Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Reviews

Our general use of this solution has to do with the needs of one of our clients. They had an SQL server and they were migrating from an on-premises SQL Server to Azure SQL server on the cloud. We use this solution because it fits their budget and they have some clients in other countries they want to give access to the product through Power BI.

What I like the most would be MPP (Massively Parallel Processing) architecture. Because we had to migrate a lot of data and it helps us a lot to make things faster.

As far as improvements to the product, I think the Data Factory integration should be enhanced to be properly implemented because right now it is still lagging behind other vendors like Informatica. We ended up having to use Data Factory because we don't have any expertise in Informatica. But I want to see Data Factory get better overall.

An enhancement I would like to see is in data loading for Data Factory. Right now we are seeing a little bit of a performance lapse in the cloud server. Specifically, this happens between Azure and our clients maybe because we are connecting to SQL Server Management Studio. There is a slight but noticeable delay. I do not know if it has to do with Azure and whether it is their problem or our problem.

I can't complain much about Data Factory, but because I used to use SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services) which was the prior on-prem version, I know what capabilities it is missing in comparison. They changed it over to Data Factory, but by comparison, Data Factory has a long way to go to reach the level of SSIS as a product.

Right now is still early in our implementation so I can't really say that I am sure it will remain stable in production under larger loads. But so far it is good and we are happy with the solution and its stability.

One of the reasons we decided to go with Azure was because we knew we could scale-out. We were happy with this scalability before we committed to the product.

Right now, I know only two of our clients are using the solution. They are actually a government organization. But we know we can scale up when we have to.

I have not had direct contact with technical support. Someone else handles that. But I have not heard any complaints.

The initial set up was not very complex. It was easy to install this product.

We had a partnership with another team and together we did the installation. They helped us to figure out some architectural decisions which they were very helpful with.

My advice to other people considering this solution is that this is a great product. But there is one problem and that is the rate that Microsoft is changing its software implementations. The rapid changes could make it hard to keep up with upgrades. Some of the features get enabled and disabled very quickly. So we are waiting now until everything settles down because cloud technology is still evolving. We understand that. But, on the other hand, as they make so many changes to keep up with the technology, it remains hard to predict what the future of the product is. I might say to anyone that they wait for some time in 2020 and then start using the product.

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate the product as somewhere between a seven or an eight. If I have to choose seven or eight, I would pick seven-out-of-10.

I use this solution for client service forecasting. I work with medium-sized businesses, and I work through a virtual machine.

Synapse Analytics gives you information and reports in real-time.

The platform is not flexible, and the graphical user interface needs to be improved because the interface makes it hard for the end user to use it.

Also, artificial intelligence could be used to improve analytics.

I have used the solution for over a year.

The solution gets support, which helps its stability.

Microsoft's technical support is good when I compare it with other platforms like Oracle. You can also fix many problems yourself because Microsoft has an active community.

The initial setup is easy if you have information about analytics visualization and data warehousing. It's easy enough to install and configure the blade. It takes one day to deploy the solution.

The solution is expensive at the enterprise level. The license is monthly.

Microsoft is a good platform because it's compatible with data warehouse, power analytics, and visualization, and you now have excellent machine learning and AI tools like GPT-4. The platform is also very stable, and support can be migrated for software.

I rate Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics a ten out of ten.

I mainly use Synapse Analytics to gather data, do aggregations, and generate reports.

Synapse Analytics' best features are notebooks, pipelines, and monitoring.

An improvement to Azure Synapse would be more templates for specific domains. 

I've been using Synapse Analytics for four months.

Synapse Analytics is generally stable, but its performance can be slow when performing very large datasets.

Synapse Analytics is definitely scalable.

Microsoft's technical support is fast and responsive.

Previously, we used Databricks.

The initial setup was straightforward, and I would rate the experience as 4.5 out of 5.

We're getting a good ROI from Synapse Analytics.

I understand that Synapse Analytics' pricing is lower than Informatica's.

I also evaluated Informatica Cloud Integrations but felt that Synapse was more straightforward.

I would give Synapse Analytics a rating of nine out of ten.

We have implemented our data warehouse on Synapse.

The solution has been reliable so far.

The product is scalable, or, at least, that is my understanding. 

We've had a good experience with technical support in general. They are helpful. 

The solution has proven to be very user-friendly.

Right now, we are really struggling with the performance. it's not as good as we had hoped. 

I cannot recall coming across any missing features. 

One problem is that getting the query cost is not easy. I need to use multiple tools. It can be accessed through the web, or we have Azure Data Studio, or SSMS, and I only get the query cost in SSMS, the SQL Server Management Studio. In other tools, I'm not getting it. For example, in the web version or in Azure Data Studio, it is not available. They need to make it accessible in both of those places as well. 

I haven't used the solution for very long. 

The performance on offer is lackluster. We were hoping for better. 

That said, it is reliable, and if I get the required performance, I am happy with it. 

While I haven't really tested the scalability, it is my impression that the solution can scale and it shouldn't be an issue for any company to do so.

Technical support is good. They are helping us in improving the performance. We're quite satisfied with the level of service they are offing us. They are helpful and responsive. 

I did not handle the initial setup. That was handled by another party. Therefore, I don't have any insights into the process or how easy or difficult it was to implement. 

I don't have any insights into the licensing process. It is implemented on our client's side, and therefore, I'm not involved in that.

We're just customers and end-users. My company does not have any relationship. It's our client who has a relationship with Microsoft.

I'm not sure which version we are using, however, I would guess it is the latest version. I'm not 100% sure.

Since the solution is still new to me, and I am having issues with performance, it's too early to say if I would recommend the solution to other users or companies. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We have been using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics as our proof of concept in our data warehouse. As for the analytics part, we have not used it because we do not have any SQL pools. We think it is a bit more than we need because our data is not implicated and the data sets are not very large. It is mostly been used for the detection functions and to link up the sources.

The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics are how easy and quick it is to set up the linked services.

When I was trying to link services to an SFTP site it was not able to do all the possible encryption that I needed. They can improve by adding more encryption options.

I have been using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics for approximately six months.

The solution is incredibly stable. 

The only thing that has not been stable are the pipelines that we are using runtime integration on our on-premise server and something is slowing everything down, it might be a particular ODBC connection. I am not sure if that is due to the Microsoft platform or it might be some other setup or settings that are causing the issue. However, other than this issue, the solution has been brilliant. It has been very reliable and stable.

The solution is scalable. I have changed the interface and most of the operations can be done from the interface by clicking a few buttons, it is quick and easy.

At the moment we only have approximately four people using the solution because it is a data warehouse creation in the back end. We have not reached the stage where our staff will use the product but we are building a single customer view using the platform and we will be increase usage in the future.

The initial installation is straightforward. There is a lot of documentation provided by Microsoft making it very easy to get started.

Having used the serverless option for the database has saved us a lot of money.

We chose the serverless option for the database which has saved us a lot of money. Our costs are approximately £600 per month.

It is beneficial to always plan exactly what the main aims are and then choose the solution that can do it. If you want something quick, I set something up without any knowledge with Azure in three weeks. Once you get going, everything will be at your fingertips.

I rate Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics an eight out of ten.

We are mainly using this solution as an interface between the Data Lake and the users.

We are consultants and this product assists with the services that we offer for our clients. Our company has a large number of consultants who are working in this space.

The most important feature for me is the integration with PolyBase.

Other valuable features for me are advanced threat protection and data privacy.

I would like there to be more focus on the Software as a Service (SaaS) product. For example, Snowflake, one of their competitors, is more focused on SaaS.

They need to improve a little bit in terms of user-friendliness. I would rate them a three out of five, in terms of how user-friendly the interface is.

The auto-scaling capabilities are quite poor, especially compared to Snowflake or Firebolt.

In total, I have been using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics for one year.

This is a stable solution.

You can scale it, although you need to put in more effort. We have approximately 800 users.

In general, Microsoft support is pretty good.

I have experience with similar products such as Snowflake and Firebolt.

The initial setup is very complex compared to other products. It takes weeks to deploy.

We implement this product for our clients.

The cost of the licensing depends on the size of the warehouse, where the cost of storage is approximately $130 USD per terabyte. The charge might be several thousand dollars or more each month.

There are multiple options that are available at an extra cost. For example, the advanced threat protection costs an extra $25 USD.

We evaluated several options before choosing Synaps Analytics.

The suitability of this product really depends on the use case. It is good if your company is using only Microsoft products and you don't want to use another stack. If you want to use other platforms then you should consider Snowflake, which is also deployed on Azure. It really depends on what it is that you need.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We haven't really implemented any SSIS. I haven't been in a project where it was implemented as part of the data we have been building.

The features we've found most valuable for data warehouses is extracting data, SSIS packages, and the DBs.

So far, with the current SQL that I'm using compared to what we've previously used, I'm happy with it. I wouldn't necessarily point out anything that needs improvement.

From my point of view from what we have implemented recently, I'm happy with the solution, I'm happy with the performance. I'm not entirely happy with the billing model. I'm not entirely happy with how the enterprise services are pretty expensive, but that's about it.

I have been using this solution for around 18 months.

It is very stable.

I think the architectural design is very scalable.

I never contacted Microsoft customer support. 

We do have access to it, but we haven't needed to.

I've used Tableau, I've used SQL DB, I've used SAP DB.

The initial setup wasn't complex. It was okay. It wasn't complex at all.

To set it up within full compliance with our cloud infrastructure team, I'd say maybe two weeks after beginning our testing. I'd say the team wasn't a hundred percent devoted to setting it up as they had other things to do. So I'd say I'll give it two weeks to be realistic for a large organization.

It depends on whether you have those resources internally or not. If you have internal resources you wouldn't need to outsource, if you don't have, you would. So it's not a matter of how good that application is but a question of whether you have the capability in house.

The enterprise services are pretty expensive.

We use it for reporting purposes and for building data warehouses, pipelines, and data lakes for IoT projects.

I like how Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics integrates with other Microsoft solutions. 

Real-time integration is hard to do in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics.

I've been using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics for two years.

I would rate the solution's stability at nine out of ten.

For the amount of data that we have, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics has worked perfectly fine in terms of scalability. Thus, for us the scalability is a ten out of ten.

The documentation is good, but if you cannot find the right documentation and the right steps, then the initial setup can be hard. I would rate the initial deployment at seven out of ten.

This solution is deployed on the cloud, and it took half a day to deploy it. I configured the data lake storage, created the workspace, and added users and user rights. Building pipelines is a straightforward process.

I think Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is priced well, and I would rate the price at eight out of ten.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics at seven. Other solutions have more user-friendly and intuitive interfaces.