Snowflake and Microsoft Analytics Platform System are competitive in cloud-based data warehousing and analytics. Data comparisons show Snowflake offers easier scaling and competitive pricing, while Microsoft Analytics Platform System has robust features that justify its pricing.
Features: Snowflake integrates seamlessly with various data sources, processes real-time data, and efficiently handles concurrent queries. Microsoft Analytics Platform System includes a comprehensive suite of analytics tools, advanced data security features, and compatibility with Microsoft's ecosystem, making it a strong choice for organizations already utilizing Microsoft products.
Room for Improvement: Snowflake could enhance its data security features and increase compatibility with specific enterprise software environments. It would benefit from expanded analytic tool offerings. Microsoft Analytics Platform System could improve in simplifying on-premises deployment, enhancing integration with non-Microsoft products, and providing more flexible pricing models for smaller enterprises.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Snowflake’s cloud-native architecture facilitates easy deployment with straightforward support options. It streamlines transitions with efficient customer service. Microsoft Analytics Platform System might have a more complex on-premises setup but offers detailed support documentation and personalized assistance for existing Microsoft customers.
Pricing and ROI: Snowflake uses a flexible consumption-based pricing model that supports cost efficiency and high return on investment with low initial setup costs. Microsoft Analytics Platform System requires a substantial upfront investment but offers long-term value for organizations leveraging Microsoft’s integrated solutions.
Snowflake is a cloud-based data warehousing solution for storing and processing data, generating reports and dashboards, and as a BI reporting source. It is used for optimizing costs and using financial data, as well as for migrating data from on-premises to the cloud. The solution is often used as a centralized data warehouse, combining data from multiple sources.
Snowflake has helped organizations improve query performance, store and process JSON and XML, consolidate multiple databases into one unified table, power company-wide dashboards, increase productivity, reduce processing time, and have easy maintenance with good technical support.
Its platform is made up of three components:
Snowflake has many valuable vital features. Some of the most useful ones include:
There are many benefits to implementing Snowflake. It helps optimize costs, reduce downtime, improve operational efficiency, and automate data replication for fast recovery, and it is built for high reliability and availability.
Below are quotes from interviews we conducted with users currently using the Snowflake solution:
Sreenivasan R., Director of Data Architecture and Engineering at Decision Minds, says, "Data sharing is a good feature. It is a majorly used feature. The elastic computing is another big feature. Separating computing and storage gives you flexibility. It doesn't require much DBA involvement because it doesn't need any performance tuning. We are not doing any performance tuning, and the entire burden of performance and SQL tuning is on Snowflake. Its usability is very good. I don't need to ramp up any user, and its onboarding is easier. You just onboard the user, and you are done with it. There are simple SQL and UI, and people are able to use this solution easily. Ease of use is a big thing in Snowflake."
A director of business operations at a logistics company mentions, "It requires no maintenance on our part. They handle all that. The speed is phenomenal. The pricing isn't really anything more than what you would be paying for a SQL server license or another tool to execute the same thing. We have zero maintenance on our side to do anything and the speed at which it performs queries and loads the data is amazing. It handles unstructured data extremely well, too. So, if the data is in a JSON array or an XML, it handles that super well."
A Solution Architect at a wholesaler/distributor comments, "The ability to share the data and the ability to scale up and down easily are the most valuable features. The concept of data sharing and data plumbing made it very easy to provide and share data. The ability to refresh your Dev or QA just by doing a clone is also valuable. It has the dynamic scale up and scale down feature. Development and deployment are much easier as compared to other platforms where you have to go through a lot of stuff. With a tool like DBT, you can do modeling and transformation within a single tool and deploy to Snowflake. It provides continuous deployment and continuous integration abilities. There is a separation of storage and compute, so you only get charged for your usage. You only pay for what you use. When we share the data downstream with business partners, we can specifically create compute for them, and we can charge back the business."
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