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Amazon Redshift 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
6.2
Amazon Redshift offers mixed returns; beneficial for high data volumes, but concerns arise over rising costs and limited data effectiveness.
Sentiment score
6.9
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse offers significant ROI by efficiently managing large data volumes and integrating with existing tools.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Amazon Redshift's support is responsive but costly, with quick responses for routine issues, though advanced support can be inconsistent.
Sentiment score
6.8
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse support receives mixed reviews, praised for expertise but needing faster responses and improved Azure-related assistance.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Amazon Redshift is generally praised for scalability, though experience varies with larger clusters and specific configurations.
Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse scales well but requires SQL expertise; performance varies compared to alternatives like Snowflake.
The scalability part needs improvement as the sizing requires trial and error.
I give the scalability an eight out of ten, indicating it scales well for our needs.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Amazon Redshift is praised for stability, high availability, and performance, despite occasional challenges with complex queries and environment changes.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is praised for stability and reliability, handling large data volumes with minor concerns about processing speed.
Amazon Redshift is a stable product, and I would rate it nine or ten out of ten for stability.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is stable for us because it is built on SQL Server.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon Redshift faces challenges in performance, integration, cost, and compatibility, needing improvements in speed, security, and serverless options.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse needs enhancements in speed, scalability, compatibility, cost efficiency, and error messaging for better performance.
They should bring the entire ETL data management process into Amazon Redshift.
When there are many users or many expensive queries, it can be very slow.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is excellent but very expensive.
The ETL designing process could be optimized for better efficiency.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon Redshift offers competitive pricing for large enterprises, but smaller organizations might find it more costly than alternatives.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is cost-effective for large enterprises, but costs vary by data size, performance, and support.
The cost of technical support is high.
It's a pretty good price and reasonable for the product quality.
The pricing of Amazon Redshift is expensive.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is very expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon Redshift provides scalable, efficient data processing with AWS integration, offering robust analytics, security, and user-friendly features.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse offers accelerated performance, seamless integration, and scalability, excelling in data management and business intelligence.
Amazon Redshift's performance optimization and scalability are quite helpful, providing functionalities such as scaling up and down.
Scalability is also a strong point; I can scale it however I want without any limitations.
Security configurations are implemented across all processes, such as AWS Config and GuardDuty.
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.
The interface is very user-friendly.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Redshift
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (5th)
Microsoft Parallel Data War...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (10th)
 

Featured Reviews

Ved Prakash Yadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Works as a data warehouse system and collects data from different sources
In terms of improvement, I believe Amazon Redshift could work on reducing its costs, as they tend to increase significantly. Additionally, there are occasional issues with nodes going down, which can be problematic. We often encounter issues like someone dropping a column or changing the order of columns, which can cause synchronization problems when pushing data through our pipeline. It's a minor issue, but it can be annoying.
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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
65%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
3%
Computer Software Company
30%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Insurance Company
9%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...
What do you like most about Amazon Redshift?
The tool's most valuable feature is its parallel processing capability. It can handle massive amounts of data, even when pushing hundreds of terabytes, and its scaling capabilities are good.
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

Liberty Mutual Insurance, 4Cite Marketing, BrandVerity, DNA Plc, Sirocco Systems, Gainsight, Blue 449
Auckland Transport, Erste Bank Group, Urban Software Institute, NJVC, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Tata Steel Europe
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Redshift vs. Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.