When to use Azure Data Explorer

[Tzvia Gitlin Troyna]

Azure Data Explorer is a big data interactive analytics platform that empowers people to make data driven decisions in a highly agile environment. The factors listed below can help assess if Azure Data Explorer is a good fit for the workload at hand. These are the key questions to ask yourself.

The following flowchart table summarize the key questions to ask when you're considering using Azure Data Explorer.

Guidance summary

The following table shows how to evaluate new use cases. While this doesn't cover all use cases, we think it can help you make a decision if Azure Data Explorer is the right solution for you.

Use case	Interactive Analytics	Big data (Variety, Velocity, Volume)	Data organization	Concurrency	Build vs Buy	Should I use Azure Data Explorer?
Implementing a Security Analytics SaaS	Heavy use of interactive, near real-time analytics	Security data is diverse, high volume and high velocity.	Varies	Often multiple analysts from multiple tenants will use the system	Implementing a SaaS offering is a Build scenario	Yes
CDN log analytics	Interactive for troubleshooting, QoS monitoring.	CDN logs are diverse, high volume and high velocity.	Separate log records.	May be used by a small group of data scientists but may also power many dashboards	The value extracted from CDN analytics is scenario-specific and requires custom analytics	Yes
Time series database for IoT Telemetry	Interactive for troubleshooting, analyzing trends, usage, detecting anomalies	IoT telemetry are high velocity but may be structured only or medium in size	Related sets of records.	May be used by a small group of data scientists but may also power many dashboards	When searching for a database, context is typically "build"	Yes

Read more on When to use Azure Data Explorer (Kusto)