No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Microsoft Azure vs Virtustream xStream comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
324
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (1st)
Virtustream xStream
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
27th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 8.7%, down from 16.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Virtustream xStream is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure8.7%
Virtustream xStream0.8%
Other90.5%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Syed Abid  - PeerSpot reviewer
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
Versatile integrations and reliable customer satisfaction elevate cloud service experience
For Microsoft Azure improvement, they need to enhance their support system. The first level of support should be improved in terms of quality and response time. They need more technical support at the first level, as there are currently only one or two technical people among five to ten staff members at this level. They should ensure that the first level support is more technical because we normally provide services to technical users ourselves. When an issue arises, it usually escalates to the second or third level. When facing first level support, they may have limited knowledge and only collect screenshots to forward to their seniors. They should ensure that the first level support is aligned with L2 and L3 to better assist us, especially since we mention in the ticket that our issues are related to specific problems and require that sort of support.
RH
Business Systems Manager at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
Improves efficiencies, has encryption, and great mission-critical customer support
Previously we had an amateur solution where we were managing on our own data center but we had the management in-house. It was a strategic move to give people who were more competent and with business focus other core initiatives. It was a strategic outsource model. The equipment we were using was out date and at the end of its life cycle, we had to make some transitions, do a hardware replacement, or move on. We moved on to this solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft Azure can be used for everything, including development, hosting and storage."
"All development and pre-production scenarios are now under pay as you go, and are not open all the time, in that way we’re saving a lot of resources, money and we gain fast flexibility to grant new capabilities, computing power, and PoC scenarios."
"The use case for Azure is maintenance. Azure maintains the infrastructure so we don't have to, and that's the best use case for any cloud-based application."
"We leverage Azure regions around the world; we love the flexibility and ease at which we can deploy and manage resources for our global clients."
"The organization can focus more on real business problems instead of IT problems, reduce the time spent setting up the infrastructure, and become more agile and, in many cases, more reliable by using the public cloud."
"Kubernetes service and API management are the most valuable."
"Azure has helped in the setup of operations with minimal environments for developing a proof of concept, and the POC is the most useful and charming feature to get a minimal valuable product for all deployments, while customer satisfaction increased the performance of sales and customer requirements were optimized."
"Stability is straightforward"
"Once we made the move to this solution, we received efficiencies, 100%, 200%, even up to 1000%, depending on some processes."
"The solution has encryption which we did not have before."
 

Cons

"The cost is something that could be improved. There's not much clarity regarding the price range."
"We have faced some issues on the pricing side, but it has improved lately. We are trying to adjust to the new pricing methods that they are using now. It should be better from now on."
"Stability. Microsoft is implementing changes too fast and sometimes things break."
"It is more difficult for HR and finance to use Microsoft Azure, as they want to build AI agents without always contacting IT."
"I would like to see better policy-based management and everything related to security management could have been better integrated."
"It would be ideal if they could reduce costs a bit. Right now, we find the product to be expensive."
"The interface is not easy to use. I'd like to see them develop a better interface, more graphical information about the resource and the consumer."
"Azure ARM​ console can be a bit overwhelming at the beginning."
"Our account representative was inexperienced, they could improve on how they are managing accounts."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a very expensive machine and I would like for them to improve the price. There are smaller sized competitors who offer cheaper prices."
"The licensing price is fine."
"The long-term cost is higher than if you set up the servers on-premises, which is something that could be improved through more competitive pricing."
"We pay yearly for the license."
"Several thousand dollars and counting, we haven't needed to upgrade on premises hardware (In fact we eliminated all of the old on-premises hardware and run 100% on Azure) or pay for it's maintenance, power etc."
"Customers need to purchase additional services because of the complexity of it."
"We are on a monthly subscription for Microsoft Azure and the cost is more expensive than some of the competitors, such as Amazon AWS. They should be more competitive with other solutions."
"I rate the tool's pricing a six out of ten."
"The solution is a bit expensive, we are still negotiating the price."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) solutions are best for your needs.
910,454 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business141
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise153
No data available
 

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Continental, Domino Foods, Florida Crystals, Intel, Lanx, UOL Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and others in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS). Updated: August 2026.
910,454 professionals have used our research since 2012.