Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Reviews

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.

I used it for a project thesis for my school project.

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.

I am a researcher. For people to be able to research a solution, there should be at least a free trial. Just advertising a product or saying that this product is better doesn't work. I would strongly recommend providing a lot of free trials and trainings. This will also help Microsoft in having more users or customers. Oracle provides some free trials. You can just go for a free trial and use your database online, which is very good.

I have been using Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse for three months.

It was ready when I started to use it. I just had to do my project.

Its price could be better. It was a school project, and I got it for free. If I try to pay through my company, it is a little bit more expensive as compared to Oracle.

I am also using an Oracle solution. Oracle has been in the database field for a longer time, and it provides you more familiar terms that the users understand. When users start to work with an Oracle solution, they are more familiar with the terms. They just need basic training to understand it, but with Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, they have to be a little bit more experienced. In order to understand this product better, they have to know how other Microsoft products work.

It is a powerful asset if we can use it and learn more about it. If Microsoft can give some free training sessions for students and amateurs, it would be helpful in knowing more about this product from inside. 

I would rate Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse an eight out of ten.

We primarily use this solution for source analytics and procurement.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the analytics and that it can connect with Power BI. I found it quite interesting and very compelling in terms of detail within a single stack.

I would like my team to be able to build pipelines that integrate with the Azure Data Factory. Some of the best-in-class ETL products that are available in the market, such as Informatica ETL, are far more mature than this solution.

We started implementing projects with Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse about six months ago.

This is a stable product.

Scalability is good and we haven't had any issues.

We have approximately 150 users. We are stable at the moment but we will expand our usage as we get more data.

We have contacted Microsoft support twice, but I do not have much experience with them.

In addition to Azure SQL Data Warehouse, we work with the version that is on-premises.

We are also working with Oracle Data Warehouse and we plan to continue using both of these solutions.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We implement this solution for our customers.

If you are using Microsoft products, such as Office 365, then this solution is good because it can take the data from multiple sources. 

This is a good product, but when you compare to Oracle Data Warehouse there are differences in scalability, high availability, and implementation.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.