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Microsoft Azure vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Azure
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
312
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (1st)
Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 20.1%, up from 20.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 10.0%, up from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Nicolas Chabrier - PeerSpot reviewer
Promotes clear, logical structures preventing impractical configurations and offers seamless integration
The only thing is regarding the management of multi-cloud environments. That's not really possible. So basically, it's wonderful if you manage Microsoft clearly and if you manage Microsoft Azure, but if you need to consume external services and have a global overview of all your consumption, it's not the case. Google, for instance, has tools that help you manage multiple environments, which makes sense because Google is really the cloud provider. So that's why they need to be compliant with the others. But for sure, Microsoft's approach is different, and it's wonderful when you're one hundred percent on Azure. But if you'd like to have something more of a multi-cloud strategy, that's a bit of a gap where they could improve.
Vasundhara  Joshi - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamlessly scalable since applications written in Java and .NET do not create issues for its users
Regarding the setup phase, every step is a hurdle. With Pivotal Cloud Foundry, I won't get any proper resources for that. Even if I Google it, there is no proper solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry. However, if we go for Azure or some other cloud, we can get a lot of information. I believe there is not much information for Pivotal Cloud Foundry since it may be some license issue. If you go for Azure, the migration process is straightforward. Since we have been given 10 GB of space in the public cloud, we are utilizing it in our company. So, we are trying to deploy our application on the cloud, and for us, it is like a trial process for now. From our total application rate, I can say that only two to three percent is on Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Currently, half of the code is in the shell script, which is causing issues. Also, most people in my organization have worked on Java-related code. For most of the applications, they are using the same, that is, shell script and AUTOsist, and so we haven't migrated yet. So that is the reason that we are planning to opt for a hybrid model so that we don't have to migrate completely to Pivotal Cloud Foundry.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It has made my applications easier to use and has improved the development process."
"We are satisfied with the technical support."
"We are using Microsoft Azure because our organization uses a lot of Microsoft solutions. We have used Microsoft technology for a long time and we have internal engineers with great capability that understand the technology. This is why Azure is the best for us."
"It enhance the application's performance by managing increased demand efficiently"
"Azure Active Directory: Has powerful security and auditing capabilities that we use to secure all our apps."
"This is a very stable product."
"The time to market is fast compared back to the traditional on-premise hosting. That is one of the better things I can say because there is no need to worry. The Pack services will enable it to start immediately."
"The most valuable feature is cloud-based storage."
"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the deployment is easier."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is the UI, it is easy to use."
"We find its stability and scalability valuable."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
 

Cons

"One area where Microsoft Azure could improve is in offering a broader range of pre-built plugins and tools compared to AWS."
"It could be cheaper."
"The support team is not responding to my emails."
"There was a time when the solution was updated on their side and all of our functions stopped working. This issue could be worked on to prevent it from happening in the future. They must give us the information of when they are going to updates on the platform side so that we can take the appropriate measures on our side as well."
"Microsoft Azure could improve by having the availability be 100%. Which is difficult, but not impossible."
"Microsoft Azure could improve by being more user-friendly and the interface could be better."
"Technical support needs to be better."
"Technical support could be improved."
"It is not straightforward to setup."
"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"There are no synthetic application monitoring and real-time monitoring features."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"It should offer more security features."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is not scalable, infinitely, because when you install it on a set of virtual machines it is very hard to scale. It's easy to scale on an application level, but not it is not similar to if you were using Amazon. Amazon you can scale thousands of applications."
"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. For an SME, spending roughly 5,000 euros per month becomes interesting, indicating a significant infrastructure setup in the cloud."
"The pricing model can be improved because we find that Azure pricing is a bit high."
"I pay for a yearly subscription."
"Their licensing costs might be a little bit lower, compared to AWS, but I'm not sure. I think we get licenses, especially on long-term projects, on a yearly basis. It could be cheaper."
"Reducing the price would be of benefit to our customers."
"It is operational expenditure (OPEX). There is no cost upfront. When you start using it, you have to pay the charges. Initially, the cost is less, but after you start using it more and more, the cost will go higher. It is a little bit costly, but that is okay because you get better resources. You also get better support in terms of how you create the resources. Documentation is available, and the SLAs are met."
"We have an annual license subscription to use the solution."
"If you are not aware of costs, pricing, etc., you can end up with a hefty bill. However, I found that the Azure price calculator is a valuable tool to use before starting to deploy VMs in Azure. This tool will give you an overview of the costs you should expect on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis."
"We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
46%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
39%
Manufacturing Company
21%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...
Which is better - SAP Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure?
One of the best features of SAP Cloud Platform is that it is web-based and you can log in from anywhere in the world. SAP Cloud Platform is suitable for companies of any size; it works well with bo...
How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?
I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure...
Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database...
What do you like most about Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I would say it is around a nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. Just short of Oracle. It's sort of Oracle cloud.
 

Also Known As

Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.