Google BigQuery vs. Microsoft Fabric

Google BigQuery is great for being the central datastore and entry point of data if you're on GCP. It seamlessly integrates with other Google products, meaning you can ingest data from other Google products with ease and little technical knowledge, and all of it is near real-time. Being serverless, BigQuery will scale with you, which means you don't have to worry about contention or spikes in demand/storage. This can, however, mean your costs can run away quickly or mount up at short notice.

Incentivized

I would highly recommend Microsoft Fabric, especially for medium to large enterprises aiming to build a robust, scalable, and secure data analytics platform. It effectively unifies various data workloads, streamlining data integration, engineering, and particularly enhancing our ability to create and share reliable Power BI dashboards. The deep integration with Azure AD for features like Row-Level Security is a significant advantage for data governance.

Incentivized

• Its serverless architecture and underlying Dremel technology are incredibly fast even on complex datasets. I can get answers to my questions almost instantly, without waiting hours for traditional data warehouses to churn through the data.
• Previously, our data was scattered across various databases and spreadsheets and getting a holistic view was pretty difficult. Google BigQuery acts as a central repository and consolidates everything in one place to join data sets and find hidden patterns.
• Running reports on our old systems used to take forever. Google BigQuery's crazy fast query speed lets us get insights from massive datasets in seconds.

Incentivized

• Access Control / Security & Governance
• Collaborative Work up to Visualization
• Data Ingestion

Incentivized

• It is challenging to predict costs due to BigQuery's pay-per-query pricing model. User-friendly cost estimation tools, along with improved budget alerting features, could help users better manage and predict expenses.
• The BigQuery interface is less intuitive. A more user-friendly interface, enhanced documentation, and built-in tutorial systems could make BigQuery more accessible to a broader audience.

Incentivized

• Clarity and Documentation on Power BI Integration Changes and Best Practices
• More Flexible and Advanced Scheduled Report Delivery Options
• Enhanced Data Export Control Based on Sensitivity Labels

Incentivized

We have to use this product as its a 3rd party supplier choice to utilise this product for their data side backend so will not be likely we will move away from this product in the future unless the 3rd party supplier decides to change data vendors.

Incentivized

web UI is easy and convenient. Many RDBMS clients such as aqua data studio, Dbeaver data grid, and others connect. Range of well-documented APIs available. The range of features keeps expanding, increasing similar features to traditional RDBMS such as Oracle and DB2

I've rated Microsoft Fabric's overall usability as a 4, primarily due to its extensive and multifaceted feature set, which can make it challenging to navigate and determine the optimal functionality for a given task.While the breadth of capabilities is a core strength for large enterprises, it often leads to a sense of being "lost" or overwhelmed for teams like ours that do not have highly formalized roles or dedicated specialists for each Fabric "experience" (e.g., Data Engineering, Data Warehousing, Data Science).

Incentivized

I have never had any significant issues with Google Big Query. It always seems to be up and running properly when I need it. I cannot recall any times where I received any kind of application errors or unplanned outages. If there were any they were resolved quickly by my IT team so I didn't notice them.

Incentivized

I think Google Big Query's performance is in the acceptable range. Sometimes larger datasets are somewhat sluggish to load but for most of our applications it performs at a reasonable speed. We do have some reports that include a lot of complex calculations and others that run on granular store level data that so sometimes take a bit longer to load which can be frustrating.

Incentivized

BigQuery can be difficult to support because it is so solid as a product. Many of the issues you will see are related to your own data sets, however you may see issues importing data and managing jobs. If this occurs, it can be a challenge to get to speak to the correct person who can help you.

Incentivized

Google BigQuery of course collects a much much larger array of raw data and can handle (practically) an unlimited amount of data. For a large enterprise like ours that relies on large-scale analytics, this is absolutely imperative. Google BigQuery can also combine GA4 data with external sources (like CRM tools), so our analytics can be unified. Due to our heavy reliance on GA4, Google BigQuery is the natural choice since it is a Google product and has better integration.

Incentivized

Microsoft Fabric integrates data ingestion, engineering, warehousing, and Power BI visualization into one cohesive environment. This "one-stop shop" approach dramatically reduces complexity, minimizes operational overhead, and eliminates the need to integrate disparate tools and manage data across multiple systems. It provides superior scalability for large datasets, supports open data formats, and offers a much broader suite of data engineering and data science capabilities.In essence, Fabric's integrated ecosystem and streamlined operational management were key differentiators, providing a more cohesive, scalable, and efficient solution for our evolving data strategy than combining specialized tools.

Incentivized

We have continued to expand out use of Google Big Query over the years. I'd say its flexibility and scalability is actually quite good. It also integrates well with other tools like Tableau and Power BI. It has served the needs of multiple data sources across multiple departments within my company.

Incentivized

• In some places, Google BigQuery has helped us save some money by avoiding the need for expensive infrastructure and reducing some of the operational costs.
• Scalability is up-to-date and really helpful in multiple places.
• Knowledge transfer is easy as it is very user-friendly, so the learning curve has been reduced.
• Also, it gives us more insights from our data, helping us make smarter decisions for our business.

Incentivized

• Transformation from Monthly Reports to Daily Insights, Accelerating Decision-Making
• Streamlined Reporting: Enhanced Data Consistency and 30% Reduction in Reports Provided
• Empowered Self-Service Analytics Through Elevated Employee Data Literacy

Incentivized