AWS Lake Formation vs Azure Data Factory comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.3, while Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.1. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 5.1% mindshare in CDW, compared to Microsoft’s 9.1% mindshare. Additionally, 71% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

AWS Lake Formation

Read 8 AWS Lake Formation reviews

2,803 Views
2,407 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

Azure Data Factory

Read 90 Azure Data Factory reviews

4,913 Views
3,836 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

AWS Lake Formation

Azure Data Factory

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Azure Data Factory and AWS Lake Formation are competing cloud services in managing and orchestrating data workflows. Azure Data Factory seems to have an advantage with superior pricing and customer support but AWS Lake Formation's robust features justify its cost for those prioritizing comprehensive capabilities.

Features: Azure Data Factory offers entrenched integration options across various platforms, intuitive data mapping, and transformation capabilities with ease of use. AWS Lake Formation provides a focused system for setting up secure data lakes with automated data cataloging and fine-grained access control, establishing a strong data governance framework.

Room for Improvement: Azure Data Factory could improve its security features and offer more detailed monitoring capabilities. Expanding built-in connectors for even wider integration and enhancing real-time streaming support could also be beneficial. AWS Lake Formation might focus on streamlining its initial setup and improving user interface simplicity. Offering enhanced support for data analysis tools and additional automation features could further elevate its service.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure Data Factory enables quick deployment with agility and receives praise for rapid customer service responses. AWS Lake Formation requires more setup time due to its emphasis on security and data governance, suitable for businesses needing extensive formulations but offers a thorough data management process.

Pricing and ROI: Azure Data Factory presents attractive pricing with low initial setup costs, promoting a favorable ROI for enterprises needing cost-effective solutions. AWS Lake Formation involves higher initial costs, which are balanced by its valuable data governance capabilities, rendering it appealing for businesses focusing on security and oversight.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Lake Formation vs. Azure Data Factory Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Azure Data Factory

January 2025

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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

AWS Lake Formation

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

13th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Azure Data Factory

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Integration (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 5.1%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Data Factory is 9.1%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Ramesh Raghavan

US South Lead, Accenture AWS Business Group at Accenture

Centralized repository, offers various cataloging mechanisms for quick data retrieval but data governance capabilities could be better

There are a couple of areas for improvement with Lake Formation. One of the main challenges, especially when dealing with rich media content, like in MarTech (Marketing Technology) or ad agencies, is its versatility. Some clients feel that Lake Formation doesn’t meet their needs and they tend to prefer competitor products for those specific use cases. The second area for improvement is in data governance. Specifically, Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance. This includes managing the entire data lineage—where the data originated, how it moves, and where it’s currently stored. The visibility of the data as it evolves is crucial, and that’s where more advanced governance capabilities would be beneficial.

Read full review

Joy Maitra

Sr. Technical Architect at Hexaware Technologies Limited

Facilitates seamless data pipeline creation with good analytics and and thorough monitoring

Azure Data Factory is a low code, no code platform, which is helpful. It provides many prebuilt functionalities that assist in building data pipelines. Also, it facilitates easy transformation with all required functionalities for analytics. Furthermore, it connects to different sources out-of-the-box, making integration much easier. The monitoring is very thorough, though a more readable version would be appreciable.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AWS Lake Formation works hand in hand with other products."

"The most important advantage in using AWS Lake Formation is its ability to connect the data lake to the other technologies in AWS. This is what I advise my clients."

"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."

"The solution has many features that are applicable to events such as audits."

"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."

"We use AWS Lake Formation typically for the data warehouse."

"AWS Lake Formation lets you see all your data and tables on one screen."

"It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services."

"The two most valuable features of Azure Data Factory are that it's very scalable and that it's also highly reliable."

"The most valuable feature of Azure Data Factory is that it has a good combination of flexibility, fine-tuning, automation, and good monitoring."

"I find that the solution integrates well with cloud technologies, which we are using for different clouds like Snowflake and AWS"

"It is easy to integrate."

"The most valuable feature is the ease in which you can create an ETL pipeline."

"The tool's most valuable features are its connectors. It has many out-of-the-box connectors. We use ADF for ETL processes. Our main use case involves integrating data from various databases, processing it, and loading it into the target database. ADF plays a crucial role in orchestrating these ETL workflows."

"It is beneficial that the solution is written with Spark as the back end."

"The trigger scheduling options are decently robust."

More Azure Data Factory pros

Cons

"The solution could make improvements around orchestration and doing some automation stuff on AWS front automation. It would be useful if we could use automation to build images and use hardened images which are CIS compliant."

"AWS Lake Formation's pricing could be cheaper."

"In our experience what could be improved are not the support, performance or monitoring, but at a managerial level, the very expensive professional services of AWS. This could be an area of improvement for them. It's too expensive to acquire their support."

"It falls short when it comes to more granular access control, such as cell-level or row-level entitlements which is a significant drawback for organizations that require precise control over who can access specific rows of data."

"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."

"For the end-users, it's not as user-friendly as it could be."

"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."

"You need to have data experience to use the product."

"Data Factory's performance during heavy data processing isn't great."

"Azure Data Factory's pricing in terms of utilization could be improved."

"Sometimes, the compute fails to process data if there is a heavy load suddenly, and it doesn't scale up automatically."

"You cannot use a custom data delimiter, which means that you have problems receiving data in certain formats."

"Data Factory's monitorability could be better."

"I would like to see this time travel feature in Snowflake added to Azure Data Factory."

"I have not found any real shortcomings within the product."

"There are performance issues, particularly with the underlying compute, which should be configurable."

More Azure Data Factory cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."

"Pricing is comparable, it's somewhere in the middle."

"Pricing appears to be reasonable in my opinion."

"Data Factory is expensive."

"The price you pay is determined by how much you use it."

"Understanding the pricing model for Data Factory is quite complex."

"The solution's pricing is competitive."

"The cost is based on the amount of data sets that we are ingesting."

"This is a cost-effective solution."

More Azure Data Factory pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Lake Formation?

It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?

The pricing is expensive compared to OpenStack, but cheaper than other cloud environments. It's middle-of-the-road for regular storage yet very cost-effective when using Amazon Glacier for data.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?

If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker. I would have built-in functions that provide statistics for the data when using the GUI, such as SageMaker Insig...

See all answers

How do you select the right cloud ETL tool?

AWS Glue and Azure Data factory for ELT best performance cloud services.

See all answers

How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica PowerCenter?

Azure Data Factory is flexible, modular, and works well. In terms of cost, it is not too pricey. It offers the stability and reliability I am looking for, good scalability, and is easy to set up an...

See all answers

How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica Cloud Data Integration?

Azure Data Factory is a solid product offering many transformation functions; It has pre-load and post-load transformations, allowing users to apply transformations either in code by using Power Q...

See all answers

Comparisons

Snowflake vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 39% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 14% of the time

BigQuery vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon EMR vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 4% of the time

More AWS Lake Formation Competitors

Informatica PowerCenter vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 13% of the time

Snowflake vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 10% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 8% of the time

Alteryx Designer vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 7% of the time

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 5% of the time

More Azure Data Factory Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation

February 2025

Download AWS Lake Formation product report

Buyer's Guide

Azure Data Factory

February 2025

Download Azure Data Factory product report

Overview

AWS Lake Formation is a service that makes it easy to set up a secure data lake in days. A data lake is a centralized, curated, and secured repository that stores all your data, both in its original form and prepared for analysis.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Azure Data Factory efficiently manages and integrates data from various sources, enabling seamless movement and transformation across platforms. Its valuable features include seamless integration with Azure services, handling large data volumes, flexible transformation, user-friendly interface, extensive connectors, and scalability. Users have experienced improved team performance, workflow simplification, enhanced collaboration, streamlined processes, and boosted productivity.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday

1. Adobe 2. BMW 3. Coca-Cola 4. General Electric 5. Johnson & Johnson 6. LinkedIn 7. Mastercard 8. Nestle 9. Pfizer 10. Samsung 11. Siemens 12. Toyota 13. Unilever 14. Verizon 15. Walmart 16. Accenture 17. American Express 18. AT&T 19. Bank of America 20. Cisco 21. Deloitte 22. ExxonMobil 23. Ford 24. General Motors 25. IBM 26. JPMorgan Chase 27. Microsoft (Azure Data Factory is developed by Microsoft) 28. Oracle 29. Procter & Gamble 30. Salesforce 31. Shell 32. Visa

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Azure Data Factory

January 2025

Free Report: AWS Lake Formation vs. Azure Data Factory

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