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Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse vs Teradata comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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
6.9
Most are satisfied with ROI, acknowledging its benefits, though improvements are possible, as it efficiently enhances backend operations.
Sentiment score
8.1
Teradata boosts analytics speed over 100%, enhancing customer service and satisfaction, with high ROI and user approval.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse support is responsive and expert, though users sometimes need online resources for faster solutions.
Sentiment score
7.1
Teradata's customer service is praised for expertise but criticized for delays, with ratings ranging from 6 to 10 out of 10.
Customer support is very good, rated eight out of ten under our essential agreement.
The technical support from Teradata is quite advanced.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse excels in scalability, integration, and expandability, though improvements are needed for large data sets.
Sentiment score
7.4
Teradata is praised for its scalability, speed, and flexibility, despite some complexity and cost challenges in cloud environments.
I give the scalability an eight out of ten, indicating it scales well for our needs.
As a consultant, we hire additional programmers when we need to scale up certain major projects.
This expansion can occur without incurring downtime or taking systems offline.
Scalability is complex as you need to purchase a license and coordinate with Teradata for additional disk space and CPU.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is praised for its stability, reliability, and quick issue resolution, despite time-consuming extensive dataset processing.
Sentiment score
8.4
Teradata excels in stability with minimal downtime, robust architecture, 99.9% uptime, and reliable performance, despite minor large dataset issues.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is stable for us because it is built on SQL Server.
I find the stability to be almost a ten out of ten.
The workload management and software maturity provide a reliable system.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse presents complexity, compatibility challenges, performance issues, high costs, and requires improved in-memory analysis and updates.
Teradata users seek better transaction processing, enhanced scalability, modern interface, cloud focus, advanced analytics, and improved support and documentation.
It would be better to release patches less frequently, maybe once a month or once every two months.
When there are many users or many expensive queries, it can be very slow.
The ETL designing process could be optimized for better efficiency.
Unlike SQL and Oracle, which have in-built replication capabilities, we don't have similar functionality with Teradata.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse's pricing varies by needs; Azure integration can be cost-effective, but technical support costs extra.
Teradata's high cost is justified by its superior performance, competitive total ownership costs, and flexible pricing models.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is very expensive.
Initially, it may seem expensive compared to similar cloud databases, however, it offers significant value in performance, stability, and overall output once in use.
Teradata is much more expensive than SQL, which is well-performed and cheaper.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse offers performance, integration, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness for large data management and business intelligence.
Teradata offers efficient, scalable data management with fast query performance, robust security, automation, and cloud flexibility for businesses.
The columnstore index enhances data query performance by using less space and achieving faster performance than general indexing.
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.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is used in the logistics area for optimizing SQL queries related to the loading and unloading of trucks.
The data mover is valuable over the last two years as it allows us to achieve data replication to our disaster recovery systems.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Parallel Data War...
Ranking in Data Warehouse
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Teradata
Ranking in Data Warehouse
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (6th), Backup and Recovery (20th), Data Integration (15th), Relational Databases Tools (8th), BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (9th), Marketing Management (6th), Cloud Data Warehouse (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is 1.1%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Teradata is 15.5%, up from 15.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user104457 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 13, 2014
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Bhadra - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides flexible data handling and integrates easily but requires less frequent patch releases
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse keeps giving updates and new features. In my first consultancy, I transitioned a mortgage company from Oracle OBIEE to Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse to greatly reduce the mortgage approval time. 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. It extracts data from the ERP system, and we are doing extensive data analytics. The system handles target marketing for a company which does 85 to 90% of its business in wholesale. We have a variety of clients from mom-and-pop stores to big box stores, and we have intermediaries. We sell through approximately 13 retail channels including Etsy, our retail website, Faire, Wayfair, and Walmart. Each channel requires different types of inventory updates and packaging, which is managed automatically. A significant amount of development is done on Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse where all these processes are automatically fed out and updated. We also conduct inventory analysis and aging analysis. We identify seasonal buyers, track their purchasing habits, and auto-trigger campaigns for them, sometimes offering discounts on various items. We've found that combining top-selling items with non-selling items can lead to increased sales, as people often buy additional items when they find one on sale.
RajeshKumar25 - PeerSpot reviewer
Harnessing advanced parallelism for top performance while embracing cloud trends
Teradata is primarily used for data warehousing across all customers. My clients have built-in applications that use Teradata, and their use varies from customer to customer, depending on the industry and database size. The primary function is as an OLAP analytical ecosystem Scalability is…
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Comparison Review

it_user232068 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 5, 2015
Netezza vs. Teradata
Original published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-i-choose-net Two leading Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) architectures for Data Warehousing (DW) are IBM PureData System for Analytics (formerly Netezza) and Teradata. I thought talking about the similarities and differences…
 

Answers from the Community

it_user104457 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 13, 2014
Apr 13, 2014
I think hands down it's Exadata since for the front end apps it's just another Oracle database which means everything under the sun is compatible with it.
2 out of 3 answers
it_user89046 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 10, 2014
Given we partner with many or all of the above, or can get to them as we access all data, I have the following opinion - InfoBright is very new and probable to be sold long term. It is also an expensive subscription so presents highest risk to me. Exidata is Oracle - if you like Oracle and their style, it maybe ok, but then it is Oracle. Microsoft is Microsoft - tends to be cheap to acquire and expensive to implement and maintain. Teradata is pricey but of the group presents the least risk and the greatest number of front end partners. The product I represent is unique as it is designed for high complexity large numbers of users and data and runs inside Teradata taking better advantage of the architecture. Disclosure: I work for Information Builders
it_user3309 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 10, 2014
You are asking about front end tools but you do not mention which ones. What you have are "database backends" and each has different features. The utilization will depend on what kind of expertise you have available else you will end up trying to implement say, Teradata on Exadata which may not give you the best solution. What are your criteria for success? Based on these you will have to evaluate each solution -- I am sure each vendor will be happy to set up the environment and work with your set of sampl,e data to show you have they evaluate against your criteria.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Insurance Company
10%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse provides good firewall processing in terms of response time.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is excellent but very expensive. Working on the pricing could make it a better solution.
Comparing Teradata and Oracle Database, which product do you think is better and why?
I have spoken to my colleagues about this comparison and in our collective opinion, the reason why some people may declare Teradata better than Oracle is the pricing. Both solutions are quite simi...
Which companies use Teradata and who is it most suitable for?
Before my organization implemented this solution, we researched which big brands were using Teradata, so we knew if it would be compatible with our field. According to the product's site, the comp...
Is Teradata a difficult solution to work with?
Teradata is not a difficult product to work with, especially since they offer you technical support at all levels if you just ask. There are some features that may cause difficulties - for example,...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft PDW, SQL Server Data Warehouse, Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, MS Parallel Data Warehouse
IntelliFlex, Aster Data Map Reduce, , QueryGrid, Customer Interaction Manager, Digital Marketing Center, Data Mover, Data Stream Architecture
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Auckland Transport, Erste Bank Group, Urban Software Institute, NJVC, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Tata Steel Europe
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Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse vs. Teradata and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.