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Microsoft Analytics Platform System vs Snowflake Analytics 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

Microsoft Analytics Platfor...
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (18th)
Snowflake Analytics
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Web Analytics (6th), Cloud Data Warehouse (11th)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Hemanthreddy Vakiti - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Daily restaurant dashboards have become faster and now support simultaneous team analytics
Some of the best features of Snowflake Analytics is how it is separated for compute and storage, which allows multiple teams to run queries without performance impact. Our project has more than nine or ten teams, so if a team is working on a particular dashboard and another team wants to work on Snowflake Analytics, they can easily work on it without disturbing the work of one team, ensuring that the work can be consistent and multiple users can use the tool simultaneously. This is one of the main features I appreciate about Snowflake Analytics.The other aspect is how the query performance is high due to its columnar storage and also automatic optimization, allowing for scaling down during weekdays when there is less data and scaling up during weekends or festivals when the data can be huge. Because of this automatic scaling, if there is less data, we are using only 5 GB instead of 10 GB, which reduces the storage level, and consequently, the cost can be reduced. This automatic scaling and optimization saves us a huge amount of money for our project. Snowflake Analytics has impacted our organization positively by providing faster query performance and better scalability. Previously, we faced issues with slow queries due to traditional systems, but within Snowflake, we can assign separate virtual warehouses for reporting as well as data processing, ensuring that it does not impact tool performance and does not delay reporting to business users. Analysts can run complex queries without affecting ETL workloads due to this separation, which has improved our speed of reporting, and our business users have expressed happiness due to how fast we are generating reports during peak hours.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 leverage its capabilities for many applications. We can integrate with our databases, like Oracle, MySQL, or any other, using Microsoft Integration Services."
"It is closely integrated with other products in the MS portfolio."
"This solution will connect to any database, you can combine databases, and you can create a cube or tabular model."
"I like that it's integrated with other Azure products."
"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."
"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."
"The latest interface of Snowsight UI has added good capabilities and the interface is excellent."
"I am impressed with the product's data-sharing feature."
"The solution auto-scales and it provides concurrency."
"Snowflake Analytics has positively impacted our organization by saving about eight to ten hours per week, which we can use for advanced analytics and automation tasks."
"The performance has been good."
"One of the distinctive features of Snowflake is its ability to handle large datasets efficiently."
"Time Travel and Snowpipe are good features."
"It's not necessary to use a physical server."
 

Cons

"Releases of new products and functionality is never accompanied by associated documentation, training and resources that adequately explain the release."
"The pricing model needs to be improved."
"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."
"​Hybrid environments are complex to manage."
"I think the biggest problem with the product is that it does a data ingest model, which is very expensive."
"However, centralized EDW tends to be extremely expensive and very inflexible."
"The trouble is Microsoft has changed their licensing. It's an extremely expensive product now."
"Moving data from legacy systems to Snowflake is not that easy. There are some cases where processors are not actually compatible with Snowflake."
"The distribution methodology isn't as strong as Bethesda or SAP HANA. It's not as strong as other competitors."
"The pricing visibility is complex. If you understand pricing, you can estimate costs, but if not, it can be challenging."
"One notable absence in Snowflake's offerings is an on-premises solution."
"The solution’s scalability could be improved."
"Snowflake could improve in the areas of advanced machine learning AML and generative AI."
"Snowflake should include a WHERE clause for building data pipelines."
"Machine learning in Snowflake isn't as advanced as in other products. I haven't heard of any successful industry-wide use cases of machine learning implemented in Snowflake. It might take a couple of years to reach the same level as Databricks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate Microsoft Analytics Platform System a seven out of ten for pricing."
"The initial price is lower than Oracle, but extensive use of SQL may lead to a higher total cost of ownership."
"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."
"Users have to pay extra for premium-level technical support."
"It is not overly expensive. I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"The product's pricing is subjective."
"Snowflake Analytics is a little more costly than Azure."
"When using Snowflake, you pay based on your usage. They calculate how much CPU has been used. If you use excess warehouse storage, you are charged one credit per hour. If you are in Asia, you are charged $3 per credit. If you have 10 users running parallel with the same excess, you will be charged $30."
"The pricing is on the higher side."
"I have been using free trial version."
"Snowflake charges per query, which amounts to a very minor cost, such as $0.015 per query."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price, and ten is high price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
16%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake Analytics?
The pricing for Snowflake Analytics is reasonable, but as I am not part of the management team, I am not certain about our organization's exact costs. Overall, the return on investment for this...
What needs improvement with Snowflake Analytics?
One improvement Snowflake Analytics could benefit from is in cost, particularly during peak hours. Sometimes, due to its automatic scalability, we think it has scaled up, but it does not always hap...
What is your primary use case for Snowflake Analytics?
I am using Snowflake Analytics because we are already using Snowflake for data engineering and data warehousing tasks, and we are using it for analytics as well as business intelligence reporting. ...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft APS, MS Analytics Platform System
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Transport for London, E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co. KG, Prometeia, Tangerine, SSM Health Care, Service Corporation International
Lionsgate, Adobe, Sony, Capital One, Akamai, Deliveroo, Snagajob, Logitech, University of Notre Dame, Runkeeper
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Analytics Platform System vs. Snowflake Analytics and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.