Company
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How do you select the right cloud ETL tool?
AWS Glue and Azure Data factory for ELT best performance cloud services.
How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica PowerCenter?
Azure Data Factory is flexible, modular, and works well. In terms of cost, it is not too pricey. It offers the stability and reliability I am looking for, good scalability, and is easy to set up an...
How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica Cloud Data Integration?
Azure Data Factory is a solid product offering many transformation functions; It has pre-load and post-load transformations, allowing users to apply transformations either in code by using Power Q...
What do you like most about Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse provides good firewall processing in terms of response time.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is excellent but very expensive. Working on the pricing could make it a better solution.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft PDW, SQL Server Data Warehouse, Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, MS Parallel Data Warehouse
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Adobe 2. BMW 3. Coca-Cola 4. General Electric 5. Johnson & Johnson 6. LinkedIn 7. Mastercard 8. Nestle 9. Pfizer 10. Samsung 11. Siemens 12. Toyota 13. Unilever 14. Verizon 15. Walmart 16. Accenture 17. American Express 18. AT&T 19. Bank of America 20. Cisco 21. Deloitte 22. ExxonMobil 23. Ford 24. General Motors 25. IBM 26. JPMorgan Chase 27. Microsoft (Azure Data Factory is developed by Microsoft) 28. Oracle 29. Procter & Gamble 30. Salesforce 31. Shell 32. Visa
Auckland Transport, Erste Bank Group, Urban Software Institute, NJVC, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Tata Steel Europe
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Data Factory vs. Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.