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Databricks vs Microsoft Analytics Platform System comparison

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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

Databricks
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (3rd), Data Science Platforms (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (3rd), Streaming Analytics (1st)
Microsoft Analytics Platfor...
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (18th)
 

Featured Reviews

SimonRobinson - PeerSpot reviewer
Governance And Engagement Lead
Improved data governance has enabled sensitive data tracking but cost management still needs work
I believe we could improve Databricks integration with cloud service providers. The impact of our current integration has not been particularly good, and it's becoming very expensive for us. The inefficiencies in our implementation, such as not shutting down warehouses when they're not in use or reserving the right number of credits, have led to increased costs. We made several beginner mistakes, such as not taking advantage of incremental loading and running overly complicated queries all the time. We should be using ETL tools to help us instead of doing it directly in Databricks. We need more experienced professionals to manage Databricks effectively, as it's not as forgiving as other platforms such as Snowflake. I think introducing customer repositories would facilitate easier implementation with Databricks.
MahmoudMohamed1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Engineer at Tatweer Educational Technologies Company - TETCO
Offers smooth data integration between systems, but requires better real-time analytics capabilities
We leverage its capabilities for many applications. We can integrate with our databases, like Oracle, MySQL, or any other, using Microsoft Integration Services. This lets us continue using private databases without paying additional licensing fees. Additionally, the license includes Analytics services and Power BI, which work on-premises, unlike most other technologies that require cloud solutions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution offers a free community version."
"There are good features for turning off clusters."
"We recommend Databricks, especially with the Azure cloud frameworks."
"Databricks is a unified solution that we can use for streaming. It is supporting open source languages, which are cloud-agnostic. When I do database coding if any other tool has a similar language pack to Excel or SQL, I can use the same knowledge, limiting the need to learn new things. It supports a lot of Python libraries where I can use some very easily."
"The Delta Lake data type has been the most useful part of this solution. Delta Lake is an opensource data type and it was implemented and invented by Databricks."
"I think the features I like the most are the scalability of the solution as well as its ability to share."
"Scalability is one of the main features of Databricks."
"Databricks serves as a single platform for conducting the entire end-to-end lifecycle of machine learning models or AI ops."
"We leverage its capabilities for many applications. We can integrate with our databases, like Oracle, MySQL, or any other, using Microsoft Integration Services."
"The most valuable part of the product is that it is a system, with different tools for different services for different kinds of scenarios, making it a very rich, integrated, technology-rich platform whose total integration with the rest of Microsoft products creates flexibility and compatibility and makes the tool a very useful one."
"The result is a highly flexible, affordable, and scalable platform that makes large-scale Hub and Spoke EDW architectures a practical reality."
"We help customers in many ways from customized analysis for detection of anomalies in tax, operations, customer relationship, and marketing campaigns, and we also use mining and ML to help them discover trends, which provides useful information based on their business."
"By combining both Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) and unstructured Hadoop analytical capabilities in a single, easy-to-manage EDW appliance, Microsoft APS is well positioned to help organizations use information to enhance their competitive position."
"The Cube Solution is quite different when compared to the rest of the competition and has unique functionality for advanced analytics."
"Helps our customers to discover trends, which provides useful information based on their business."
"Microsoft Analytics Platform System's most valuable feature is its ecosystems and seamless integration with other Microsoft reporting platforms and databases."
 

Cons

"The solution is expensive. It's not like a lot of competitors, which are open-source."
"It would be nice to have more guidance on integrations with ETLs and other data quality tools."
"Databricks is an analytics platform. It should offer more data science. It should have more features for data scientists to work with."
"Databricks is a very expensive solution. Pricing is an area that could definitely be improved."
"The integration and query capabilities can be improved."
"Would be helpful to have additional licensing options."
"I think setting up the whole account for one person and giving access are areas that can be difficult to manage and should be made a little easier."
"I have seen better user interfaces, so that is something that can be improved."
"We need better real-time analytics capabilities. It's a bit challenging for us."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product overall as a five. This is probably because there is still a lot of room for improvement, features that other products have that are missing, and a lot of open-source technology nowadays that are very good and people can use instead."
"I think the biggest problem with the product is that it does a data ingest model, which is very expensive."
"Releases of new products and functionality is never accompanied by associated documentation, training and resources that adequately explain the release."
"Machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities need to be more friendly for beginning users."
"The flexibility of this solution needs to be improved because you cannot make changes at every one of the different steps."
"Functionality needs to be more up-to-date with competing products."
"In general, I am not really very satisfied with the tutorials that are out there."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing costs of Databricks depend on how many licenses we need, depending on which Databricks provides a lot of discounts."
"Databricks' cost could be improved."
"The solution is affordable."
"Whenever we want to find the actual costing, we have to send an email to Databricks, so having the information available on the internet would be helpful."
"I am based in South Africa, where it is expensive adapting to the cloud, and then there is the price for the tool itself."
"We only pay for the Azure compute behind the solution."
"I'm not involved in the financing, but I can say that the solution seemed reasonably priced compared to the competitors. Similar products are usually in the same price range. With five being affordable and one being expensive, I would rate Databricks a four out of five."
"There are different versions."
"The initial price is lower than Oracle, but extensive use of SQL may lead to a higher total cost of ownership."
"Users have to pay extra for premium-level technical support."
"We are currently paying $200,000 a year for all the different parts of the suite during an ingest model Microsoft now charges us $700,000 a year."
"I rate Microsoft Analytics Platform System a seven out of ten for pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise60
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
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Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
Microsoft APS, MS Analytics Platform System
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Transport for London, E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co. KG, Prometeia, Tangerine, SSM Health Care, Service Corporation International
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Google, Databricks and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.