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Dremio vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Dremio
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (8th)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Dremio is 4.2%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 9.1%, down from 14.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

MikeWalker - PeerSpot reviewer
It enables you to manage changes more effectively than any other platform.
Dremio enables you to manage changes more effectively than any other data warehouse platform. There are two things that come into play. One is data lineage. If you are looking at data in Dremio, you may want to know the source and what happened to it along the way or how it may have been transformed in the data pipeline to get to the point where you're consuming it. There's another thing called data providence. They're tied together. Data providence allows you to go back and recreate the data at any particular point in time. It's extremely important for compliance and governance issues because data changes all time. How did it change? What was it three days or months ago? You may have made some decisions based on data that was three months old, so you might need to revisit those. It's essential for things like machine learning and deep learning, where you are generating AI models off data. When the model stops working or doesn't work as expected, you need to figure out why. You have to go back and adjust the datasets used to train the model. We do that through an open-source project called Nessie, which is their basis for providing data lineage and data province capabilities. It's super powerful. Arrow is another open-source project for storing data in memory and performing data query operations. Data sits on a disk in one format. If you want to do anything with data, you have to load it into your computer and put it into memory so you can work with it. Arrow provides a format in memory that enables the whole library to perform various operations on that data. Every vendor has its own way of representing data in memory. They've latched onto an industry standard and developed it so it's open. Now people can use the exact same format in memory to do operations and use the library set to perform functions on data. New developers can decide if they want to develop their own memory format or use one that's already there. Data transfer is a massive problem when you're working with large datasets, doing advanced analytics, and trying to train machine learning or deep learning models. What happens often is companies downsample their data sets to do training on models because transferring and managing data on a deep learning or machine learning platform is too much.
Sunil Gidwani - PeerSpot reviewer
No competitors provide the entire solution to one place
I rate Azure Synapse Analytics eight out of 10. No competitors provide the entire solution to one place like Synapse. For example, a database just focuses moving and manipulating data, etc. But Synapse is like an all-inclusive workspace. I advise other people to go with Databricks Notebook if you need a computation engine. It has a solid SQL storage procedure. Suppose you are dealing with complex transformation logic and manipulation of run-time data flows. In that case, it's better to use Databricks than any Microsoft ADF. DataBricks looks more promising in terms of computing in memory, so we integrated Databricks in Synapse.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Everyone uses Dremio in my company; some use it only for the analytics function."
"Dremio gives you the ability to create services which do not require additional resources and sterilization."
"Dremio enables you to manage changes more effectively than any other data warehouse platform. There are two things that come into play. One is data lineage. If you are looking at data in Dremio, you may want to know the source and what happened to it along the way or how it may have been transformed in the data pipeline to get to the point where you're consuming it."
"We primarily use Dremio to create a data framework and a data queue."
"Dremio allows querying the files I have on my block storage or object storage."
"The most valuable feature of Dremio is it can sit on top of any other data storage, such as Amazon S3, Azure Data Factory, SGFS, or Hive. The memory competition is good. If you are running any kind of materialized view, you'd be running in memory."
"The most valuable aspect of this Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is its consolidation of technical support from Microsoft, and its ability to securely host large quantities of data within the cloud environment. The overall ability to manage and maintain Big Data within the cloud provides a heightened level of efficiency, reliability, and support from Microsoft. This results in a superior user experience and an increased level of value for the end user."
"-"
"We also like governance. It looks at what the requirements are for the company to identify the best way to ensure compliance is met when you move to the cloud."
"The solution has been working well overall."
"The most advantageous aspect of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is its simplified data transformation process compared to traditional databases. This makes data cleansing and transformation more manageable and straightforward, which we appreciate. It is much easier to build as well."
"The initial setup process is straightforward."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is its ability to integrate well with other services offered by Azure."
"The fact that we can ingest from different types of sources, whether they are internal systems or external sources."
 

Cons

"Dremio takes a long time to execute large queries or the executing of correlated queries or nested queries. Additionally, the solution could improve if we could read data from the streaming pipelines or if it allowed us to create the ETL pipeline directly on top of it, similar to Snowflake."
"It shows errors sometimes."
"I cannot use the recursive common table expression (CTE) in Dremio because the support page says it's currently unsupported."
"We've faced a challenge with integrating Dremio and Databricks, specifically regarding authentication. It is not shaking hands very easily."
"Dremio doesn't support the Delta connector. Dremio writes the IT support for Delta, but the support isn't great. There is definitely room for improvement."
"They have an automated tool for building SQL queries, so you don't need to know SQL. That interface works, but it could be more efficient in terms of the SQL generated from those things. It's going through some growing pains. There is so much value in tools like these for people with no SQL experience. Over time, Dermio will make these capabilities more accessible to users who aren't database people."
"The initial setup is complex."
"Synapse Analytics needs to develop an automation framework because now you have to build a cache yourself. You have to build a pipeline in WhereScape, which does end-to-end pipeline automation well. Microsoft should come up with a framework to save people time. If they developed a tool like WhereScape, it would dramatically reduce development time."
"I wish the data governance feature could be incorporated without requiring an additional license."
"If I'm looking for something good in the cloud, I would want it to have better standard connectors."
"The major challenge that we're seeing with Azure Synapse is around security concerns. The way it is working right now, it has Managed VNet by Microsoft option, similar to the implementation of Azure Databricks, which may pose a concern for financial institutions. For managed environments, the banks have very strict policies around data being onboarded to those environments. For some confidential applications, the banks have the policy to encrypt it with their own key, so it is sort of like Bring Your Own Key, but it is not possible to manage the resources with Microsoft or Databricks, which is probably the major challenge with Azure Synapse. There should be more compatibility with SQL Server. It should be easier to migrate solutions between different environments because right now, it is not really competitive. It is not like you can go and install SQL Database in some other environment. You will have to go through some migration projects, which probably is one of the major showstoppers for any bank. When they consider Synapse, they not only consider the investment in the actual service; they also consider the cost of the migration process. When you scale out or scale down your system, it becomes unavailable for a few minutes. Because it is a data warehouse environment, it is not such a huge deal, but it would be great if they can improve it so that the platform is available during the change of configuration."
"The solution does not support oriented scaling in the synapse."
"More integration is needed to improve the product for the future."
"Synapse Analytics' performance slows down if you don't get your distribution right because it gets queued and goes into a single node."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Dremio is less costly competitively to Snowflake or any other tool."
"Right now the cluster costs approximately $200,000 per month and is based on the volume of data we have."
"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."
"You have to be very careful with one specific service inside Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics which is called the Sequel Data Warehouse Dedicated. It is very reliable and performs well, but it's expensive. You need to define the tier well because you can choose between several tiers and you have to define which suits your needs and not overperform the tier because it's quite expensive."
"We have a licensing cost to pay."
"All of the prices are available online."
"Microsoft's pricing is relatively high, and it varies according to the extent of our usage. The pricing is directly tied to our consumption. This decision is ultimately a business choice."
"I think Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is priced well, and I would rate the price at eight out of ten."
"There is a cost calculator available online that allows you to input your entire scenario, and it will get back to you with information on what the costs are going to be."
"The pricing is okay. You can pay as you go."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
4%
Educational Organization
44%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dremio?
Dremio allows querying the files I have on my block storage or object storage.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dremio?
Every tool has a value based on its visualization, and the pricing is worth its value.
What needs improvement with Dremio?
Dremio's interface is good, but it has a few limitations. I cannot do a lot of things with ANSI SQL or basic SQL. I cannot use the recursive common table expression (CTE) in Dremio because the supp...
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 Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
The product is easy to use, and anybody can easily migrate to advanced DB.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
The cost is reasonable for our company. There is no license cost; we pay only for Azure Compute's costs. It is important to manage the cost efficiently on a daily basis.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

UBS, TransUnion, Quantium, Daimler, OVH
Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe, 
Find out what your peers are saying about Dremio vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.