Every day, customers trust Microsoft Databases to power their most critical applications, business processes, and AI-powered experiences. Continuous customer feedback provides valuable insights into how these technologies perform in production and where we should continue investing.

I’m honored to share that Microsoft Databases have received multiple 2026 PeerSpot Customer Choice / Tech Leader recognitions based on feedback from real practitioners using these technologies in production environments.

This year, PeerSpot recognized:

  • SQL Server as a Tech Leader in Database Management Systems (DBMS) (#1) and Relational Database Tools (#1)
  • Azure SQL Database as a Tech Leader in Database as a Service (DBaaS) (#2)
  • Azure Database for PostgreSQL as a Tech Leader in Open Source Databases (#1)
  • Azure Cosmos DB as a Tech Leader in Managed NoSQL Databases (#1), NoSQL Databases (#1), and Vector Databases (#1)

Customer feedback across Microsoft Databases consistently highlights five themes: reliability, scalability, operational simplicity, developer productivity, and AI readiness. These are the same priorities shaping our investments across SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Database for PostgreSQL. The PeerSpot recognition reinforces that customers see value not only in the performance of our databases today, but also in how they are helping organizations prepare for the next generation of AI-powered applications.

What customers consistently value

SQL Server: Trusted reliability for mission-critical workloads

For SQL Server customers, reliability, stability, and long-term data stewardship remain foundational requirements. Organizations continue to rely on SQL Server to support business-critical applications, analytics, and increasingly AI-enabled workflows.

Hemanth Reddy Vakiti, a data engineer at Cognizant, wrote that “The backup and recovery allow us to easily access previous 10 to 15 years of data”, citing SQL Server’s ability to handle large datasets and support secure role-based access.

Another SQL Server reviewer, Isseo Martinez from eGlobal, called out availability and stability, saying “We never have concerns about the database.” For many organizations, that confidence is the foundation for business-critical applications and long-term modernization strategies. 

Azure SQL Database: Simplifying modernization with cloud-scale SQL

Customers regularly tell us they want the reliability and familiarity of SQL Server with the operational simplicity of a fully managed cloud service. Azure SQL Database helps organizations modernize applications, reduce infrastructure management, and scale with confidence.

Fredrick Weinshenk, a cloud engineer at healthcare IT firm Med Tech Solutions, wrote that “The ease of deployment and scalability are significant reasons we push our larger clients to Azure,” and described the platform as “reliable” and “solid.”

That feedback reflects a recurring need we hear from customers: modernize infrastructure, reduce operational burden, and retain the SQL skills, tools, and application patterns their teams already trust.

Azure Database for PostgreSQL: Open-source flexibility with enterprise reliability

Customers choose Azure Database for PostgreSQL because it combines the innovation of the PostgreSQL ecosystem with the operational benefits of a managed service.

Wesley Haakman, a principal architect at IT service provider Intercept, using the service across hundreds of customer scenarios, shared that “[the] organization’s database uptime has improved” and highlighted the ease of integration with other Azure services.

Sathish Palanisamy, data engineer at a large transportation company, said “We’ve used Azure Database for PostgreSQL for four years, benefiting from its performance, scalability, ease of integration, and support, especially during migration from Oracle, while also reducing costs and enabling faster, secure, AI-driven innovation in our airline operations.”

These reviews highlight the value customers place on flexibility, modernization, and a clear path to AI-powered innovation.

Azure Cosmos DB: Global scale and performance for modern applications

Customers building modern cloud-native and AI-powered applications consistently point to Azure Cosmos DB’s combination of low latency, elastic scalability, flexible data models, and search performance.

Kunal Mukerjee, former vice president of technology strategy at Docusign, said “Cosmos DB has improved search result quality, throughput, and query latency. There are trade-offs to finding the sweet spot among all of these. Having a NoSQL solution that can do that in a 100 percent Azure shop is the best fit we could want.”

Another customer, Yoni Nijs, CTO of Zero Friction, described using Azure Cosmos DB serverless for a highly unpredictable consumer portal and provisioned throughput with autoscale for a back-office application, noting that the configuration was “… very scalable and still cost-effective.”

These are exactly the patterns AI applications demand: responsive global systems that can adapt to changing demand without sacrificing performance or cost efficiency.

Taken together, these reviews reinforce a clear message: organizations want databases that are not only secure and scalable, but also ready for the next generation of intelligent applications.

Turning customer feedback into innovation

The themes customers highlighted are the same themes guiding our investments across the Microsoft Databases portfolio. Our goal is not simply to add new features, but to help customers solve real challenges: modernizing existing applications, building AI-powered experiences, reducing operational complexity, and scaling with confidence.

SQL Server

Relational databases continue to power many of the world’s most critical applications. With SQL Server 2025, we’re helping customers extend those applications into the AI era without changing the platforms, skills, or tools they already trust. Native vector support, in-database embedding generation, semantic search, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities make it easier to build intelligent applications while keeping data secure, governed, and close to operational workloads.

Azure SQL Database

With Azure SQL Database, customers get a fully managed cloud-native SQL solution for modernizing and building AI applications. Azure SQL Database Hyperscale helps applications scale with demand and grow as needs evolve, while automatic tuning and elastic resource management improve performance and cost efficiency. Customers can build AI-powered experiences on operational data with AI retrieval and secure agent connectivity, with integrations across key AI and analytics solutions like Microsoft Foundry and Microsoft Fabric. 

This helps their organization build a direct path from business-critical data to intelligent applications, without compromising the security, governance, and performance they expect from Microsoft’s SQL platforms. 

Azure Database for PostgreSQL

For PostgreSQL on Azure, our investments focus on helping customers modernize faster, accelerate AI development, and run mission-critical workloads with greater confidence. Highlights include the public preview of Azure HorizonDB, bringing AI-native capabilities such as integrated vector search, AI functions, AI pipelines, and model management to PostgreSQL; new migration and upgrade innovations including AI-assisted Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migration tooling; and performance improvements such as Premium SSD v2, cascading read replicas, and new high-performance infrastructure options for Azure Database for PostgreSQL. These innovations are helping organizations adopt AI capabilities while continuing to benefit from PostgreSQL’s open-source ecosystem.

Azure Cosmos DB

For customers building AI-native applications, Azure Cosmos DB investments focus on helping developers move faster while simplifying operations at scale. Recent innovations include enhanced vector and hybrid search, semantic reranking, agent-focused development tools, Global Secondary Indexes, per-partition automatic failover, richer change feed capabilities, and improvements to local development through the Linux Emulator. Together, these investments help developers build responsive, AI-powered applications faster while maintaining performance, resilience, and operational efficiency.

Across the portfolio, our goal is consistent: help customers build applications faster, operate them more efficiently, and prepare for a future where AI is deeply integrated into every application experience.

Thank you to our customers and community

These PeerSpot recognitions belong first and foremost to our customers and community.

Every review, product suggestion, support interaction, preview program discussion, and customer conversation helps shape the direction of Microsoft Databases. Your feedback helps other technology leaders make informed decisions, and it helps our teams build better products.

On behalf of everyone across the Microsoft Databases organization, thank you for your trust, your partnership, and your willingness to share your experiences.

I encourage you to read what your peers are saying, and, if Microsoft Databases are helping your organization innovate, consider sharing your own review.