A solution that makes your work much easier
Which platform is suitable as a central analysis service for your data depends on many factors. With Azure Synapse, Microsoft offers a PaaS offering that is particularly notable for its high scalability, integration capability, especially with regard to other Azure services, and cost efficiency. However, the new SaaS platform Microsoft Fabric is also attractive. The central data lake One Lake and collaborative data processing based on Parquet Delta files are currently regarded as game changers for daily data analysis. We will introduce you to the topics.
Analyzing your data can be made considerably easier with Platform as a Service. If you have already looked into this topic, you will certainly have come across Microsoft's analytics service, Azure Synapse. Synapse is particularly suitable if you want to process large volumes of data.
Azure Synapse is an integrated analytics platform from Microsoft designed to help you and your business collect, manage, process and analyze data from multiple sources. Synapse is an evolution of the former Azure SQL Data Warehouse and offers advanced features and integrations.
Azure Synapse as PaaS for the analysis of data
With Azure Synapse, organizations capture and store data from multiple sources such as data lakes, data warehouses, on-premises systems and cloud-based services. The platform offers extensive data integration tools that allow you to create and manage data pipelines to extract, transform and load data from different sources.
The platform also offers powerful data analytics capabilities, including built-in machine learning algorithms and advanced analytics services. You can perform complex queries and analysis on large amounts of data to gain valuable insights and make informed business decisions.
Azure Synapse also offers integrated security features and meets strict compliance requirements to ensure the security and protection of sensitive company data. It also enables collaboration within teams through integrated tools and functions. Azure Synapse provides you with various services that you can use in different ways.
Source: Microsoft
Azure Synapse explained in 30 seconds
Azure Synapse is an unlimited analytics service that combines enterprise data warehousing with big data analytics. It enables flexible data queries according to your specifications with serverless or dedicated resources on a large scale. Azure Synapse combines the best technology from different areas: SQL technology for enterprise data warehousing, Spark technology for big data purposes, Data Explorer for analyzing logs and time series, pipelines for data integration and ETL/ELT, and deep integration with other Azure services such as Power BI, Cosmos DB and Azure ML.
Source: Microsoft
Building cloud architectures in Azure Synapse
Azure Synapse is suitable for setting up a cloud environment as an integrated analysis platform for several reasons. It allows you to scale performance and storage capacity based on your requirements. You can flexibly add or remove resources to ensure high scalability and performance. This is particularly important if you work with large amounts of data or have to cope with peak loads.
You will also find extensive data integration functions in Azure Synapse that allow you to extract, transform and load data from various sources. It supports both structured and unstructured data and offers tools for data cleansing and data transformation. This allows you to efficiently prepare your data for analysis. Even advanced analyses are easy to manage, as Azure Synapse offers advanced analysis functions for this purpose. These include integrated machine learning algorithms and advanced analysis services. This allows you to perform complex queries, machine learning and big data analyses to gain valuable insights and knowledge from your data.
Data analytics in the cloud with Azure Synapse
Azure Synapse combines the best technology from different areas: SQL technology for enterprise data warehousing, Spark technology for big data purposes, Data Explorer for analyzing logs and time series, pipelines for data integration and ETL/ELT as well as deep integration with other Azure services such as Power BI, Cosmos DB and Azure ML.
As usual at Microsoft, security and compliance are also a top priority in Azure Synapse. Azure Synapse has integrated security functions and meets strict compliance requirements. It offers encryption, identity and access management as well as monitoring functions to protect your data. Azure Synapse is also integrated with other Azure services that provide additional security features.
Last but not least, Azure Synapse Studio offers you a comprehensive development environment for data integration, data analysis and collaboration. It enables teamwork, version control, notebook integration and simplified workflows. This allows your teams to work together efficiently and increase their productivity.
Azure Synapse or Microsoft Fabric?
A new addition to the range of cloud-based analysis platforms is the software as a service platform Microsoft Fabric. This is exciting at this point because Synapse is integrated into Fabric. Microsoft's official documentation states: "Microsoft Fabric is an all-in-one enterprise analytics solution that covers everything from data movement to data science, real-time analytics and business intelligence."
Boost your data analysis with Microsoft Fabric
Frederic Bauerfeind summarizes what you need to know about the new SaaS platform in our blog article about Microsoft Fabric.
You can see Microsoft Fabric as a kind of orchestrator that coordinates all your processes in connection with the analysis of your data. The special feature: The entire data journey, from data collection and storage to transformation and analysis, takes place on a single SaaS platform and on the basis of a new data lake called OneLake. All users work on the same database and save their data statuses as Parquet Delta files, i.e. they use the same data independently of each other for their own tasks in the data journey, whether they are data engineers, data analysts or report consumers. ALL data is combined in a single lake. As an end user, you can access data from Azure Synapse directly from Power BI, among other things. You do not need to import data separately.
Image source: Microsoft
Companies currently using Azure Synapse should evaluate Microsoft Fabric and consider whether a technological change makes sense. Some features from Synapse are not included in Fabric. In addition, data would have to be migrated manually from Synapse to Fabric, as there are no automated import and customization options.
If you're not currently using Azure Synapse or Microsoft Fabric, you're probably spoiled for choice. Because the question is not only whether Synapse or Fabric is better for you, but also whether you want to opt for PaaS with more self-control or SaaS with more service performance. As always, there is also the question of costs, which need to be weighed up carefully. Microsoft Fabric is a brand new platform that will continue to develop and be tested by users over the coming months. Which platform is right for you depends on your strategic and technological requirements. One thing is certain: one of the two solutions will make your work with data much easier.
