How Microsoft’s Data Integration and Transformation Offerings Compare

• Several Microsoft data integration and transformation offerings are available, and they vary in features, maturity, and on-premises versus cloud support.
• Most of the cloud options are not general-use products and limit where resulting datasets can be stored.
• Migrating existing workloads from on-premises and between the offerings is not always possible, which often necessitates new development.

Organizations routinely use data integration tools for extract, transform, and load (ETL): gathering data from various sources on a predetermined schedule and combining and storing the data in a convenient form for analysts and business intelligence (BI) applications. Selecting a Microsoft ETL solution involves deciding between on-premises or cloud offerings, choosing between several back-end technologies, and understanding the functional and service limitations of each.

This report compares Microsoft offerings (on-premises and cloud) that provide enterprise ETL functionality. (The future viability of the offerings is discussed in “Data Integration and Transformation Comparison.”)