Azure Stack Reviews

We are using it in our company and the customer's company as well. So, it works on both sides. For certain development environments, we need to build our internal environment, and we need it for that. Similarly, we need to build the production environment for the customer, and we use it for that.

The beauty of Azure is that most of the features are easily accessible. It is user-friendly. Almost all resources in Azure are very easily accessible. For example, you can access a virtual machine, and you can scale it up. You can go ahead with different infrastructure-as-a-service in Azure for the platform or for the cloud. Different levels of development could be done using it.

It should be improved in terms of integrations. It could be integrated more with external tools. 

We have Azure Purview for governance, but that is for data governance. For code governance, we have to use SonarQube or WhiteSource for vulnerabilities and license management. We would like to have a native code compliance tool.

I have been working with this solution for three years. 

It is absolutely stable.

It is scalable. The resources in Azure are scalable for a smooth transaction. 

Their technical support is very good. They are always easily available when we need them.

Positive

I have been working with different automation tools such as Jenkins. Jenkins is a good tool to start with. Being a DevOps person, I had to go with Azure ADO and Azure DevOps, which basically gives you the view of how DevOps actually works.

It is easy to set up. It takes you minutes to set it up.

Azure has a subscription version. It has a pay-as-you-go subscription with a subscription ID. So, you have your particular subscription with an enterprise agreement. There is a dev-type subscription for development and testing.

The pricing seems pretty reasonable. The pricing could be per resource. For example, you have Databricks, Data Factory, Scaled DB, and Cosmos. You have everything in Azure. They have an Azure pricing calculator that you can use to check the price of every resource. It gives you a proper cost estimation. You can compare the cost and then go for the best resource for your project.

I would definitely advise others to implement it as an infrastructure service only because you get to learn more. You get to explore the code more and know different steps. You can automate more and better. You can get automation done on top of what is already there, which could lead to another invention. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We have used the solution for IPS, IDS, and security incident response. We have used Defender as an antivirus, anti-malware, and intrusion detection. We used Intune for endpoint management and endpoint detection response. We use Purview for insider threats, data leakage detection and response, and data classification.

You can use the Azure security policies to enforce your compliance objectives. We also used web firewalls and identity governance, which is a security feature or can be used as such.

The solution's front door and web application firewalls have proven most beneficial for our edge computing needs. The solution provides end-to-end comprehensive protection across the services.

You have vulnerability management tools as well. The way this solution gives you steps to follow to remediate vulnerability is not very well done. It can't be an idealized process. It needs to deal with what really exists and provide more support to people who are remediating.

The main challenge with the tool for a security person is protecting the data in transit between the on-premises or hybrid application and the public cloud. Knowing how to move the data securely at a reasonable cost was difficult.

I have been using Azure Stack for eight years.

Sometimes, Microsoft services fail without warning. The solution sends you a warning, but it's not enough of a warning in advance, which they could improve. Sometimes, we would think our application failed, but it would actually be the underlying Microsoft services that failed.

Azure Stack is a highly scalable solution. Our organization had around 500 users using the solution. We had plans to increase its usage to minimize the use of third-party tools because of cost considerations.

Sometimes, the technical support was excellent, and sometimes, they knew nothing. It's not that the people on the support team were not good, but they were not necessarily well-informed about new services.

Neutral

The solution's initial setup is usually straightforward. However, it's not simple unless you have experience in that field. The only complexity I encountered was integrating it with Business Intelligence (BI). However, that could have been my own ignorance about BI rather than Microsoft.

When I tried to scrape data out of the rest of the services and dump it into BI to analyze it, I didn't find it very helpful. I also didn't find the documentation helpful, but that's probably my ignorance. If I had known more about data analysis, I would probably have had an easier time.

The solution's deployment time took about nine months, but there were many significant enterprise-level applications to migrate. The holdup was more about the application team ensuring they could meet the business's needs before migrating.

To deploy the solution, you follow a typical business analysis process, where you gather requirements from the business, the cybersecurity team, or stakeholders. Then, you work in the cloud to find out how to meet those requirements using that solution. Earlier, you had to have a third-party VPN, but now they have their own VPN. The cloud was not quite mature until the last few years.

I find Azure Stack to be very costly. The people who manage the budgets are satisfied with the solution’s medium pricing, which is neither very expensive nor very cheap. I think the solution has a reasonably good value for what it provides.

The solution's integration with other Azure Services is extremely valuable. Since everything is designed to fit together, you don't have to do a lot of work to integrate the services with the security protections or vice versa.

The way the solution handles data sovereignty could use some work. You still need to do a lot of work to determine where the processing occurs. Suppose you have a Canadian residency requirement. Many services still have processing in the United States or Asia, where sensitive data can be an issue. It would be better if the tool were more forthright about where processing occurs or could actually move processing into the countries where sovereignty is required.

Some third-party tools were well-adapted for integration with the solution. However, this was the result of the third parties' work, not of Microsoft's. The third parties ensured that all the work was done to integrate them with Azure Stack.

The solution consistently provides support and integration. Azure Stack tries to consider and meet the needs of cybersecurity professionals as best it can. Also, I like how the tool adapted to shift left, where security became the responsibility of the whole IT team, and they met that need very well.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We use the solution for data lake and storage. We also use Fabric. We have some applications running in Oracle. We take the data from there and bring it into Azure for storage. We use Synapse Analytics to build the tables. We do the data analysis and data cleansing and visualize it using Power BI.

The product is easy to use. It is fantastic. It's integrated directly with Azure DevOps and Visual Studio. It is easy to integrate the product with other solutions. It makes our AI projects easier. We can use SQL or machine learning.

We face some challenges with database rebuilding.

I have been using the solution for six months.

The product is stable. I rate the stability an eight or nine out of ten. In the software industry, nothing is ten out of ten. Everything has room for improvement.

The product is very flexible and elastic. Around 100 developers use the solution in our organization.

The initial setup is very easy. We can use the cloud infrastructure and the Azure template to deploy the solution. Or else, we can use the GUI and click till the installation is finished. The ease of setup depends on how skillful the person is in deploying the product.

We also use tools like Power BI. The system should be dynamic after the process change. The data and table must be fully responsive dynamically. The rebuilt table command must be scheduled. After that, the statistics must be collected dynamically. Many people working with data management do not know this process and say that Azure Stack has delay issues.

The engineering team in our organization has ten people, including the manager. The machine learning and AI team has 15 people. The database, Oracle, and operating systems teams have 15 people each. I recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

We use Azure Stack for everything, and it drives our entire business.

The solution's most valuable features are security, configurability, and recoverability.

The solution's transparency over cost management could be much easier because it's very difficult to manage costs.

I have been using Azure Stack for five years.

Microsoft has outages from time to time that affect everybody, and it takes the whole system down.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

Around 200 users are using the solution in our organization.

I rate the solution’s scalability ten out of ten.

It's very difficult to get our issues dealt with quickly because we're a small company.

Neutral

The solution's initial setup is not complex, but it requires a lot of training. The solution's deployment took a few weeks because we built the entire company on the cloud.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup a six out of ten.

Azure Stack is a very expensive solution. The costs are very opaque and coming out of control quite quickly.

Azure Stack is deployed on the cloud in our organization. Azure Stack is a very fast and flexible product. I would recommend the solution to other users because it is a safe and standard system.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

My company uses Azure Stack to host the records management software.

The most valuable features of the solution are scalability, ease of use, and its ongoing maintenance process that takes away a lot of trouble when one has to do an on-premises installation.

I feel that Azure Stack has so many different variables which are not very clear. Unless you have a great deal of knowledge or a really good integrator, you may encounter a few surprises when you begin with the implementation phase of Azure Stack. In general, the initial setup phase of Azure Stack is an area with concern that needs improvement. The initial setup affected me the most from the point of view of the cost structures related to Azure Stack.

I can't comment if I would like to see any additional functionalities added to the solution since I currently don't use even 10 percent of its capabilities.

I have been using Azure Stack for six months. My company just uses the product internally.

The product has remained stable so far in our company.

It is a scalable solution.

There are around 30 users of the product in our company, and I get it to the needs of approximately 250 clients of our company who use the solution.

My company does not necessarily plan to increase the use of the solution in the near future. The usage of the solution will organically grow if required.

I have faced no issues with the technical support provided by Microsoft. I haven't had direct contact with Microsoft since it is the vendor from Microsoft that provides me with good technical support. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I currently use Fortinet FortiGate.

I haven't previously worked with products similar to Azure Stack since every product in our company was deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution was initially deployed on an on-premises model, and currently, my company is shifting the product to the cloud.

The solution's implementation phase took place over a span of approximately two and a half months.

People from Azure managed the deployment of the solution in our company from their end, so I don't know the efforts people put in to deploy the solution.

I have a consultant who takes care of the deployment, configuration, and migration part of the solution. I haven't faced any issues with the solution's deployment, configuration, and migration phases since I got help from a third-party integrator, who was very helpful.

I have not seen any return on investment from the use of the solution in my company.

Azure Stack's price falls on the higher side of the spectrum. The licensing costs for Azure Stack in our region range somewhere between 40,000 to 50,000 USD. Though my company makes monthly payments towards the licensing costs of Azure Stack, I have plans to purchase a three-year plan in the future. The licensing costs for Azure Stack include the cost of the additional facilities it provides, like maintenance and support.

I am satisfied with the overall product.

I recommend those who plan to use the product in the future to do their homework and learn everything about it before purchasing it.

I rate the overall product a seven out of ten.

We use the analytics side of Azure Stack extensively. I use Azure Stack for advanced analytics, AI machine learning, and business intelligence to report and interpret data. We also use the solution to store our data repositories from a data lake perspective.

The most valuable feature of Azure Stack is its ability to store and process large amounts of data. The analytics side of Azure Stack is pretty influential to our business.

Azure Stack is an expensive product that should be made more cost-effective.

I have been using Azure Stack for five years.

I rate Azure Stack a ten out of ten for stability. Azure Stack is very stable. We just had one glitch in five years, and the glitch was for a couple of hours. So, Azure Stack's stability is very good.

I rate Azure Stack a ten out of ten for scalability. Azure Stack is very scalable. Around 100 IT users are using Azure Stack in my company. Finance engineers are using it for reporting. From a finance perspective, Azure Stack is extensively used by cost accountants.

Fortunately, we used a partner to set up Azure Stack instead of doing it ourselves. It was relatively simple for them to set up the solution. If we had done it ourselves, it would be pretty complex. The partners who set up Azure Stack for us have done it for a number of organizations. It was pretty quick, and it took a matter of weeks to set it up.

Azure Stack definitely gave us a return on investment in my previous organization. My previous organization was a mining organization, and the value we got from the system was improved utilization of fleets. We could monitor and improve fleet utilization, which had a monetary return but was never quantified. We managed monthly to increase the utilization closer to a significant eighty percent from about forty or fifty percent.

Azure Stack has an annual licensing fee, which is very expensive. We pay service costs to the integrator or the partner to support and maintain Azure Stack.

We have a Microsoft Edge device to transfer data between the cloud and on-premise. However, the backing for Azure Stack is purely cloud-based.

The deployment of Azure Stack was done through an integrator. The first step in deploying Azure Stack was to set up the Azure platform in the back end, to put down temporary Edge devices, and then later on, the actual dedicated Edge devices were shipped from Microsoft.

Fortunately, the deployment and maintenance of Azure Sack are done by an integration partner. They maintain it, and we pay them a service level agreement. I don't know what they've got operating in the back end, but a relatively small team of no more than five people keeps it running.

Regarding Azure Stack, I would ask users to be very mindful of what services they consume. It is like a buffet. So the more services you subscribe to, the higher the cost. So, the cost can escalate quite rapidly. There's a lot of convenience, but it comes at a cost.

Overall, I rate Azure Stack an eight out of ten.

Our company uses the solution for normal production and visibility of our systems. We have 400 users and are at proof of concept while we complete governance. 

The solution integrates and runs well with other Microsoft tools. 

The whole package works very well together for identity management, defending endpoints or servers, and the CM.

Documentation for enrollment is very good. 

The solution could be less expensive. 

So many new features are added at a fast pace that it is sometimes hard to keep up with all the solution offers. 

I have been using Microsoft-based solutions for 23 years. The solution has been added to the mix along the way. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

We do not have scalability experience because we are in the process of finalizing the cloud adoption framework and giving the green light for production. We have to finalize the governance and other things before we will allow production. While we wait, we are using the solution for proof of concept things. 

Technical support has worked very well.

From our experiences, technical support is rated a ten out of ten. 

Positive

If you want to do setup right, then it requires time and is complex. The risks are high if you deploy too quickly. 

We are partnered with consultants for implementation to ensure proper governance and frameworks. 

We will have an agreement with a partner to provide support and maintain at least a part of the solution with our in-house team. 

Pricing could be improved so I rate it an eight out of ten. 

We use Microsoft products but did conduct a lightweight comparison. Because we rely very heavily on Microsoft on-premises, we immediately saw the benefits of using the solution instead of AWS or Google. 

The solution is developing very fast so new features are always being added. It is almost hard to keep up with everything the solution offers. 

The solution has been working very well for our company. For financial institutions, I recommend its use along with Microsoft Identity.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

We're using the latest version.

It's deployed on the cloud, mainly as a Kubernetes container.

It's more reliable, secure, and easy to deploy. It's much more stable as a platform.

There's Azure SQL Database on the cloud for small loads, but now they're moving to Synapse, which has a combination of the storage plus the analytics. 

I've been using this solution for more than six years.

It's stable. We haven't had any significant down times, because now you have redundancy across networks. We have not come across any situation where any disruptions have occurred, at least on the cloud connectivity.

It's absolutely scalable. We haven't had any challenges with scalability.

We had some issues, and we directly raised a defect bug to them so they could sort it out. I haven't heard teams complaining about that. I don't see any challenge right now because the stack is much stabler, easier, and we haven't needed to reach out.

Positive

Both AWS and Azure are the best in the world right now. 

It all depends on what our customers need, so we use both.

One or two people are needed to maintain this solution.

I would rate the pricing 4 out of 5. It could be lower.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.