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Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs Teradata comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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 Synapse Ana...
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Teradata
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (4th), Backup and Recovery (20th), Data Integration (17th), Relational Databases Tools (7th), Data Warehouse (3rd), BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (10th), Marketing Management (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Matthew Spieth - PeerSpot reviewer
Beneficial real-time analytics, simple setup, and useful tutorials
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics could improve its compatibility with Visual Studio. One of the challenges for people moving from an on-premise to a cloud solution, such as Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, is that you're constantly working in a browser. There are people that have been working for decades on desktop applications. For them to start working in a browser, it's quite a change. Allowing people to work and do their work inside Visual Studio than in the browser, would be a large advantage.
SurjitChoudhury - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers seamless integration capabilities and performance optimization features, including extensive indexing and advanced tuning capabilities
We created and constructed the warehouse. We used multiple loading processes like MultiLoad, FastLoad, and Teradata Pump. But those are loading processes, and Teradata is a powerful tool because if we consider older technologies, its architecture with nodes, virtual processes, and nodes is a unique concept. Later, other technologies like Informatica also adopted the concept of nodes from Informatica PowerCenter version 7.x. Previously, it was a client-server architecture, but later, it changed to the nodes concept. Like, we can have the database available 24/7, 365 days. If one node fails, other nodes can take care of it. Informatica adopted all those concepts when it changed its architecture. Even Oracle databases have since adapted their architecture to them. However, this particular Teradata company initially started with its own different type of architecture, which major companies later adopted. It has grown now, but initially, whatever query we sent it would be mapped into a particular component. After that, it goes to the virtual processor and down to the disk, where the actual physical data is loaded. So, in between, there's a map, which acts like a data dictionary. It also holds information about each piece of data, where it's loaded, and on which particular virtual processor or node the data resides. Because Teradata comes with a four-node architecture, or however many nodes we choose, the cost is determined by that initially. So, what type of data does each and every node hold? It's a shared-no architecture. So, whatever task is given to a virtual processor it will be processed. If there's a failure, then it will be taken care of by another virtual processor. Moreover, this solution has impacted the query time and data performance. In Teradata, there's a lot of joining, partitioning, and indexing of records. There are primary and secondary indexes, hash indexing, and other indexing processes. To improve query performance, we first analyze the query and tune it. If a join needs a secondary index, which plays a major role in filtering records, we might reconstruct that particular table with the secondary index. This tuning involves partitioning and indexing. We use these tools and technologies to fine-tune performance. When it comes to integration, tools like Informatica seamlessly connect with Teradata. We ensure the Teradata database is configured correctly in Informatica, including the proper hostname and properties for the load process. We didn't find any major complexity or issues with integration. But, these technologies are quite old now. With newer big data technologies, we've worked with a four-layer architecture, pulling data from Hadoop Lake to Teradata. We configure Teradata with the appropriate hostname and credentials, and use BTEQ queries to load data. Previously, we converted the data warehouse to a CLD model as per Teradata's standardized procedures, moving from an ETL to an EMT process. This allowed us to perform gap analysis on missing entities based on the model and retrieve them from the source system again. We found Teradata integration straightforward and compatible with other tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft provides both the platform and the data center, so you don't have to look for a cloud vendor. It saves you from having to deal with two vendors for the same task."
"Can capture all the transactional data throughout a company."
"The best thing about it is that it has integration at multiple places. It can talk to more than 90 types of data sources, which is one good thing about it."
"Our primary use case is for gathering data and analytics. We provide insights into vehicle data. We gather millions of records per second and we have various millions of vehicles running across."
"I like its performance. It is well-structured and offers a lot of practical options. Because of the visual design of the product, it is very easy to find icons and other visual elements. It took me more than two weeks to understand how it works. I had an intensive training session to understand it, which was enough. It was not hard to understand how it works."
"Technical support is okay in terms of the help they provide."
"It's user-friendly and has a good dashboard."
"The useability, the user interface, is very user-friendly."
"The product's scalability is great. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Teradata's capabilities enhance data management efficiency, support scalability, and contribute to faster query performance."
"The most valuable features are the large volume of data and the structuring of the data to optimize it and get very optimal data warehouse solutions for customers."
"The product is reliable."
"It has given our business the ability to gain insights into the data and create data labs for analysis and PoCs."
"I've never had any issues with scalability."
"It is very stable. It's 100% uptime. Speed and resilience are one of the greatest features of this product. In almost twenty years we've never had downtime, except for outages for patches and upgrades. We've never had a system failure in twenty years."
"It has increased the speed of reporting."
 

Cons

"The initial setup process needs improvement. When you're moving to the cloud it takes a bit of time. It would be great if they could implement something that would make it faster."
"I am very sure that there are areas in need of improvement, but I can't recall what they are off the top of my head."
"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics can improve by adding more flexibility to the reports. Having more visible structures based on the area, region and country would be beneficial."
"From an infrastructure standpoint, I believe it can be more secure in terms of availability."
"I would like my team to be able to build pipelines that integrate with the Azure Data Factory."
"It's stable, but its stability could be better. However, we understand that it's in production, and new features are getting added and upgraded, so you do get hiccups sometimes."
"One potential area for improvement could be the availability of an on-premises data lake implementation, as the product is currently only implemented in a cloud environment."
"I would like to see better integration with Active Directory, because we have had problems, and we still do."
"The SQL Assistant is very basic. This tool can be improved for usability."
"From my perspective, it would be good if they gave better ITIN/R plugins to use the data for AI modeling, or data science modeling. We can do it now; however, it could be more elegant in terms of interfacing."
"Teradata has a few AI models, but in data science, we need more flexibility."
"An additional feature I would you like to see included in the next release, is that it needs to be more cloud-friendly."
"Since I was working on the very basic, legacy systems, the memory thing was always a challenge. If Teradata is moving to the cloud, the space constraint or the memory issue that my company generally faces will eventually resolve, in time. What I'd like to see in the next release of Teradata is that it becomes full-fledged on the cloud, apart from better connectivity to various systems. For example, if I have to read or include a Python script, if I write some basic codes, I should be able to read even unstructured data. I know that it's not supported even in Snowflake, but at least semi-structured data support, if that can be a little more enhanced, that would be good."
"There is a need to improve performance in high transaction processes, as well as the reporting system."
"Data synchronization to the DR site."
"The cloud is the new challenge and the new opportunity."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We normally pay between $300 and $500 per month, which is quite expensive for how much we actually use it, performance- and usage-wise. They have a cheap version and an expensive version, and our usage usually falls in the middle ground, which makes it not as cost-effective as it could be."
"The price of this solution could be improved."
"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."
"I would rate the ROI a nine out of ten, where one is zero value and ten is 100% value."
"It just depends on how big your instance is. It could be anywhere from 1,000 to 50,000 per year depending on how big your instance is. You pay based on how big you make your database. Essentially, they charge you per hour of usage."
"I don't know about the price, but I'm trying to get a sense of the cost."
"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."
"The solution is subscription-based. You can also pay to use the product as you go."
"Teradata used to be expensive, but they have been lowering their prices."
"Make sure you have the in-house skills to design and support the solution, as relying on external sources is extremely costly and tends to lock you into specific platforms, tools, and paradigms."
"It's a very expensive product."
"The cost of running Teradata is quite high, but you get a good return on investment."
"We are looking for a more flexible cost model for the next version that we use, whether it be cloud or on-premise."
"I rate the product price a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"It is still a very expensive solution. While I very much like the pure technological supremacy of the software itself, I believe Teradata as a company needs to become more affordable. They are already losing the market to more flexible or cheaper competitors."
"We had a lot of parties involved when purchasing from the AWS Marketplace. They are very flexible and aggressive in trying to close the deal. They are good at what they have to offer and listening to the customer. It's a two-way street."
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Comparison Review

it_user232068 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 5, 2015
Netezza vs. Teradata
Original published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-i-choose-net Two leading Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) architectures for Data Warehousing (DW) are IBM PureData System for Analytics (formerly Netezza) and Teradata. I thought talking about the similarities and differences…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
48%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

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 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 financial aspect, including pricing and cost reduction, is not something I focus on.
Comparing Teradata and Oracle Database, which product do you think is better and why?
I have spoken to my colleagues about this comparison and in our collective opinion, the reason why some people may declare Teradata better than Oracle is the pricing. Both solutions are quite simi...
Which companies use Teradata and who is it most suitable for?
Before my organization implemented this solution, we researched which big brands were using Teradata, so we knew if it would be compatible with our field. According to the product's site, the comp...
Is Teradata a difficult solution to work with?
Teradata is not a difficult product to work with, especially since they offer you technical support at all levels if you just ask. There are some features that may cause difficulties - for example,...
 

Also Known As

Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics
IntelliFlex, Aster Data Map Reduce, , QueryGrid, Customer Interaction Manager, Digital Marketing Center, Data Mover, Data Stream Architecture
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe, 
Netflix
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831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.