Event Stream Processing Offerings

Microsoft offers several services and products for processing event streams in real time. The chart here lists these Microsoft offerings and Directions on Microsoft‘s forecast of future Microsoft investment for each. Microsoft does not endorse this report, and its plans could change at any time.

Selecting the most appropriate of these offerings for a particular solution involves criteria such as complexity, compatibility, and cost. 

Stream Analytics is most likely to be used for streams that are delivered through Azure Event Hubs or Azure IoT Hub and when the preferred query language is T-SQL (of which the Stream Analytics Query Language is a subset).

Log Analytics targets system management, so it requires less customization to work in that domain. Similarly, Application Insights focuses on application analysis by developers, and Azure Time Series Insights specializes in working with time-windowed device readings.

Azure Data Explorer offers many choices for handling data ingestion, scaling, querying, visualization, and programmatic access, but it can require more effort to use than higher-level services like Log Analytics. Data Explorer, Log Analytics, and Application Insights use Kusto Query Language, which is similar to T-SQL but optimized for analytics. The unique language could be a factor for choosing one of these services versus the alternatives.