Microsoft placed in the Leaders category in the Forrester Wave Q2 2017 for Database-As-A-Service

In the latest Forrester Wave report for Database-As-A-Service, Microsoft was placed in the Leaders category along with Amazon and Oracle. Database-as-a-service (DBaaS) provide faster provisioning, unlimited elastic scale, and continuous availability for EA pros. Amazon in the only company that was ahead of Microsoft in this report. Forrester noted that AWS not only has the largest adoption of DBaaS, it also offers the widest range of offerings to support analytical, operational, and transactional workloads. Forrester said that Microsoft offers a mature, scalable, secure, and compelling offering with SQL Azure and other database services.

Microsoft first launched its DBaaS in 2010, and since then it has gone through several iterations to make the platform more scalable, better performing, and secure. Microsoft also offers Azure Data Warehouse, a managed data warehouse built on the SQL platform that is ramping up in adoption. The Azure SQL Database includes built-in intelligence that learns app patterns and adapts to maximize performance, reliability, and security. Overall, Azure SQL Database has done well with broad levels of deployments across various verticals and use cases. Customers use Azure SQL Database to support eCommerce, web and mobile apps, and other enterprise applications. Customers like Microsoft Azure’s scale, automation, and security, but they are concerned about access latency and higher costs, especially as additional backup, disaster recovery, and premium performance features are added.

At Build conference last month, Microsoft announced Azure Cosmos DB, a brand new cloud database service built from the ground up to power planet-scale cloud services and data-intensive applications. Microsoft claims that Azure Cosmos DB is the industry’s first globally distributed, multi-model database service to deliver horizontal scale with guaranteed uptime, throughput, consistency and single-digit millisecond latency at the 99th percentile. Microsoft is also adding several new features to its cloud database services. Back in April, Microsoft announced Azure SQL Database Threat Detection, a new security intelligence feature built into the Azure SQL Database service. I think Microsoft will further move towards Amazon in the Forrester Wave for DBaaS in the coming months.