Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Reviews

We are developing our SQL Data Warehouse locally, using SQL Server 2016 on our private cloud, and we will be migrating it to Azure once it is ready.

The company for which I am working deals with products in the leisure industry, such as museums and swimming pools. They use the data warehouse solution for big data reporting. Currently, we are developing a multi-platform data warehouse that can support the reporting requirements for all of the customers. Whatever analytics they want to perform will be done with the data warehouse, and not the SQL database application.

My role is to design the data warehouse, and once that is complete, we need to build the data pipelines so that the data can be moved from the application databases into the warehouse. Then we will design the OLAP servers and OLAP cubes, vertically, to give us a presentation layer on top of the data warehouse. This layer is what the customers will be using.

The most valuable feature is the incremental load because we do not need to refresh the entire data on a daily basis. We have a nightly load where all of the data is updated, and it is a very good feature.

The transaction log shipping gives us the ability to replicate the database onto different servers for backup and synchronization.

The major concern is that I have a hard time with having to version control the data warehouse all the time. As it is now, I have to open all of the ports and push everything onto the server. I would like to see version control implemented into the data warehouse. This would make the tool perfect. 

I have been using this Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse for about two and a half years.

The version that we have been using, 2016, is stable. We have not used the 2019 version in production yet, but there is a team that is evaluating that version right now. I'm not sure of the reason for it not being in production, whether it is related to stability or not.

The scalability is good. I think we are already using a high availability cluster for 2016, so I assume that it will be the same with the 2019 version. We are also using it with our data recovery system, so it is not an issue.

We have approximately twelve to fifteen developers and approx. 900+ customers who will be using the data warehouse. We are acquiring customers on a monthly or quarterly basis, so it is a pretty big user base and we expect that our usage will continue to increase.

We don't have too many technical issues, so overall, I think that it's good enough.

I began with Microsoft SQL Server and have been on the Microsoft platform ever since.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It has been a long time since we first implemented this solution, but since that point, we have created a custom handbook that we can follow in order to set it up.

There are certain design concepts that can be used to design a data warehouse. My advice to anybody who is implementing this solution is to first study the user's needs, and then go with that approach. The design will be specific to the needs.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

It is useful for Azure services. I am using its latest version.

Its seamless integration with Azure services is most valuable. If somebody wants to use all Azure services, it is the best solution.

The ability to integrate with different Azure services from within the Synapse Analytics workspace is also valuable.

Its stability is an issue. They have been releasing a version every six months to one year, which means that there are many versions available, and clients are not up to speed on the latest one that they're offering. From a stability point of view, they could do better. They're still upgrading their Synapse Analytics workspace, and it is not that stable. Its scalability can also be better.

I would like to see support for cross-DB queries.

I have been working with this solution for three years.

Its stability is an issue because they're still upgrading the Synapse Analytics workspace.

It is scalable to a certain limit. It is not as scalable as Snowflake, but it is scalable.

There are many available versions of Azure Synapse, such as Azure Synapse SQL Datawarehouse, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure Synapse Analytics workspace. You need to be aware of the features that you are looking for and accordingly choose the offering.

I would rate it a five out of 10.

The healthcare sector is looking for how to accomplish certain processes because currently a lot of it is pure logistics. The goal is to announce and to make processes more transparent and see if they can be made more efficient. This is where business analytics comes in. The organization is using different kinds of information sources, such as electronic client dossiers or HR systems. They will see what kind of knowledge is required, how the patient or the clients are experiencing what quality of health, and create dashboards to see how the organization is doing. This will show which areas they can improve and which areas are already more efficient to make them more visible. This should allow a better understanding from the management, organization, and healthcare professional.

The features most valuable are the simplicity, how easy it is to create a dashboard from different information systems. We are trying to get these organizations to work with the architecture. This should allow these organizations if there is a new product or a new piece of software that is introduced to be able to handle operations themselves. For example, being able to attach the new product to a Power Bl, create a connector, or create interactive information exchange between these two or more different information systems. Standardization and simplicity, are key features.

The solution can integrate well if there is a connector. It will integrate perfectly with the Office 365 suite and Workspace 365.

Indicating what areas need improvement in this solution is a difficult question because the organizations that I am working for are really new in this area. However, an even better more simple interface, or perhaps an extension of a connector app store solution, would be helpful. For example, if your organization, has an electronic client dossier and you want to connect that information system in real-time towards Power BI, you just go to the app store and see if there is an ONS connector, introduce it, set it up, and go from there.

In an upcoming release, it would be beneficial to have the ability to have dashboards on mobile devices to receive a better experience for the user.

I have been using the solution for approximately five years.

This solution is reliable. You have to be aware that you are solely depending on an internet connection. The stability is more about the resilience and reliability of the stability of the network rather than the solution itself.

We have not tried to expand the solution into a very large extension because it is a rather small organization that I am working for. The Azure platform where Power BI is running on is expandable to whatever you like.

We have many organizations using this solution. The care organization I am working for has three customers using it. I am also working as an associate with another company and they have multiple organizations that are working with these solutions. My estimate would be approximately 15 organizations that are working with this solution.

We have plans to increase usage, but these organizations are all at the starting point. This is a strategic solution to improve their processes and business continuity. It is a conservative environment, every change is really hard. It is really stressful to get changes done and it will take some time. This solution changes the way in which work is done, it will take up to three to four years to be widely adopted.

If I ever have to do call Microsoft support, they are really supportive. For instance, on the Office 365 suite, I had an issue and I received a call back the next day by somebody in the United States. They walked me through the issue and they resolved it within a few hours. They have service-level agreements to attend to and there is good monitoring to see what the status is, the support was really good.

In the initial setup, to make it really easy I have, for instance, just a plain Excel sheet retrieving information in and one information system which brings in live data giving you a good starting point. It is not a really hard setup, to do it is quite straightforward. In the Netherlands, there are some major players concerning electronic client dossiers and electronic patient dossiers. Once you go through the complexity once you can then re-use it for a different customer.

The deployment just takes approximately two hours. It is the testing and the acceptance, and what to get out of the product, that is going to take a longer period of time. This could take up to a couple of weeks to a couple of months.

The type of license depends on what you want. This is a perpetual and monthly license, similar to Office 365.

My company pays for the license and  I am not sure about the price. Sometimes my company wants to have a micro business case study to see if it is an actual benefit for us to purchase. It is a strategic solution and we have to make sure that the organization understands this is going to save them money in the long run.

My advice to those wanting to implement this solution would be to "Think big and act small." See what is up ahead. One of the organizations that I am working for, the big picture is population health management. We are not going to start with that, we are going to start to improve one small process, which is a cumbersome process that is been difficult for many years. That is the process that we are going to make transparent towards the organization, to see where the bottlenecks could be or are, and improve that process. 

We want the user experience to improve and that the amount of time you can save is monitored, which can be used for other care processes. Start with a cumbersome problem, resolve them first. You can actually tell within the organization, if the solution is already working, not on the larger scale, but on the small scale. Once you start seeing these results move on to the next problem.

The solution is secure. However, the organization has to be aware that if you use the security by default, the security is there. It has security by design. It is not the optimal security, I would always recommend that organizations use multi-factor authentication for an additional security layer. Additionally, if possible, have a next-generation firewall within their network in use or, if not, start implementing that if they are planning to move forward into an outsource Azure platform-based eco landscape.

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

We use this solution to analyze big data. We collect data from different sources then we analyze that data with Synapse.

One of the most valuable features of this solution is its ability to integrate well with other services offered by Azure. 

Scaling this solution up and down is not quick and easy. This could be improved. The pricing of this solution could also be improved. 

We have used this solution for two years. 

This is a stable solution but we have experienced some unavailability issues. These were not critical issues. 

This solution is quite easy to scale depending on your workload. Overall it is a little bit expensive. You have to know exactly what you are doing as you scale up, otherwise the cost goes up quite quickly.

This solution is relatively easy to set up and use. The time it takes to setup depends on the complexity of your environment. If you want to complete a basic setup, it only involves a few clicks. In a production environment for a complex setup, it's it takes some time to complete the configuration. 

We completed the setup in-house. 

Synapse is useful for very big loads of data. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

I am using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics with Snowflake.

The solution has been working well overall.

I have been using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics for approximately four years.

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is stable.

I have not needed to contact the support, everything seems to work.

The solution could improve by having better costing information.

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

The solution's scalability is very, very good. It's one of the most important aspects for us. 

We really need our data to stay in Western Europe. As an insurance company, it's important for our business. Microsoft can guarantee that it stays in Western Europe. That way, data is not processed anywhere else.

It's widely acknowledged as an excellent product throughout the industry. There's a lot of knowledge about it in the Netherlands as well. It makes it very easy to find a consultancy and also employees who can help us with its modern architecture.

The initial setup is easy. You don't need extensive training. It's an intuitive process.

What I would like to see is a possibility for time travel on the data. For instance, a financial department would like to do an analysis of the data set as it was for the first of the month while another department wants to run the analysis about how things went yesterday or last week. They have different starting points for the queries. I've seen Snowflake handle tasks such as these. It's got a feature called time shuffling, which can show me what's there on a certain variety of dates. It's very convenient.

It would be great if we could query the data of the day as well as in the data warehouse. 

They should have scalable memory processor options for the data warehouse.

While the solution is flexible, sometimes this works against the user.

We're new to the solution. We started using it last year around April or May. It's been less than 12 months so far.

The solution is scalable. It's online. That means you can scale it online and can stop the database to change the scaling of it.

We've had a few calls with technical support. They were very helpful and responsive. We have been satisfied with their level of support.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not overly complex. A company shouldn't have any issues with the initial setup or implementation. You don't need deep technical insights to have training.

You can create a floor space in an hour. That's no problem. Afterward, you have to work with the data and do a few more things in terms of configuration, however, it's not hard.

We are using the latest version of the solution.

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

I would recommend Synapse, however, it depends on which industry an organization is working in. It can be complex, and often, you have to choose between several tools. They're all able to do the same job, they're just more industry-specific in some cases. 

If you want to transform your data, you can choose between the database, data factory, and SQL, and even other tools.

This means it is very flexible, however, it also makes it difficult to administer. It's not that one of these sources is harder per se. It's more about what is the best for the job. Sometimes you create something and it doesn't perform and you have to start from scratch.

We are using it internally and afterward some of the outcomes are made public, either to customers or in different projects.

It's mainly for preparing internal documents when we use Word. Otherwise, we use it for externally or for a lot of PowerPoint and Excel for budget purposes. Being a small company, we don't need a very sophisticated software solution, so with an Excel spreadsheet, we can handle the different budget of different projects simultaneously.

When connecting one project to the other, especially when it's handled by the same project director, the possibility of linking one spreadsheet to the other has been useful. Also, when using a Word document and making a link to another document based on an Excel spreadsheet, that's very useful. It's also great that we can interrelate one document to the other and sometimes one project to the other.

The macro functions of Excel are very useful. 

The stability is pretty good.

The solution has the potential to scale.

The macro functions, though useful, are not totally user-friendly. Some people have difficulties in learning them.

If the project keeps growing we will need to link some of the documents to the data warehouse. However, at that time, I'm not sure about the possibility of keeping the same systems that we are using right now. We may need some kind of migration. I cannot say for sure, as I am not an expert. We'll need advice on that.

The initial setup is not straightforward.

The solutions not user-friendly and does require training of some sort.

The solution requires a lot of the memory of the different devices.

We've been using the solution for a while. We use it pretty much every day and have used it over the past 12 months.

My intention is to increase productivity. As long as a project can still be handled the way they are, we will keep using the current system. If we see a better alternative with better productivity achievement, we will most probably think about migration. For now, we find it to be stable and acceptable.

We do plan to increase usage and we may hire a consultant to help with an expansion in a few months. This will likely happen, however, anything can change in terms of the business and the larger industry.

Scalability is good. I foresee scalability in terms of the possibility of using more features and the only difficult thing that I see already is the macros of the Excel spreadsheets. I also know that it has a good opportunity for scalability, in terms of the more complex tasks that can be achieved. 

Currently, we have ten people on the solution.

We use an outsourcing service for technical support. We've been satisfied with their level of service.

We haven't used a different product. We've always used Microsoft.

The initial setup is complex. It's not straightforward.

In many ways, implementation is a never-ending process, as there are always things to improve. In a few months, most of our people are familiar with the product and have a good sense of the basics, however, there's always more to do.

There was actually one consultant at the beginning of the project. We will also definitely need someone for future migration. However, it's not something that we are considering at present. It's something we'll need to do probably in the next few months. It will depend on the growth of the business.

The licensing is okay. There might be a few extra fees in addition to the standard license.

I'm just an end-user and customer.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

I'd rate them higher if they could make it more user-friendly in terms of those more sophisticated capabilities that the system offers. Also, the training requires long hours. That's something difficult to organize when people have to be allocated to specific training sessions, instead of being on the projects. There's a kind of complex way of balancing the possibility of some people using the more sophisticated solutions and getting trained. 

Our primary use case is to process data and provide it to our clients.

The most valuable feature is data processing.

The architecture, including compute and storage, is good.

The performance and data consistency need to be improved.

Support for PSQL functionality should be included, as it is something that is missing right now.

I have used Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics over the past 12 months.

The stability has been getting much better. Two years back, there were issues with it.

Scalability is something that is improving.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We deployed it ourselves.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.