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Microsoft Azure vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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
6.9
Number of Reviews
324
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (1st)
Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
16th
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 September 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 12.0%, down from 18.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 5.0%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure12.0%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry5.0%
Other83.0%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2832981 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Cloud migration has reduced hardware dependency and supports secure global access to apps
The best features Microsoft Azure offers are cloud scalability, virtual machines, storage, networking, security, monitoring, and identity management. Scalability is the most valuable to our organization because Microsoft Azure allows businesses to scale resources up or down based on workload demand. This helps manage traffic spikes without buying permanent hardware. Virtual machines are also valuable as Microsoft Azure provides cloud-based Windows and Linux virtual machines to run applications, servers, and workloads. Identity and Access Management is important, as the integration with Microsoft Entra ID helps manage user authentication, role-based access, and MFA. For example, employees access business apps securely using single sign-on. Backup and disaster recovery are also important because they provide automated backups and failover options to ensure business continuity. Microsoft Azure positively impacts my organization by reducing infrastructure dependency, improving availability, and enabling remote access. Teams can access applications globally without on-premises server dependency, and in terms of cost, it is very low-cost.
reviewer2263239 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
PCF allows for fine-grained configuration, especially regarding scaling but routing limitations
Something that can be done better is canary deployment. So, right now, we're using blue-green deployment. The support for canary deployment would be nice. A few things, such as what OpenShift does better are cluster management. Like, you can manage the entire thing together. Currently, it's possible to manage all the clusters, especially when it comes to cluster management using straightforward configuration. As of now, we have to handle each application instance individually, which means servicing them one by one. It would be better if we could perform these actions as a group or in a more streamlined manner. One more downside is actually the cost of this environment. So, major downside of Pivotal, it's the cost. So, the runtime running costs are very high. Extremely high.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Kubernetes service and API management are the most valuable."
"Microsoft Azure has benefited our organization mostly because we moved all our infrastructure to the cloud."
"I would definitely recommend Azure because it's an enterprise trade cloud platform and can provide valuable insights of your data and of metrics of data sources in real time."
"It is a very easy-to-use platform, and it is very powerful in terms of data backup and Blob storage. It has very good features, especially if you are using Microsoft products, such as Windows, Microsoft SQL Server."
"The solution does a lot of coding and customization, and can go live quickly."
"I have found all the features to be good."
"The most valuable feature of Azure is the flexibility to pick and choose what you need, on the spot, and then be able to manage it yourself."
"Microsoft Azure has a lot of useful features. They have databases, application services, PaaS solutions, such as platform and infrastructure services. The virtual machines' functions and services are good."
"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, and it has very good performance."
"It is a scalable product...We are not facing any particular issues since most of the applications in our company are written in Java and .NET."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and that the deployment is easier."
"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is the UI, it is easy to use."
"We find its stability and scalability valuable."
"It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."
 

Cons

"One of the most important areas for improvement is the administrative part of management. It‘s difficult to manage all aspects of Azure invoicing, and further pricing vs usage comparison and capacity to move under usage resources to a better positioned."
"It was quite frustrating that an issue with their product required an upgrade to get serviced when it was a failure that they were responsible for."
"It would be nice if there was an on-premises version of the solution, and it wasn't just cloud-based."
"Some of the dashboard features can be improved. Some of the backup solutions for SAP are not compatible."
"An issue I encountered was around the integration of Identity. I lost some important information and I would like to see improvements with this."
"There are multiple DevOps solutions and tools available in Microsoft Azure, but most of the time they are either in the build mode, meaning you don't get complete support for them because they are either making changes, or changing the names of the particular services. Sometimes, services vanish from the portal. We are not able to see that. I think they actually change the names of the services."
"I believe that some of the services need to be available on the on-premises version and not only based on the cloud."
"The support, the cost, the way they have the tiers, this could all be improved."
"I would prefer to use Amazon AWS or Google Cloud Platform rather than Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"Something that can be done better is canary deployment. So, right now, we're using blue-green deployment. The support for canary deployment would be nice."
"There are no synthetic application monitoring and real-time monitoring features and they should be included."
"Scalability is terrible. So far we have not been able to scale it up."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve the documentation. They are good, but they could improve more. Additionally, it would be beneficial if there were more use case examples."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of the solution could be reduced. We are not able to create a free account in my country."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Customers need to purchase additional services because of the complexity of it."
"We pay yearly for the license."
"As of now, there are no monthly or yearly subscription fees."
"The pricing is relatively high."
"Be careful with Azure Cool storage accounts; if you are dealing with high object counts, then it can be more economical to use Hot storage because of the high storage access costs associated with Cool."
"Related to pricing and licensing, you have to be careful how you operate with the concept."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"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 could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
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
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business141
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise153
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise11
 

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...
 

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: September 2026.
914,262 professionals have used our research since 2012.