What is Azure Stream Analytics

Data analysis and its processing are the major parts of any business that drives business to an extent. Businesses must analyze and process data to get valuable insights to make informed decisions. In this regard, Azure Stream Analytics comes into the picture to get real-time data analysis and processing. You can transform your business and its operations through real-time data analysis and processing with Azure Stream Analytics. It is a highly reliable, flexible, and easy-to-use analytics service. In this blog, we will briefly introduce Azure Stream Analytics, its industry usage, how it works, and its key features and benefits.

What is Azure Stream Analytics?

Azure Stream Analytics (ASA) is Microsoft's fully managed service that offers real-time data analysis services. It offers a real-time data streaming service to analyze and process large data sets in real-time. Data can arise from multiple sources, including systems, apps, sensors, social media channel feeds, etc. Azure Stream Analytics offers a smooth way to extract the most valuable data insights from this continuously streaming information. Further, you can quickly process large data volumes through real-time analysis with Steam Analytics. Also, it offers PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) by removing the need for managing multiple resources. A few points to know:

  • Azure Stream Analytics provides the best data security against any risk and identity.
  • It is helpful in multiple areas, including stock (share) trading, finding credit card fraud, social media feeds, etc.
  • Further, you will get web clickstream analytics access.
  • It is highly beneficial because it offers real-time access to stock trading analysis. 

Become a Microsoft Azure Certified professional by learning Microsoft Azure certification Training from hkrtrainings!

Azure Devops Training

  • Master Your Craft
  • Lifetime LMS & Faculty Access
  • 24/7 online expert support
  • Real-world & Project Based Learning

When to Use Azure Stream Analytics?

Microsoft Azure Stream Analytics (ASA) offers multiple real-time data analysis and processing scenarios. Let us know the scenarios that describe when you can use Azure Stream Analytics much more effectively:

ETL pipeline flowing in Parquet format to storage in Azure

MS Azure Stream Analytics helps in ETL (extract, transform, load) operations related to data flow in Azure Storage in a Parquet format. It is helpful when you process and store high-volume data within a column form for better analytics and processing. 

Telemetry flows and logs analysis from apps and IoT devices in real-time.

When you are working on apps and IoT devices in real-time to analyze telemetry feeds and logs produced by them, Azure Stream Analytics is very useful.

Power BI's real-time dashboarding

MS Azure Stream Analytics smoothly integrates with MS Power BI, the powerful BI platform by Microsoft. You can use it when building real-time dashboards and visualizing the flowing data Stream Analytics fabricates.

Geospatial analytics for driverless cars and fleet handling

When you work with geospatial devices, Azure Stream Analytics helps in the data analysis and processing for multiple scenarios. These include fleet management, driverless vehicles like cars, buses, etc. 

Spike, dip, and sluggish +Ve and -Ve changes in sensor data can be spotted using anomaly recognition.

Azure Stream Analytics is helpful when you find anomalies in flowing data. It helps you locate and respond to abnormal activities like spikes, dips, and changes in sensor data, either +ve or -ve.

 Remote tracking and maintenance planning for expensive assets

When you deal with high-value assets or resources, ASA helps you track them remotely with proper upkeep planning. You can stop high downtime, easily optimize the asset’s usage, and enhance reliability. 

Analyzing clickstream data to know consumer behavior

You can use Azure Stream Analytics (ASA) to analyze clickstream data to know real-time consumer behavior in detail.

Working Process of Azure Stream Analytics

The ASA follows a simple working process. You must focus on the flowing data source to know how Azure Stream Analytics works. Then you can ingest or insert data into a specific system that is IoT certified. You might be interested that the data you inserted can also be accessed through Azure Blob Storage. Here, you must develop an analytics task that consistently defines the origin of the data source to analyze the data flow. For this, you need to focus on a similar query language like SQL that makes combining data patterns’ streaming easier in the long run. Further, it is very easy to understand the ASA’s working process. 

Also, you need to understand a few points that make it easier to know Azure Stream Analytics. These include:

  • You can easily transfer data to the Server Database. And also can transmit to Power BI’s dashboard for reporting purposes.
  • ASA offers you the grant to modify the system settings if they are not properly working.
  • Further, you can pass on data verified through the data evaluation process, which also accepts some activities depending on the solutions.

The following image best describes the working process of Azure Stream Analytics.

IMG

Get ahead in your career with our Microsoft Azure Tutorial

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get new updates..!

Key Features of Azure Stream Analytics

Let us discuss some key features of Microsoft Azure Stream Analytics:

1) Ease of Use 

Azure Stream Analytics (ASA) is simple, easy to use, and offers a user-friendly interface. With a few clicks, you can easily set up and connect with multiple sources and sink to build an end-to-end pipeline. 

2) Ease of Adopt

It is easy to adopt as the ASA uses SQL queries for data analysis. However, Azure Stream Analytics offers SQL query language, enabling users to analyse complex data through data processing clusters. Also, it enables you to modify the service by developing a user-defined role.

3) Reliability

Azure Stream Analytics (ASA) offers high reliability with smooth job processing. It also has a fault-tolerance ability, with strong built-in data recovery capability if any failure occurs. Further, it can guarantee to deliver a task atleast once with smooth processing. Also, it is almost 100% available as a fully managed service at a granular minute level.

4) Fully Managed

ASA offers fully managed PaaS services. Here, you can use the whole platform without the need to manage any hardware or software. Thus, you only need to focus on other business logic, Azure Stream Analytics manages the rest.

5) Security

Microsoft Azure Stream Analytics offers high-end security to the overall data which is in storage as well as in use. The security system it supports is TLS 1.2 and VNET to manage the companies and user data safely and effectively. 

6) Performance

ASA can effectively process a large volume of data within seconds with slight latency. Furthermore, ASA is highly scalable and flexible to scale up and down as required.

Alternatives for Streaming Analytics

Multiple Stream Analytics platforms are popular alternatives for Azure Stream Analytics. The following are the two among them:

1) Apache Kafka Streaming  

  • It is a popular open-source Streaming Analytics platform from Apache Software Co. It is built on Java and Scala.
  • Apache Kafka has a distributed data streaming technology. It is used by many Fortune 500 companies across the globe.
  • It offers a low latency platform and higher productivity in real-time data processing.

2) Azure Functions 

  • Azure functions offer flexibility to read information from IoT Hub.
  •  Using Azure functions, you can customize data processing tasks.
  • You will have complete control over the coding part.
  • You can use any coding language Azure functions support for data streaming and analysis.

Benefits of Azure Stream Analytics 

The following are some of the key benefits of Azure Stream Analytics:

  • Azure Stream Analytics (ASA) offers an easy-to-use interface that only takes a few clicks to set up and start.
  • It is very economical and flexible to use. It also helps to scale data.
  • It allows you to connect with multiple outputs and inputs, including direct connectivity to Event hubs for smooth data processing between sources and states.
  • ASA is a highly reliable, flexible, and secure platform. 
  • ASA is a highly reliable, flexible, and secure platform. 

Azure Devops Training

Weekday / Weekend Batches

Conclusion

Azure Stream Analytics is designed to offer flexibility and ease of use for multiple users across the globe. It offers real-time data analysis and processing with great reliability and data security. It also improves the developer's productivity many times. Moreover, as a fully managed service, there is no need to manage any hardware and software for maintenance. Thus, there are many benefits to business entities of using Azure Stream Analytics. 

Find our upcoming Azure Devops Training Online Classes

  • Batch starts on 28th Sep 2023, Weekday batch

  • Batch starts on 2nd Oct 2023, Weekday batch

  • Batch starts on 6th Oct 2023, Fast Track batch

Global Promotional Image
 

Categories

Request for more information

Amani
Amani
Research Analyst
As a content writer at HKR trainings, I deliver content on various technologies. I hold my graduation degree in Information technology. I am passionate about helping people understand technology-related content through my easily digestible content. My writings include Data Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Python, Salesforce, Servicenow and etc.

Azure Stream Analytics, or ASA, is a fully managed service that offers real-time data analytics. It helps you with faster data analysis and processing of data streams. It helps to get various insights, develop reports, and activate actions. 

Stream Analytics regularly analyzes and processes large data streams rather than processing them in multiple batches. 

The following are the multiple types of Azure Analytics

  • Azure Stream Analytics
  • Azure Synapse Analytics
  • Azure Data Explorer
  • Azure Analysis Services.