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Amazon Redshift vs Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.0
Some entities quickly achieved cost savings and ROI, while others face challenges with optimization and evaluating benefits.
Sentiment score
4.9
Users find Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse effective in managing data, integrating tools, with ROI potential despite indirect tracking.
We earned back our investment in Amazon Redshift within the first year.
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Amazon Redshift support is efficient yet costly, praised for documentation, but phone contact and complex issue resolution face delays.
Sentiment score
6.8
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse support is generally positive with responsive service, though some suggest enhancements in speed and Azure expertise.
Whenever we need support, if there is an issue accessing stored data due to regional data center problems, the Amazon team is very helpful and provides optimal solutions quickly.
Analyst at Cepstrum(EEE Students Society), IIT Guwahati
Documentation that allows anyone with prior knowledge of Redshift or SQL to resolve technical issues.
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It's costly when you enable support.
Senior Analyst at ESRI INDIA
They are responsive and get back to us.
Service Desk Administrator at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would rate my experience with technical support around six on a scale of 1 to 10 because I have not had a particular experience with technical support.
CEO at Smart Data-Driven Solutions
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Amazon Redshift is highly scalable with flexible cluster adjustments, despite some challenges at larger scales and heavy loads.
Sentiment score
7.3
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is scalable with SQL benefits, but may lag behind Snowflake in large data handling.
The scalability part needs improvement as the sizing requires trial and error.
Data Analytics, Ai & Automation Lead at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
We have successfully increased our storage space, which was a smooth process without server crashes before or after scaling.
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
We go from a couple of users to tons of users all the time, and it scales and handles things really well.
Service Desk Administrator at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
I give the scalability an eight out of ten, indicating it scales well for our needs.
Architecture at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
As a consultant, we hire additional programmers when we need to scale up certain major projects.
Associate Director at Sequentis
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Opinions on Amazon Redshift's stability vary, with some praising reliability and others noting issues in large clusters or maintenance.
Sentiment score
8.1
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is stable, reliable, handles large volumes well, with occasional speed issues on vast datasets.
Amazon Redshift is a stable product, and I would rate it nine or ten out of ten for stability.
Data Analytics, Ai & Automation Lead at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is stable for us because it is built on SQL Server.
Architecture at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon Redshift users face challenges with performance, integration, cost, and features, preferring improved solutions like Snowflake's offerings.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse needs better tool integration, scalability, compatibility, frequent updates, competitive pricing, and enhanced error messaging.
They should bring the entire ETL data management process into Amazon Redshift.
Data Analytics, Ai & Automation Lead at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
Integration with AI could be a good improvement.
Analyst at Cepstrum(EEE Students Society), IIT Guwahati
Integration with AI features could elevate its capabilities and popularity.
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It would be better to release patches less frequently, maybe once a month or once every two months.
Associate Director at Sequentis
Addressing the cost would be the number one area for improvement.
CEO at Smart Data-Driven Solutions
When there are many users or many expensive queries, it can be very slow.
Computer engineer at a engineering company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Amazon Redshift offers mid-to-high pricing, seen as reasonable due to its scalability and potential cost-effectiveness compared to competitors.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse offers competitive pricing, suitable for large enterprises, but can be costly for high-performance needs.
The cost of technical support is high.
Senior Analyst at ESRI INDIA
It's a pretty good price and reasonable for the product quality.
Data Analytics, Ai & Automation Lead at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
The pricing of Amazon Redshift is expensive.
Co-Founder, Director at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is very expensive.
Architecture at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon Redshift offers scalability, fast queries, AWS integration, flexibility, security, cost-effectiveness, easy setup, and compatibility for complex data management.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse boosts data loads, integrates with Power BI, and offers scalable BI with minimal costs.
Amazon Redshift's performance optimization and scalability are quite helpful, providing functionalities such as scaling up and down.
Data Analytics, Ai & Automation Lead at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
Scalability is also a strong point; I can scale it however I want without any limitations.
Co-Founder, Director at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
The specific features of Amazon Redshift that are beneficial for handling large data sets include fast retrieval due to cloud services and scalability, which allows us to retrieve data quickly.
Analyst at Cepstrum(EEE Students Society), IIT Guwahati
The columnstore index enhances data query performance by using less space and achieving faster performance than general indexing.
BI/Data Warehouse Analyst at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is used in the logistics area for optimizing SQL queries related to the loading and unloading of trucks.
Architecture at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
There's a feature that allows users to set alerts on triggers within reports, enabling timely actions on pending applications and effectively reducing waiting time.
Associate Director at Sequentis
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Redshift
Ranking in Data Warehouse
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
73
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (6th), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (8th)
Microsoft Parallel Data War...
Ranking in Data Warehouse
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon Redshift is 4.6%, down from 7.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is 3.2%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Redshift4.6%
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse3.2%
Other92.2%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Hemanthreddy Vakiti - PeerSpot reviewer
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Optimized restaurant analytics has driven faster insights and streamlined daily reporting
Amazon Redshift offers massive parallel processing capability, allowing it to handle millions of records, along with integration with other AWS features such as S3 and QuickSight. The column-level storage supports high performance and easy data retrieval compared to other tools. The integration with S3 has helped my team immensely since S3 is our starting source, and the direct integration with Amazon Redshift simplifies the transformation and loading process. Columnar storage has benefited our performance significantly, allowing us to extract specific rows from tables with years of data much faster than other tools with row-level storage. Amazon Redshift has positively impacted our organization by significantly improving query performance and speed. Features such as easy integration with S3 allow us to process millions of records efficiently, ultimately saving us nearly one hour per day for our project.
HassanFatemi - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at Smart Data-Driven Solutions
Has handled large volumes of data effectively but still needs cost flexibility
There could be improvements on the cost side of Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse because it is still considered to be quite expensive by a lot of users, and many companies are not interested in solutions with parallel data warehousing due to this expense. Addressing the cost would be the number one area for improvement. Additionally, I have not worked recently with it, so I don't know if this feature already exists, but if it doesn't, having an elastic feature that adjusts the service's power dynamically based on the workload would be beneficial instead of fixing the power at a specific level.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Construction Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise22
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Redshift?
My experience with pricing and setup cost is satisfactory, as we have been loyal clients of Amazon since the beginning of our organization. However, I am not aware of the exact costs associated wit...
What needs improvement with Amazon Redshift?
Amazon Redshift could improve by enhancing its UI to be more user-friendly for non-technical users and by offering better cost management, as similar tools tend to be less expensive. Additionally, ...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
The pricing could be better; I think it actually just went up.
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
The basic use case for us is virtual machines. In real estate, we use it for our operations. They handle large data sets well, and the performance is good during those times.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft PDW, SQL Server Data Warehouse, Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, MS Parallel Data Warehouse
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Liberty Mutual Insurance, 4Cite Marketing, BrandVerity, DNA Plc, Sirocco Systems, Gainsight, Blue 449
Auckland Transport, Erste Bank Group, Urban Software Institute, NJVC, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Tata Steel Europe
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Redshift vs. Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.