Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer comparison

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

117

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Cus...

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 15.9%, down from 18.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer is 4.1%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

Charley Hanania

Data Platform Specialist at QS2 AG - Quality Software Solutions

It is very easy to implement, manage, and offers great insights into what is happening inside the engine

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is integrated into other Azure capabilities and has a great foundation being on SQL Server with a long history of security, performance, and usability from a DBA perspective. Once you've set up a server, adding databases is easy. There's a minor challenge with having data in separate databases that you want to connect like we do on premises. I'm looking forward to using some of these new AI-driven functions that have come out around vectorization. Having the data closer to my transactional databases or data makes it easy to augment and enhance the Database and applications I currently use. It's great that Azure SQL now seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Fabric. It's a first-tier service in the cloud that connects to web applications and other databases. The data transformation orchestration capabilities within Database Factory and similar capabilities make it effortless to move that stuff forward.

Read full review

RODRIGOPETERSON

Senior Architect at Capgemini

Leverages cloud capabilities and offers minimal latency with operation model

Customers have less operational burden and more responsibility regarding the management of hardware. Increasing the scale of Oracle Exadata Cloud provides more capacity, higher performance, and expanded storage, CPU, and memory resources. If you need to scale Oracle's capacity up or down, the appliance can be adjusted on-premise. When you purchase Oracle Exadata Cloud, you must acquire either a half or full rack. If you need to increase capacity, you can scale up by adding more hardware. This hardware commitment lasts four to five years, meaning you must maintain this infrastructure and continue payments for that period. While you can scale up to meet increased demands, scaling down is more challenging. I recommend the solution when the customer desires to transition to a cloud-native solution but needs to retain their data in OpenEdge due to compatibility issues or the requirement to interact with on-premise systems to minimize latency. This solution offers minimal latency and modernizes Oracle capabilities through a gateway. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable aspect of SQL Azure is the SQL language itself. It's open and everybody can use it at my company. Also, we thought in the beginning that the response time would be inadequate, but it's actually decent. It's much better than expected. Then again, I'm not a programmer, but that's what I hear from our development team."

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database supplies reliability and efficiency with its infrastructure, which is very beneficial to our organization."

"Database services and Active Directory related functions for this solution are good. Stable, scalable, and easy to install. Its technical support is good."

"The solution is efficient and easy to use."

"In terms of stability, because Microsoft is the underlying technology, they are much more stable than say Oracle. Since 2014 they did a great job in offering stability, performance and high visibility on the solution, especially in comparison to the other competitors."

"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."

"It is easy to scale in Azure in a way that I cannot scale on-prem."

"Coding does not require much effort."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros

"I am particularly fond of the intelligent capabilities that enhance the backend, utilizing technology to analyze SQL queries."

"The operation model is the most valuable feature."

"I like that Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer is a stable, well-positioned product in the market today, and it's very scalable."

"Exporting and importing is easy because of its cleanliness, making the process easier. However, setting up the Data Guard was more difficult. Despite this, the client experienced lower downtime."

"Performance has significantly improved."

"The most valuable feature is that it is based on Exadata infrastructure, which is Oracle 's leading engineered system that is trusted, fault-tolerant, and has unique performance features."

Cons

"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of better self-service tools."

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database could be improved by offering an easier way to view all existing roles in the database without needing complex queries found online."

"Support isn't that great. They need to work on this aspect of their service. It can be challenging to reach them."

"Lacks some tools on the SQL Server for data virtualization."

"The pricing is very high."

"The document storage is primarily relational, which is not ideally suited for SQL. If there were better integration with SharePoint for document handling in SQL, it would greatly benefit the organization. Moreover, the current on-premise limitations prevent direct file pulling, limiting certain capabilities."

"One area for improvement is setting up logs, especially for servers like VM SQL. It was also tricky to connect services on VNets to on-premise."

"There is a need for dynamic scaling support without losing current transactions. That should be part of the standard offering to SKUs. It doesn't have Auto SQL. We have HyperSQL, but there are limitations on the Elastic Pool. It only allows 25 databases. It would help if we could automatically analyze and optimize long-running queries instead of handling these tasks manually."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database cons

"As a customer, you can't see the boot messages of your virtualized guest machines."

"We had some problems in the developer's environment. We had some problems with the initial installation environment."

"Scalability is not straightforward."

"For the data migration, we used ZDM. It was not integrated with the databases, and the documentation lacks clarity."

"A room for improvement in Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer is that they need to train more partners to gain more knowledge because currently, they are keeping a lot to themselves. For example, they are still keeping a lot of information on their campus, so information sharing is limited."

"The solution is expensive."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You can use it for smaller instances and pay less. You can also go for the premium product with all the security, scalability, and business continuity features, but you have to pay a premium amount."

"It requires a license. As compared to its competitors, such as Oracle, it is affordable and reasonable."

"I am not aware of the exact pricing, but our monthly bill for Azure is around 80,000. It is less expensive than using SQL Server. It has the pay-as-you-go model, and the charges are based on the usage."

"The licensing for this solution is based on subscription."

"The pricing is actually complicated, and that is probably one downside of it. In some respects, although we can plan for the costs on a month-by-month basis, we are finding it hard to project our costings for it. Fundamentally, Microsoft is offering two pricing models, and it is challenging to understand the differences between the two. We're basically on the DTU model at the moment. That may change in the future as the size grows, but it is one of those things that we'll end up monitoring as we progress. At the moment, to get a reasonable response, generally, the price is a little high for us, but it is one of those things for which we know that we can do improvements on our code. So, it is not just the service that's the problem; it is some of the things that we need to do as well."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"There is a license required to use the solution and it cost $30 to do the installation."

"There is no licensing cost for the solution."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pricing and cost advice

"The machine and the cloud model itself already have licensing advantages."

"The price is too much."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

73%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

36%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SQL Azure?

The automated scalability feature of SQL Azure has proven to be highly beneficial, particularly when deployed in the cloud.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SQL Azure?

The price for running the server increased more than expected in recent months, and better alignment of pricing expectations is needed. Notably, costs related to IT staff coming into the office on ...

What needs improvement with SQL Azure?

We're trying to manage our costs better. We've noticed an unexpected increase in the cost of running the server over the past few months. Addressing pricing clarity and alignment would help us. Als...

What do you like most about Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer?

Exporting and importing is easy because of its cleanliness, making the process easier. However, setting up the Data Guard was more difficult. Despite this, the client experienced lower downtime.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer?

The pricing is reasonable due to a universal agreement, which often positions Oracle solutions better against others. I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten.

What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer?

Scalability is not straightforward, as you can scale up and not down. Improvements could be made to make scalability more flexible.

Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Comparisons

Compared 43% of the time

Amazon RDS vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 27% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 16% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 7% of the time

vCloud Air vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database Competitors

Oracle Database as a Service vs Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer

Compared 46% of the time

Amazon RDS vs Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer

Compared 31% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer

Compared 8% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer

Compared 7% of the time

Google Cloud Spanner vs Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer

Compared 7% of the time

More Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Download Microsoft Azure SQL Database product report

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer

Download Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer product report

Overview

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is a relational database-as-a-service that delivers predictable performance, scalability, business continuity, data protection, and near-zero administration to cloud developers and solution architects. This is the deep technical library for Azure SQL Database.

Microsoft

Oracle Cloud@Customer brings Oracle’s complete portfolio of public cloud infrastructure, fully managed cloud services, and Oracle Fusion SaaS applications into your data center. It enables you to run applications faster and lower your costs using the same high-performance capabilities, autonomous operations, and low-cost subscription pricing in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). You get all this while maintaining complete control of your data so you can address data residency, security, and connectivity concerns.

Oracle

Sample Customers

adnymics GmbH, LG CNS, Centrebet, netfabb GmbH, MedPlast, Accelera Solutions, Sochi Organizing Committee, realzeit GmbH

IBVI, illycaffe, Scottish Water, trueblue, AirAsia, droptank

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer