What advice do you have for others considering Azure Database for PostgreSQL?

In some ways, Azure Database for PostgreSQL has facilitated adopting AI technologies in my organization, mainly because we can take output from AI processes, particularly document and contract summarization, and dump that data into a database for later retrieval. We are only beginning to experiment with this and hope for more native solutions within the AI tools, which are now coming, and PostgreSQL has allowed us to lay the groundwork for this. I rate this product a 10.

Azure Database for PostgreSQL has influenced the adoption of artificial intelligence technologies in my company. Artificial intelligence is definitely in almost every conversation that happens these days. The clients I've worked with haven't used it yet, but it's at least in the air. That's another thing that will eventually have to tie in, depending on the customer. Azure Database for PostgreSQL has had a significant impact on my company's data protection strategy compared to previous solutions. Not having to manage it yourself is a huge win. You can shift that responsibility to someone else who does it at scale and can hire the best people in the world to do it. It's one less thing that you need to spend cycles on, so it's just an overall win. My experience with the migration process to Azure Database for PostgreSQL, particularly in terms of the technical expertise required and support received from Microsoft, is generally straightforward as I've seen it. It helps to have people who've done it before and know the pitfalls and can help you speed things up, but by and large, it's a fairly straightforward proposition. How much data you have does matter for the timeline. I would rate Azure Database for PostgreSQL overall a nine out of ten, and we will see how the Horizon offering works. My advice to other companies considering Azure Database for PostgreSQL is to choose the data store that makes sense for your use case. I've noticed a tendency to just grab whatever database was used last time, but maybe that's the right choice and maybe it's not. I've seen instances where people choose a data store because they think it's cool or they want to play with it and put it on their resume. Resume-driven design is a real thing. Make sure the data store you choose is the right one for your use case. If you're doing microservices, you don't have to have one-size-fits-all. If a service needs a time series database, then use that. If a service would benefit from graphs, then use graphs. Use the data store that fits your needs.

My advice to other organizations considering Azure Database for PostgreSQL is to ensure they know the configuration settings they will need in the future and understand the security ramifications of certain settings, because if they do not turn it on, they will have to rebuild. I rate this product a nine overall.

My advice to other companies that are considering Azure Database for PostgreSQL is to land back on the idea that a lot of people land on NoSQL because it feels good to say that we're schemaless and it'll fit that. The normalized pattern plus the schemaless data that can ride along with it has been very refreshing to me. I've enjoyed it greatly and I think we have a lot of spots where we are using NoSQL options that have costed us a lot of money because upfront you try to convince yourself that your data is truly schemaless. Even if it is, I think Postgres would be a good way to go about it because then you still get the best of both worlds of normalized schemaless SQL and NoSQL schemaless options as well. Azure Database for PostgreSQL has probably impacted my data's protection strategy compared to those on-premise solutions. If they were to move, I would feel more comfortable having them in the cloud. We do still have DBAs that are full-time managing those things and there's so few and far between that it probably would be impactful, but not that impactful. It's not the fault of Postgres though. Our posture is almost all cloud already. I would rate this review a nine out of ten.

The security features of Azure Database for PostgreSQL are good out of the box. I do not know if to say if it is good compared to what, as it is a native product. It is a great product in terms of out-of-the-box security. I have not heard any issues. We have not seen any hacks or any compromise to the product over many years. Overall, security is just out of the box and not so much a concern; it is more so how best you integrate it with applications knowing that it is feature-rich from a performance perspective and how it reacts to applications. Security is not really a challenge from what I know from feedback from developers. It is a bigger conversation regarding changes in time to market for applications or customer applications. The database is definitely one of the factors, but it is holistic. It is the application itself, its logic layer, it is the company's strategy around the data, the application and user experience. I would not say this is just a singular element. It is hard to say or answer that question. Azure Database for PostgreSQL has facilitated the adoption of AI technologies in my company's database operations. That is an evolution. For the client base that I serve, they are not quite there yet where Azure Database for PostgreSQL is specifically called out. They are mostly in the early adopter stage when it comes to AI and it is mostly a focus on data readiness, understanding data governance and data structure. Azure Database for PostgreSQL impacts the ability to innovate or stay competitive in an industry. The art of the possible of the tool, the AI features would definitely be a plus for organizations moving to AI, enabling competitive advantage. I would say it is not even competitive advantage only. It is performance to get speed to market eventually. AI is almost the foundation to any success going forward. It is not just the buzzword. I see it as the heartbeat to the future. Anything that is AI capable or AI embedded would definitely be a step forward to success. Azure Database for PostgreSQL has not helped reduce infrastructure costs for me or my clients. The database has not reduced infrastructure cost; databases are costly in general. What we appreciate in the industry is some right sizing of the cost or some consideration around cost. But in general, it is a cost element. There are other aspects of the holistic solution where opportunities to reduce cost can be found, but anyone in the industry would say that going down that path will require spending money on database. What we appreciate is that it has been offered as lean and considerate as possible from Microsoft. Regarding the pay-as-you-go pricing model of Azure Database for PostgreSQL, it depends. If there is an opportunity to lock in pay-as-you-go versus reservation, it depends on your business model. At the end of the day, it depends on the business outcomes you are seeking for the application or the database. You have to forecast where you will be tomorrow, next week, next year, and lock in accordingly. Pay-as-you-go would work for various use cases. If you just need the application for two months, pay-as-you-go is fine. If you need to be locked in for a few years and it seems right-sized for exactly what you need, reservation is the way to go. It probably seems like a conflicting answer and conflicting question because again, it is part of a holistic solution. The database is just one; it cannot stand alone. The database is nothing by itself but it is definitely important. The answer is it depends on the use case. I do use Azure Hybrid Benefit, and I think my clients have seen benefits when they access this feature. The ones that are already consuming licenses from the legacy strategy, they see a lot of benefits in leveraging the program. That is also serving as an encouragement to move to Azure from on-premises or in a hybrid situation. Overall, it has been positive for clients. It is something that service providers have to educate clients on. It is there but it is up to us to bring that knowledge and the benefits to the client. Azure Hybrid Benefit is out there and something that clients should make use of, but I think the education level on the client side is not there yet. It is really up to providers, not just hybrid benefit, but incentives in general. The more we are educated about incentive programs, the better it will be for us articulating to clients and also better to bring clients to the cloud or encourage clients to venture elsewhere. If they have moved to the cloud just in pockets, maybe just a fraction, but knowing about these benefits, especially migration benefits or consumption benefits, it will accelerate innovation or move to Microsoft. Regarding uptime, Azure Database for PostgreSQL has been able to change the uptime of the application. It depends on application architecture and how the overall architecture is designed or the application is designed. That is a loaded question because the database is a standalone component of a holistic application. The database could be all resilient but other aspects of the application could fail. It is not fair to blame the database for the application's uptime. My advice to other companies that are considering Azure Database for PostgreSQL is that it is one product that comes as a result of a bigger conversation from a strategic business alignment perspective, application architecture and application requirements. It should be highly considered. It is scalable, high performance, and resilient. We have not seen any issues over the years. It is matured and has worked out all the kinks that it used to have years ago. If a client is looking to check these boxes—performance, speed, reliability, and resiliency in general—knowing that it will satisfy application needs not just today but in the future, it is definitely a choice. I would rate this product a 9 out of 10.

Azure Database for PostgreSQL has influenced our application development process. Most of the developers today have the relational mindset because relational databases have been around forever. Azure Database for PostgreSQL really came in and said the dialect is similar to what a relational PostgreSQL dialect is with a little bit of a change. Any developer who wants to use Azure Database for PostgreSQL does not go through a skill level improvement or need to learn anything new. They apply the same thing they already know. This makes our developers go in and execute the project instead of learning a new skill. Azure Database for PostgreSQL has helped integrating with other Azure services and has impacted our cloud strategy. We are a heavy Azure shop, so most of our runtimes, everything runs inside Azure. Azure Database for PostgreSQL is a relational database, and every integration, we do not want to customize it. Anything which comes out of the box, we take it and make use of it so that we can deliver faster. Azure Database for PostgreSQL definitely improved our delivery speed because of the turnkey integrations. The integrations with Azure Database for PostgreSQL that have been most valuable to our company include the Functions App integration, which was really cool. The ACA apps integration was also really cool. All the open-source community integrations from PostgreSQL also really improved our velocity. My impressions of Azure Database for PostgreSQL security features such as encryption and Advanced Threat Protection are positive. We use the Advanced Threat Protection today in our ecosystem. Every solution which we put together, that really comes in handy. The encryption part, we have not tried it, but we would love to try it for another PII use case. For now, the threat protection is what we use day in and day out. We enabled it and it just works. Azure Database for PostgreSQL has had an impact on our company's data protection strategy compared to that previous platform. We all have similar threat protection in our database, even in our on-premise systems. By Microsoft Defender in place, Azure Database for PostgreSQL is automatically secured in a way that we do not have to worry about anything else. It completely runs in our network because of the VNet integration. That way we have the data protection, and currently, you have also implemented the Microsoft Entra ID integration. This made our data protection much more secure because we know certain things are only accessed by admins and certain things are not. We are able to get that with your integration today. We did it with Azure. I would give Azure Database for PostgreSQL an overall rating of 10 out of 10. I would advise other companies that are considering Azure Database for PostgreSQL that it is the right direction to move in if you are working on a relational database. It is not as simple as bringing a query and having it work as is. There will be some tweaks. The important thing to notice is how you partition the data and how you access the data. As long as you can define that upfront and work with the Azure team, they can help you make sure the migration is smooth. As long as you understand the partition and the access patterns, Azure Database for PostgreSQL will work.

That's something I would need to ask our developers regarding how Azure's integration with other services has impacted our application development. I have not realized other benefits from using Azure Database for PostgreSQL. This review received a rating of 8 out of 10.

We continue to share with different clients a positive view of Azure Database for PostgreSQL, and there are use cases for it, but it is not universal. There are other options available. We do have several pilots going on, especially for edge deployment. I would rate this review a nine out of ten.

Every year and every quarter, new releases are made with many new features, and everything is based on Microsoft solutions. If a company decided to go through Azure Database for PostgreSQL, it should be a 10 out of 10 solution; otherwise, they would take another solution on the market. The overall review rating for this solution is 10 out of 10.

I have not utilized PostgreSQL extensions for analytics. The only PostgreSQL extensions we have used so far are the OSSP ones. I cannot definitively state whether we have seen a benefit from enabling the UUID extension that the developers requested, as we have not yet verified any tangible benefits or cost savings. Automatic patching and backups have a huge impact on my database management strategy. We have an operations team of two people and do not have time to handle database maintenance manually. We chose platform-as-a-service for this reason. I would rate this product nine out of ten overall.

We are still navigating the integration of Azure Database for PostgreSQL into our database operations regarding AI technologies. We are definitely exploring it, but we are not there yet. Currently, we are trying to secure the perimeter and understand more about AI agents, but we are not there on the PostgreSQL side yet.Azure Database for PostgreSQL has not influenced our overall cloud strategy. My advice to other companies considering this solution is to ensure there is good documentation and that the documentation is updated frequently. Without it, it's tough for a person. As a security engineer, I have to explore all the Azure resources that my company is interested in, whether it be a POC, pilot, or POV. If there isn't enough documentation, then it's tough for me to approve it. The business wants me to approve it, but as an engineer, I have to approve the service. How am I going to do it without proper documentation? Scheduling a call with the vendor will take a lot of time, but if there is documentation available, I can just rely on it, create some test resources, and test it out by myself, saving me a lot of time. I rate this solution an eight overall.

I cannot speak to which feature I appreciate the most; that is more of what my developers would probably be able to provide input on. Our customers would say that the migration process to Azure Database for PostgreSQL is obviously complicated, just because for them, this is an area that they are unfamiliar with and not experts in. However, as a partner, this is exactly what we have been selling. Azure Database for PostgreSQL is a foundation before any type of thoughts could even be considered in the AI space. I would not say that the integration of Azure Database for PostgreSQL with other Azure services impacted my overall cloud strategy. Overall, I would rate Azure Database for PostgreSQL as the number one requirement choice for our nonprofit customers and in the education space. It is a must and not a nice to have.

I cannot say much about the features of Azure Database for PostgreSQL because I am not the actual user and just do the deployment. Azure Database for PostgreSQL has influenced our application development process, which is the reason why we stick with Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Otherwise, we would not use it as heavily. Our company's strategy is always to not put all eggs in one basket. We have Azure Database for PostgreSQL, MS SQL as well, and some AWS databases. We have all kinds of DB and also MongoDB. For our solution using Azure Database for PostgreSQL, I have never gotten any complaints from any incidents, security incidents, or any technical troubles. It is very rare, but incidents are code-based and not database-related. We have some code-based incidents because the application has some bugs, so we have to fix them. Based on the database itself, the most tweaking we did was the performance. We have to monitor the performance of all the transactions and all the journals, and we have to do tweaking such as determining how many CPUs and memory we have to reassign to those servers and applications. That is the only thing that we actually deal with. The patches happen on the Windows server side because we use Microsoft servers. Most of the patches happen on the Windows server side, though we have Linux servers too. When Microsoft releases some patches, it will sometimes interrupt some connections, but it is not a PostgreSQL issue and is just a server issue. We are a hybrid environment including our on-premises AD. We are in the process to migrate and try to get rid of our on-premises AD and completely use Entra as our main identity management solutions. Currently, we are hybrid and everything is Microsoft. We also use Okta as well. We have Okta and Entra. The hybrid arrangement has its advantage because it really connects our old legacy technology. Everything has to be on-premises because we have not had time to completely convert it to cloud apps yet. The hybrid approach creates a bridge to both worlds. A native cloud approach actually has more advantage because it is easy to deploy, faster to deploy, and easy to recover and roll back. It is more agile and more convenient for us. It really shortens the time for us to deploy on-premises. When you try to deploy something on-premises, especially when a new product comes in, you have to get the hardware, set up all the firewall rules on-premises, and then deploy all the applications on those servers. Because we moved to AWS and moved to Azure, everything is basically just policies, and you can define everything in the cloud. It is way faster and more convenient for us. I gave Azure Database for PostgreSQL a rating of nine.

We are starting with Copilot and agents built from Copilot. It will almost be the year of our agent for next year because many people are asking for Copilot Studio. On the keynote, we saw the old App Maker or App Builder. I am always looking at how people can make small things and be out the door already using the Azure Copilot environment. We are looking forward to that. I do not think we are there yet to really get that benefit. I do not think I am there yet either. Our overall review rating for Azure Database for PostgreSQL is nine.

Overall, Azure Database for PostgreSQL has been good for us. When sized properly, performance has been great, and we handle substantial data volumes. I would rate it an eight or nine.

The rating would probably be a seven out of ten. I am not a reseller for Azure. One of our other group companies is.

I would rate Azure Database for PostgreSQL eight on a scale of 10.

I rate Azure Database for PostgreSQL 10 out of 10. It's a great product that does not require you to be a DB admin to manage successfully.

I rate Azure Database for PostgreSQL nine out of 10.

I would rate Azure Database for PostgreSQL an eight out of ten.

I would rate Azure Database for PostgreSQL an eight out of 10. Its scaling capabilities could be improved, and ensuring reliability during sudden usage spikes is needed.