Item: Azure Data Factory
Rating: 10
Author: Rajarshi Maitra PMI™- ASM®, ACP® and CAPM®

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

One of the best Data Integration tools for both ETL and ELT. I have been using ADF for the last 6+ years and it helped me in extracting several data feeds within our organization that meets our specific business needs. The tool provides many features such as Move and Transform, Data explorer, Azure Functions, Data bricks, Data Lake Analytics, Blob Storage, Linked services, Machine Learning, and Power Query.

Pros and Cons

It allows copying data from various types of data sources like on-premise files, Azure Database, Excel, JSON, Azure Synapse, API, etc. to the desired destination.
We can use linked service in multiple pipeline/data load.
It also allows the running of SSIS & SSMS packages which makes it an easy-to-use ETL & ELT tool.

For complex JSON when it comes to mapping nested attribute it's not easy to flatten out
Data Factory V1 does not have a good implementation experience as compared to V2
Work with on premise solutions sometimes is not too friendly because you will need to set a VPN

Return on Investment

ADF makes the whole ETL process very simple and manageable.
It saves a lot of cost and time.
Solving the data ingestions with ELT approach.
Storage compaction format help us a lot when dealing with Bigdata problems.

Alternatives Considered

AWS Glue

Azure Data Factory helps us automate to schedule jobs as per customer demands to make ETL triggers when the need arises. Anyone can define the workflow with the Azure Data Factory UI designer tool and easily test the systems. It helped us automate the same workflow with programming languages like Python or automation tools like ansible. Numerous options for connectivity be it a database or storage account helps us move data transfer to the cloud or on-premise systems.

Key Insights

Do you think Azure Data Factory delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Azure Data Factory's feature set?

Yes

Did Azure Data Factory live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Azure Data Factory go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Azure Data Factory again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Fivetran, Talend Data Integration, Informatica PowerCenter

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

One of the best and reliable ETL & ELT platforms for pulling data from multiple sources

Overall Satisfaction with Azure Data Factory