Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Reviews

The solution is generally used as more of an Analytical Data Warehouse. It's more of an offline enterprise scale. Sometimes I've used it from a marketing perspective, as a marketing data platform. I've not really used it from a risk and the enterprise center as it tends to be more back office, and therefore less around the customer, and more around the finance procurement of HR risk and that type of thing.

The solution is scalable.

It's better than a similar solution offered by Amazon.

Technical support is okay in terms of the help they provide.

The product could be easier to use. For example, I find Snowflake more user-friendly. They should offer simpler operations.

The initial setup could be faster.

Technical support can get expensive as they charge per use. The product could do more around crowdsourcing to help users find answers or answer questions without having to resort to contacting technical support directly.

The product could be more feature-rich.

They should look at some of what AWS and Snowflake are doing. They've both got a feature stack and also push the integration of things. This is a little bit lacking with Azure.

The analytics side of the solution is pretty weak right now. 

I have used this solution for a while. I used it before it was even called Synapse - when it was just Azure SQL Data Warehouse. It's been three or four years.

Technical support is okay, however, it can get expensive. The more you use it, the more it costs. I do not like this particular model.

I also have experience using Snowflake. I use both products. I originally started using Snowflake in 2017.

The solution takes longer to set up than I would like. There are a lot of questions that need to be addressed with the customer, and this can draw out the process. 

You do have to pay more the more you use technical support.

Clients have had a free year and then a monthly cost that they need to pay for licensing and access.

I don't use it personally, as I'm a consultant. However, if I implement it for clients, I do use it.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. There's still some work that needs to be done on the product that can make it a lot better.

I would recommend the solution to a company if they were a Microsoft shop. In that case, it's the obvious thing for them to do and it's a good choice.

We're using this solution for analytics and its modeling capabilities. It allows you to have your visualization on top of your synapse analytics. We are partners with Microsoft. 

I like that the overall deployment and integration is pretty fast and then you also have virtualization to Power BI so it's also quite cost-effective.

For improvement, I would like to see more connectors and better integration for Hadoop. There are currently limitations for Hadoop on-prem. I'd like to see better integration and more flexibility. 

I've been using this product for almost a year. 

This is a stable solution. We have four companies who are customers of this solution and we have a team that deals with any problems. 

The product is scalable. 

The technical support is very good. 

The initial setup is straightforward and takes around two hours. 

There is a license for Azure, and whether it's a monthly or annual payment depends on the agreement you have with Microsoft. A long-term plan is more cost effective. 

I rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

It is for business intelligence. We are gathering all the data from legacy systems and transforming the data. We are then pushing the data back towards Power BI.

The whole solution is interesting for us.

They should provide a less expensive version with a smaller setup for small businesses. Currently, its price is quite high for entry-level or small businesses. In terms of integration, new connectors are always welcomed.

I have been using this solution for a year.

It is quite stable.

We don't scale up because the current level is enough for our customers. Our customers are small and medium companies in Europe.

I don't use their support.

It is complex. There are too many products that we need to involve in its setup, such as data factory and machine learning, and they're integrated so intricately. You need to have quite good skills to work with this. You would need a partner. You cannot do it yourself. The deployment usually takes a month.

It requires a less expensive version because currently, not every customer is able to buy it. If it could have a smaller setup that doesn't require so many resources, it would be helpful, and we would be able to use it in more cases. We are a small country, and most of our customers are quite small businesses.

I would rate Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics a nine out of ten.

The solution's scalability is very, very good. It's one of the most important aspects for us. 

We really need our data to stay in Western Europe. As an insurance company, it's important for our business. Microsoft can guarantee that it stays in Western Europe. That way, data is not processed anywhere else.

It's widely acknowledged as an excellent product throughout the industry. There's a lot of knowledge about it in the Netherlands as well. It makes it very easy to find a consultancy and also employees who can help us with its modern architecture.

The initial setup is easy. You don't need extensive training. It's an intuitive process.

What I would like to see is a possibility for time travel on the data. For instance, a financial department would like to do an analysis of the data set as it was for the first of the month while another department wants to run the analysis about how things went yesterday or last week. They have different starting points for the queries. I've seen Snowflake handle tasks such as these. It's got a feature called time shuffling, which can show me what's there on a certain variety of dates. It's very convenient.

It would be great if we could query the data of the day as well as in the data warehouse. 

They should have scalable memory processor options for the data warehouse.

While the solution is flexible, sometimes this works against the user.

We're new to the solution. We started using it last year around April or May. It's been less than 12 months so far.

The solution is scalable. It's online. That means you can scale it online and can stop the database to change the scaling of it.

We've had a few calls with technical support. They were very helpful and responsive. We have been satisfied with their level of support.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not overly complex. A company shouldn't have any issues with the initial setup or implementation. You don't need deep technical insights to have training.

You can create a floor space in an hour. That's no problem. Afterward, you have to work with the data and do a few more things in terms of configuration, however, it's not hard.

We are using the latest version of the solution.

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

I would recommend Synapse, however, it depends on which industry an organization is working in. It can be complex, and often, you have to choose between several tools. They're all able to do the same job, they're just more industry-specific in some cases. 

If you want to transform your data, you can choose between the database, data factory, and SQL, and even other tools.

This means it is very flexible, however, it also makes it difficult to administer. It's not that one of these sources is harder per se. It's more about what is the best for the job. Sometimes you create something and it doesn't perform and you have to start from scratch.

We are using it internally and afterward some of the outcomes are made public, either to customers or in different projects.

It's mainly for preparing internal documents when we use Word. Otherwise, we use it for externally or for a lot of PowerPoint and Excel for budget purposes. Being a small company, we don't need a very sophisticated software solution, so with an Excel spreadsheet, we can handle the different budget of different projects simultaneously.

When connecting one project to the other, especially when it's handled by the same project director, the possibility of linking one spreadsheet to the other has been useful. Also, when using a Word document and making a link to another document based on an Excel spreadsheet, that's very useful. It's also great that we can interrelate one document to the other and sometimes one project to the other.

The macro functions of Excel are very useful. 

The stability is pretty good.

The solution has the potential to scale.

The macro functions, though useful, are not totally user-friendly. Some people have difficulties in learning them.

If the project keeps growing we will need to link some of the documents to the data warehouse. However, at that time, I'm not sure about the possibility of keeping the same systems that we are using right now. We may need some kind of migration. I cannot say for sure, as I am not an expert. We'll need advice on that.

The initial setup is not straightforward.

The solutions not user-friendly and does require training of some sort.

The solution requires a lot of the memory of the different devices.

We've been using the solution for a while. We use it pretty much every day and have used it over the past 12 months.

My intention is to increase productivity. As long as a project can still be handled the way they are, we will keep using the current system. If we see a better alternative with better productivity achievement, we will most probably think about migration. For now, we find it to be stable and acceptable.

We do plan to increase usage and we may hire a consultant to help with an expansion in a few months. This will likely happen, however, anything can change in terms of the business and the larger industry.

Scalability is good. I foresee scalability in terms of the possibility of using more features and the only difficult thing that I see already is the macros of the Excel spreadsheets. I also know that it has a good opportunity for scalability, in terms of the more complex tasks that can be achieved. 

Currently, we have ten people on the solution.

We use an outsourcing service for technical support. We've been satisfied with their level of service.

We haven't used a different product. We've always used Microsoft.

The initial setup is complex. It's not straightforward.

In many ways, implementation is a never-ending process, as there are always things to improve. In a few months, most of our people are familiar with the product and have a good sense of the basics, however, there's always more to do.

There was actually one consultant at the beginning of the project. We will also definitely need someone for future migration. However, it's not something that we are considering at present. It's something we'll need to do probably in the next few months. It will depend on the growth of the business.

The licensing is okay. There might be a few extra fees in addition to the standard license.

I'm just an end-user and customer.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

I'd rate them higher if they could make it more user-friendly in terms of those more sophisticated capabilities that the system offers. Also, the training requires long hours. That's something difficult to organize when people have to be allocated to specific training sessions, instead of being on the projects. There's a kind of complex way of balancing the possibility of some people using the more sophisticated solutions and getting trained. 

We use the solution on our servers for analytics.

We have found that it is easy to develop and to do the analytics in the modules of data.

More integration is needed to improve the product for the future. There needs to be more flexibility when developing applications with this product.

I have been using the solution for six months.

The solution is stable.

We have three to four people using the product.

The solution is subscription-based. You can also pay to use the product as you go. This is an advantage, you only get charged for the time you actually use it.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is to process data and provide it to our clients.

The most valuable feature is data processing.

The architecture, including compute and storage, is good.

The performance and data consistency need to be improved.

Support for PSQL functionality should be included, as it is something that is missing right now.

I have used Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics over the past 12 months.

The stability has been getting much better. Two years back, there were issues with it.

Scalability is something that is improving.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We deployed it ourselves.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are using this product data warehousing and analytics.

Pretty much all of the features are valuable, including storage and compute. All of the features are essential to what you do.

It's very reliable and cost-effective. It meets the needs of our clients.

It's user-friendly and has a good dashboard.

I am very sure that there are areas in need of improvement, but I can't recall what they are off the top of my head.

I have been using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics for a couple of years.

It's a stable product and we're satisfied and comfortable with it. Our clients and partners have found it to be very stable and scalable, as well.

Synapse Analytics is a scalable product.

Generally, support from Microsoft is always good. I can't recall the specific instance where we had to contact them, but it was good.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It only took five minutes to set up.

We deployed the solution in-house, and we also deploy it for our clients.

This is a cost-effective product.

I highly recommend this solution to others, and we recommend it to our clients.

Overall, it's exceptionally good.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.