Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer comparison

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer

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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

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

117

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Cus...

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 15.9%, down from 18.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer is 4.1%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

Charley Hanania

Data Platform Specialist at QS2 AG - Quality Software Solutions

It is very easy to implement, manage, and offers great insights into what is happening inside the engine

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is integrated into other Azure capabilities and has a great foundation being on SQL Server with a long history of security, performance, and usability from a DBA perspective. Once you've set up a server, adding databases is easy. There's a minor challenge with having data in separate databases that you want to connect like we do on premises. I'm looking forward to using some of these new AI-driven functions that have come out around vectorization. Having the data closer to my transactional databases or data makes it easy to augment and enhance the Database and applications I currently use. It's great that Azure SQL now seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Fabric. It's a first-tier service in the cloud that connects to web applications and other databases. The data transformation orchestration capabilities within Database Factory and similar capabilities make it effortless to move that stuff forward.

Read full review

RODRIGOPETERSON

Senior Architect at Capgemini

Leverages cloud capabilities and offers minimal latency with operation model

Customers have less operational burden and more responsibility regarding the management of hardware. Increasing the scale of Oracle Exadata Cloud provides more capacity, higher performance, and expanded storage, CPU, and memory resources. If you need to scale Oracle's capacity up or down, the appliance can be adjusted on-premise. When you purchase Oracle Exadata Cloud, you must acquire either a half or full rack. If you need to increase capacity, you can scale up by adding more hardware. This hardware commitment lasts four to five years, meaning you must maintain this infrastructure and continue payments for that period. While you can scale up to meet increased demands, scaling down is more challenging. I recommend the solution when the customer desires to transition to a cloud-native solution but needs to retain their data in OpenEdge due to compatibility issues or the requirement to interact with on-premise systems to minimize latency. This solution offers minimal latency and modernizes Oracle capabilities through a gateway. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

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

"It integrates well on the back end with our functions and logic apps."

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database scales well, allowing us to increase our compute level or add more instances as required."

"Its easy usage is the most valuable."

"The most valuable feature of SQL Azure is the user-friendly VMs."

"Great auto-scaling and security features."

"We primarily and generally use it only for DB purposes. When it comes to the Azure part, we can easily provision, scale up, and scale down the generator machine. This kind of flexibility is the USP of SQL Azure. Its interface and ease of use are also valuable. It is very easy to use and integrate with multiple databases. If I need to pull in or import some data from my on-premises database, the ease with which you can connect and pull the data, not only from SQL Server but also from other flavors of MySQL or even Oracle, is very good."

"The backup features are the most valuable."

"The scalability and simple management of the infrastructure are the most valuable features."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros

"Exporting and importing is easy because of its cleanliness, making the process easier. However, setting up the Data Guard was more difficult. Despite this, the client experienced lower downtime."

"I am particularly fond of the intelligent capabilities that enhance the backend, utilizing technology to analyze SQL queries."

"Performance has significantly improved."

"The most valuable feature is that it is based on Exadata infrastructure, which is Oracle 's leading engineered system that is trusted, fault-tolerant, and has unique performance features."

"The operation model is the most valuable feature."

"I like that Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer is a stable, well-positioned product in the market today, and it's very scalable."

Cons

"Operational cost needs improvement."

"The pricing plans when using multiple Microsoft solutions are complex and have room for improvement."

"The document storage is primarily relational, which is not ideally suited for SQL. If there were better integration with SharePoint for document handling in SQL, it would greatly benefit the organization. Moreover, the current on-premise limitations prevent direct file pulling, limiting certain capabilities."

"I would like to see more compatibility with SSMS and more backward compatibility with regular on-prem SQL."

"The product's pricing needs improvement."

"One of the nice features in Microsoft SQL Server is the SQL Server CLR, which we sometimes need to use to protect our procedures using C# or CLR. This is not available in the SQL Azure database."

"There are compatibility issues that prevent Azure SQL Database from being a direct replacement for SQL Server running on a virtual machine. For instance, handling application-initiated DBCC commands is a challenge."

"It's very difficult to investigate if something wrong is going on behind the scenes. If we are facing a problem that our application is doing a CPU spike and when we look at the dump of the details, the processes that our application is generating are not consuming more than 40-50% of CPU. But we don’t know where it is going, who's generating it, and who's consuming the CPU. Even Microsoft says they don’t know."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database cons

"We had some problems in the developer's environment. We had some problems with the initial installation environment."

"For the data migration, we used ZDM. It was not integrated with the databases, and the documentation lacks clarity."

"A room for improvement in Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer is that they need to train more partners to gain more knowledge because currently, they are keeping a lot to themselves. For example, they are still keeping a lot of information on their campus, so information sharing is limited."

"The solution is expensive."

"As a customer, you can't see the boot messages of your virtualized guest machines."

"Scalability is not straightforward."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of the cost, SQL Azure is a pay-per-use solution, particularly because it's a cloud subscription, so you pay as much as you use it."

"Its price can definitely be lower. It is pretty pricey."

"Offers options for paying the license on a yearly or a monthly basis."

"It requires a license. As compared to its competitors, such as Oracle, it is affordable and reasonable."

"It only has a subscription-based license."

"When looking at the long-term expenses associated with running software on an on-premises server, the costs are almost equivalent but when we include insurance for devices, onsite fees for servers, and other related costs, we may find that this is a cost-effective solution."

"SQL Azure is an expensive solution."

"It is reasonable."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pricing and cost advice

"The machine and the cloud model itself already have licensing advantages."

"The price is too much."

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845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

73%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

36%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SQL Azure?

The automated scalability feature of SQL Azure has proven to be highly beneficial, particularly when deployed in the cloud.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SQL Azure?

The price for running the server increased more than expected in recent months, and better alignment of pricing expectations is needed. Notably, costs related to IT staff coming into the office on ...

What needs improvement with SQL Azure?

We're trying to manage our costs better. We've noticed an unexpected increase in the cost of running the server over the past few months. Addressing pricing clarity and alignment would help us. Als...

What do you like most about Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer?

Exporting and importing is easy because of its cleanliness, making the process easier. However, setting up the Data Guard was more difficult. Despite this, the client experienced lower downtime.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer?

The pricing is reasonable due to a universal agreement, which often positions Oracle solutions better against others. I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten.

What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer?

Scalability is not straightforward, as you can scale up and not down. Improvements could be made to make scalability more flexible.

Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Comparisons

Compared 43% of the time

Amazon RDS vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 27% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 16% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 7% of the time

vCloud Air vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database Competitors

Oracle Database as a Service vs Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer

Compared 46% of the time

Amazon RDS vs Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer

Compared 31% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer

Compared 8% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer

Compared 7% of the time

Google Cloud Spanner vs Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer

Compared 7% of the time

More Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Download Microsoft Azure SQL Database product report

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer

Download Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer product report

Overview

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is a relational database-as-a-service that delivers predictable performance, scalability, business continuity, data protection, and near-zero administration to cloud developers and solution architects. This is the deep technical library for Azure SQL Database.

Microsoft

Oracle Cloud@Customer brings Oracle’s complete portfolio of public cloud infrastructure, fully managed cloud services, and Oracle Fusion SaaS applications into your data center. It enables you to run applications faster and lower your costs using the same high-performance capabilities, autonomous operations, and low-cost subscription pricing in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). You get all this while maintaining complete control of your data so you can address data residency, security, and connectivity concerns.

Oracle

Sample Customers

adnymics GmbH, LG CNS, Centrebet, netfabb GmbH, MedPlast, Accelera Solutions, Sochi Organizing Committee, realzeit GmbH

IBVI, illycaffe, Scottish Water, trueblue, AirAsia, droptank

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer