Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAS Viya

Last Updated:

Our analysts compared Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAS Viya based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Big Data Analytics Tools, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Azure Synapse Analytics Software Tool

Product Basics

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is a comprehensive cloud-based analytics service designed to empower organizations with robust data warehousing and data analytics capabilities. It seamlessly integrates data warehousing and big data analytics, enabling users to ingest, prepare, manage, and serve data for immediate business insights. Key features include scalable resources, real-time analytics, machine learning integration, and a collaborative workspace for data professionals. Azure Synapse Analytics offers benefits such as improved scalability, enhanced data security, and simplified data integration. It's particularly valuable for organizations looking to harness the power of data to make informed decisions and gain a competitive edge in today's data-driven landscape.
read more...
SAS Viya is a cloud-based in-memory analytics engine that provides data visualization, reporting and analytics to businesses for actionable data insights. Powered by AI, it brings together visual analytics, visual statistics and data science for enterprises to achieve end-to-end self-service analytics. It uses a standardized code base with support for programming in R, Python, SAS, Java and Lua.

Deployable in the cloud, on-premises and hybrid environments, it integrates with a wide range of business applications through an agile, scalable architecture. The vendor offers an introductory 30-day free trial.

Pros
  • Comprehensive features
  • Powerful analytics capabilities
  • User-friendly interface
  • Scalable architecture
  • Strong support from SAS
Cons
  • Steep learning curve
  • Limited customization options
  • High cost of ownership
  • Potential vendor lock-in
  • Resource-intensive
read more...
$1.25/Hour, Usage-Based
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
$10,000 Annual
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
Small
Medium
Large
Small
Medium
Large
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile

Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Scalability: Azure Synapse Analytics offers scalable data warehousing, allowing organizations to easily adjust resources to meet their specific needs. This scalability ensures optimal performance and cost-efficiency.
  • Unified Analytics: With Azure Synapse Analytics, users can seamlessly integrate data analytics and data warehousing. This unified approach simplifies data management, analytics, and reporting, leading to faster insights and smarter decision-making.
  • Advanced Security: Security is a top priority in Azure Synapse Analytics. It provides robust security features, including data encryption, authentication, and role-based access control, ensuring that sensitive data remains protected.
  • Data Integration: This platform offers powerful data integration capabilities, allowing users to easily ingest, transform, and load data from various sources. It supports a wide range of data formats and connectors, facilitating seamless data integration workflows.
  • Optimized Performance: Azure Synapse Analytics leverages intelligent caching and query optimization to deliver exceptional query performance. Users can run complex queries on large datasets quickly and efficiently.
  • Real-time Analytics: Organizations can harness real-time data analytics with Azure Synapse Analytics. It supports streaming data, enabling businesses to gain insights from live data streams and make timely decisions.
  • Cost Management: With cost controls and optimization features, Azure Synapse Analytics helps organizations manage their data warehouse expenses effectively. Users can pause and resume resources as needed to control costs.
  • Integration with Azure Ecosystem: Azure Synapse Analytics seamlessly integrates with other Azure services, such as Azure Data Lake Storage and Azure Machine Learning. This integration enables organizations to build end-to-end data solutions within the Azure ecosystem.
  • AI and Machine Learning: Leveraging Azure's AI and machine learning capabilities, Synapse Analytics allows users to build and deploy advanced analytics models, unlocking valuable insights from their data.
  • Global Reach: Azure Synapse Analytics is available in multiple Azure regions worldwide, providing global accessibility and low-latency data processing for organizations with international operations.
read more...
  • Improve Decision-Making: Make informed business decisions by using historical and current proprietary information to derive analytical insights. Compute vast amounts of data faster and resolve complexities through parallel processing. Boost workflow efficiencies by deploying operational decisions that define real-time best actions at scale. 
  • Self-Service Analytics: Easily perform automated forecasting, goal-seeking and scenario analysis — no technical skills needed. Identify user sentiment through text analytics and incorporate geographical data for a complete picture of business metrics. 
  • Maximize ROI: Save time through built-in automation for data prep, feature engineering, algorithm selection and AI-powered data discovery. Innovate, rather than spending time on tedious data management and analytics tasks. 
  • Data Security: Ensure data encryption at rest and while moving across systems, in addition to auditing protocols. Connect to external data management systems like Oracle, Teradata, Facebook, Amazon and Esri seamlessly through Kerberos, SAML, OAuth and OpenID. 
  • Data Management: Import data by using an IDE or through REST APIs, and visualize and analyze it through self-service data prep. Join tables, apply functions and perform calculations, or drag-and-drop, pivot, and slice and dice to view desired metrics. 
  • Augmented Analytics: Identify relationships in data through automatically generated suggestions and guided analysis, and track anomalies and outliers. Tell data stories by generating easy-to-understand visuals and dashboard summaries in natural language. Derive meaningful insights for the future by creating what-if scenarios for forecasting and predictive analytics. 
  • Mobility: Access business reports on the go through a native mobile app that supports a variety of charts, graphs and tables. Configure app functionality per device for specific users to add and view reports, share links, add and view comments and view alerts. 
  • Scalable Architecture: Leverage its modular microservices architecture to scale as per business needs. Monitor and manage the health and configuration of individual microservices instances through the SAS Environment Manager. Deploys seamlessly to any type of environment, including the cloud, and runs on Cloud Foundry as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS). 
read more...
  • Data Warehousing: Azure Synapse Analytics offers a robust data warehousing solution, allowing organizations to store and manage large volumes of structured and unstructured data efficiently.
  • Analytics Workspace: It provides an integrated analytics workspace for data engineers, data scientists, and analysts to collaborate, explore data, and build advanced analytics models.
  • On-Demand Query Processing: Users can run on-demand queries to extract insights from their data in real-time, without the need for predefined structures or complex ETL processes.
  • Data Integration: Synapse Analytics supports data integration from a variety of sources, enabling users to ingest, transform, and load data with ease.
  • Auto-scaling: The platform offers auto-scaling capabilities, automatically adjusting resources to handle varying workloads, ensuring optimal performance and cost-effectiveness.
  • Security and Compliance: Azure Synapse Analytics includes robust security features, such as encryption, authentication, and access control, to protect sensitive data and maintain compliance with industry regulations.
  • Intelligent Caching: It employs intelligent caching to speed up query performance, reducing latency and enhancing overall data processing efficiency.
  • Real-time Analytics: Users can analyze streaming data in real-time, enabling timely insights and the ability to respond to changing conditions swiftly.
  • Machine Learning Integration: Synapse Analytics seamlessly integrates with Azure Machine Learning, allowing organizations to build, train, and deploy machine learning models for advanced predictive analytics.
  • Collaborative Workspace: It provides a collaborative workspace for teams to collaborate on data projects, facilitating efficient data exploration and analysis.
  • Serverless SQL Pools: Azure Synapse Analytics offers serverless SQL pools, enabling users to query data stored in data lakes without the need for provisioning dedicated resources.
read more...
  • Visualization and Reporting: Dig into data for in-depth analysis and view key business metrics through autonomous data exploration and manipulation. Create and customize interactive reports and charts to share with others across the organization for collaborative insight. Get suggestions on graphics best suited to display pertinent data through auto charting. 
  • Data Modeling: Analyze data with predictive models through regression, clustering and neural networks. Ensure version control by tracking data models from creation through usage by registering, validating and monitoring each version. Creates snapshots of model properties and files and retains them for the future. 
  • Visual Statistics: Build diverse scenarios simultaneously and refine them with what-if analyses to uncover insights through experimentation. Unifies all business tools, irrespective of the language they support, into a common visual analytics solution. 
  • Cloud Integrations: Develop low-code technologies by porting SAS open-source models into mobile and business applications through its cloud-native capability. Optimize analytics workloads on clouds like Microsoft Azure and ensure cost-efficient migration of analytics to the cloud through a workload management tool. 
  • ML-Based Insights: Get valuable insights from new data types by combining structured and unstructured data in integrated machine learning programs. Choose the desired ML algorithm from a range of options and easily find the optimal parameter settings. Use Python within Jupyter notebooks for deep learning functions like computer vision, natural language processing, forecasting and speech processing. 
read more...

Product Ranking

#40

among all
Big Data Analytics Tools

#41

among all
Big Data Analytics Tools

Find out who the leaders are

Analyst Rating Summary

78
94
54
96
63
100
93
98
Show More Show More
Availability and Scalability
Platform Security
Dashboarding and Data Visualization
Data Management
Integrations and Extensibility
Availability and Scalability
Computer Vision and Internet of Things (IoT)
Platform Security
Dashboarding and Data Visualization
Augmented Analytics

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Azure Synapse Analytics
SAS Viya
+ Add Product + Add Product
Augmented Analytics Computer Vision And Internet Of Things (IoT) Dashboarding And Data Visualization Data Management Data Preparation Geospatial Visualizations And Analysis Machine Learning Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Reporting 54 63 93 93 78 75 0 57 96 100 98 96 86 93 70 96 0 25 50 75 100
4%
83%
13%
96%
0%
4%
13%
75%
12%
100%
0%
0%
88%
13%
-1%
100%
0%
0%
86%
0%
14%
86%
14%
0%
90%
10%
0%
100%
0%
0%
71%
14%
15%
86%
0%
14%
43%
53%
4%
93%
0%
7%
0%
0%
100%
63%
0%
37%
100%
0%
0%
100%
0%
0%
14%
71%
15%
86%
14%
0%

Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

100%
0%
0%
100%
0%
0%
89%
0%
11%
82%
0%
18%
100%
0%
0%
100%
0%
0%

User Sentiment Summary

we're gathering data
Great User Sentiment 203 reviews
we're gathering data
85%
of users recommend this product

SAS Viya has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 85% when considering 203 user reviews from 3 recognized software review sites.

n/a
4.2 (157)
n/a
4.3 (33)
n/a
4.7 (13)

Awards

No awards.

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated SAS Viya and concluded it deserves the award for the Best Overall Big Data Analytics Tools available today and earns best-in-class honors for Augmented Analytics and Computer Vision and Internet of Things (IoT).

Analysts' Pick Award
Augmented Analytics Award
Computer Vision and Internet of Things (IoT) Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Scalability: Azure Synapse Analytics is praised for its ability to seamlessly scale resources to handle growing data volumes and complex workloads.
Integration: Users appreciate the tight integration with other Azure services, making it easy to build end-to-end data solutions within the Azure ecosystem.
Real-time Insights: The platform's support for real-time data analytics enables users to gain timely insights from streaming data sources, improving decision-making.
Data Security: Azure Synapse Analytics is lauded for its robust security features, including encryption and access controls, ensuring data privacy and compliance.
Data Integration: Users find it user-friendly for integrating data from various sources, simplifying data preparation and analysis.
Performance Optimization: The platform's query optimization and caching mechanisms enhance query performance, even with complex analytical workloads.
Collaboration: Its collaborative workspace fosters teamwork among data professionals, improving productivity and knowledge sharing.
Machine Learning Capabilities: Users appreciate the integration with Azure Machine Learning, allowing them to leverage AI and machine learning for advanced analytics.
Cost Management: Azure Synapse Analytics offers cost-control features that help users manage their data analytics expenses effectively, ensuring cost-efficiency.
Global Reach: Its availability in multiple Azure regions ensures global accessibility and low-latency data processing for organizations with international operations.
Show more
Ease of Use: All users who mention its interface say that it makes autonomous analysis and data modeling accessible to users of all skill levels.
Support: All users who review support say that representatives are responsive and helpful in resolving issues and queries.
Functionality: Around 71% of the users who comment on its feature set say that the software helps discover data insights through powerful visualizations and on-the-fly calculations.
Show more
Cost Complexity: Some users find managing costs in Azure Synapse Analytics complex, as resource scaling and query optimization may require careful monitoring to avoid unexpected expenses.
Learning Curve: There's a learning curve associated with the platform, especially for users new to Azure services, which can slow down initial adoption and implementation.
Data Volume Challenges: Handling extremely large data volumes can be challenging and may require additional resources, impacting overall cost-effectiveness.
Integration Complexity: While Azure Synapse Analytics integrates well with Azure services, some users have reported challenges when integrating with external systems, which may require custom solutions.
Resource Scaling Time: Scaling resources up or down can take time, affecting immediate query performance during resource adjustments.
Storage Costs: Users have noted that storing data in Azure Data Lake Storage, a common practice, can add to overall costs that need to be carefully managed.
Complex Queries: Executing complex queries may lead to longer processing times and higher resource consumption, impacting query performance and costs.
Resource Provisioning: Some users have experienced challenges when provisioning resources, requiring careful planning and allocation.
Offline Work Limitations: Certain features may require an active internet connection, limiting offline work capabilities, which could be a drawback in specific scenarios.
Support: A few users have reported concerns about the level of support provided, particularly for resolving complex technical issues.
Show more
Cost: All users who discuss its pricing say that the cost of acquisition is high.
Show more

User reviews for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics generally highlight its strengths in scalability, integration, and real-time analytics. Many users appreciate its ability to seamlessly scale resources and integrate with other Azure services, simplifying end-to-end data solutions. The support for real-time data analytics also receives positive feedback for enabling timely decision-making. However, some users note challenges associated with cost management, citing complexity in monitoring and controlling expenses. There's a learning curve for newcomers, which can slow down initial implementation. Handling large data volumes and complex queries may require extra resources and careful optimization. Integration with external systems can be complex, and resource scaling may impact query performance temporarily. In comparison to similar products, users find Azure Synapse Analytics competitive due to its tight integration within the Azure ecosystem and its machine learning capabilities. Despite some limitations, it is viewed favorably for its potential to deliver scalable, real-time insights and drive data-driven decision-making within organizations.

Show more

SAS Viya is an AI-powered data management and visual analytics platform with a robust, scalable architecture. All users who reviewed data source connectivity said that it connects to multiple sources and integrates easily with business applications, giving a seamless user experience. With fast in-memory processing of big data sets, it leverages the power of R to enable visual statistics. All users who mentioned predictive analysis said that it enables automated forecasting through what-if scenarios, goal-seeking, text mining and decision trees. Citing ease of use, all users say that the platform is intuitive and enables easy data modeling and self-service visual analytics. All users who mentioned support said that they are responsive and knowledgeable. Around 71% of the users who comment on its functionality say that it is a robust, scalable and flexible platform that enables visualization and analysis of business data, though some users say visual statistics need improvement. On the flip side, all users who review its cost say that the tool is expensive. In summary, SAS Viya is an analytics tool that provides data management, visualization and AI-powered analytics to enterprises for improved decision making, though small organizations and startups might find it cost-prohibitive.

Show more

Screenshots

we're gathering data

Top Alternatives in Big Data Analytics Tools


Alteryx

Dataiku

H2O.ai

IBM Watson Studio

KNIME

Looker Studio

Oracle Analytics Cloud

Qlik Sense

RapidMiner

SageMaker

SAP Analytics Cloud

SAS Viya

Spotfire

Tableau

WE DISTILL IT INTO REAL REQUIREMENTS, COMPARISON REPORTS, PRICE GUIDES and more...

Compare products
Comparison Report
Just drag this link to the bookmark bar.
?
Table settings