AVEVA Historian vs. Azure Data Factory

Paired with Citect SCADA or System Platform, this is an excellent process historian. It also works well collecting OPC data. For basic data storage, retrieval, and analysis, this is well suited. This is not well suited for very large deployments. Multiple instances would need to be used to scale up, and the data fed into a second-tier/enterprise historian for corporate user consumption.

Incentivized

In a data pipeline, you will be able to add different kinds of activities for example connect from your on-premise SFTP and move CSV files to storage accounts. As well data factory has its own data flow if you are an ETL developer who experimented with maybe you have worked with SSIS, thus, you will start quickly with this new feature of the data factory.

Incentivized

• Data storage--multiple data sources stream data in real time; it is stored without issue
• Data retrieval--small to moderate queries and trends are generally fast and efficient
• Cost effectiveness--it is one of the cheaper (non-enterprise) historian offers and therefore is good value for money (with a reduced feature set)

Incentivized

• Creating ETL and ELT workflows as well as orchestrating and monitoring pipelines without writing any code.
• Hybrid data integration is easily and agilely possible through this software.
• It has lot of various useful components

Incentivized

• Query performance--for very long-term/large queries; the latest version which we are yet to commission has some improvements in this area
• User interface--the trend, query, and Excel add-ins are basic and could do with a refresh; web-based clients are a paid add-on and less full featured, so not a true replacement
• Connectivity--Wonderware System Platform driver packs are required for additional data source types, where native connectors are not provided by other products

Incentivized

• Learning curve for pipeline creation interface.
• Alerting isn't necessarily built in. Had to work around this to meet team needs.
• With GIT enabled, some features can only be done via git, while some need to be done via the portal.

Incentivized

So far product has performed as expected. We were noticing some performance issues, but they were largely Synapse related. This has led to a shift from Synapse to Databricks. Overall this has delayed our analytic platform. Once databricks becomes fully operational, Azure Data Factory will be critical to our environment and future success.

Incentivized

We have not had need to engage with Microsoft much on Azure Data Factory, but they have been responsive and helpful when needed. This being said, we have not had a major emergency or outage requiring their intervention. The score of seven is a representation that they have done well for now, but have not proved out their support for a significant issue

Incentivized

AVEVA Historian, formerly Wonderware, was the best of the process tier historians in terms of reliability and functionality. It is still under development and not a "dead" product. It is also more cost effective than the more full-featured enterprise historians, such as PI, which our organization is not yet ready for. The feature set is at the right cost level, coupled with current support, were the key factors in the decision.

Incentivized

Azure Data Factory fits well into our overall systems architecture where we already utilize largely Azure services and also Microsoft based products in the on-premises environment. I think cost structure is also very competitive with Azure Data Factory. Most services provide a visual interface for designing ETL workflows, but our team found Azure Data Factory's interface more intuitive.

Incentivized

• Increased efficiency, reduction in labour for preparing reports--data is available to be queried and reported with less effort
• Increased production efficiency--near real-time data availability and comparisons to historical data has been used to make faster and better operational decisions
• Increased reliability--data has been used for maintenance optimization and planning purposes

Incentivized

• Limiting the amount of data moving up and down from the cloud for cloud-native applications.
• Overall simple to use interface which is actually easier for a first time ETL developer than SSIS.

Incentivized