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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)
29th
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 April 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 9.0%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Virtustream xStream is 0.7%, 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 Azure9.0%
Virtustream xStream0.7%
Other90.3%
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

"Features such as Azure object storage, IaaS, Azure System Center, Azure SQL Database are valuable to me."
"I had been able to reduce my costs a lot by using Functions, it allowed me to change the way we are developing solutions and reduce the time to market."
"The product is highly stable."
"Microsoft Azure is built for scalability."
"Enabling them to use OPEX spend just to utilize what they need when they need it at a low cost, was super valuable to them."
"The advantage of Microsoft Azure is its simplicity. It's easy to launch a project. However, the problem with this kind of solution is the reliability for the customers. You have to be sure to stay with Microsoft."
"The solution does a lot of coding and customization, and can go live quickly."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure is the Area feature."
"The solution has encryption which we did not have before."
"Once we made the move to this solution, we received efficiencies, 100%, 200%, even up to 1000%, depending on some processes."
 

Cons

"To give a rating of ten out of ten, the speed of technical support needs to improve because the time cycle from raising a ticket to resolution can stretch up to a month or two, which is very long; otherwise, I do not have much negativity about the product quality."
"The solution could improve by providing a better user interface and more organized workflows."
"More integration with other platforms is what I would like included in the next release for this solution."
"The solution’s stability could be improved."
"When we are doing transfers of records in large amounts, for example, petabytes of data or few long datasets, the performance should not degrade as it does."
"The local support is fair but it is sometimes limited, the service could be better."
"Due to the pandemic, I haven't been able to utilize their full resources. This has made it complicated to scale up."
"The solution needs to offer more data analysis services."
"Our account representative was inexperienced, they could improve on how they are managing accounts."
"Our account representative was inexperienced, they could improve on how they are managing accounts."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It's a pay-as-you-go subscription."
"The subscription models can be confusing and it would be beneficial for them to simplify them. We are on an annual subscription."
"It’s necessary to use third party products or to use good self-management economic tools"
"I believe that we have a three-year license, and I'm happy with the pricing."
"One piece of feedback from other users I have heard from is that Azure is somewhat expensive, so I would advise anyone thinking about this solution to be aware of the cost. You need to take into account the configuration you are going with or it could turn out to be a more expensive solution than you anticipated."
"Everything involves an annual commitment with a monthly charge."
"The pricing model is subscription-based and it's not an expensive solution."
"The solution is a bit expensive, we are still negotiating the price."
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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
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
University
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business141
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise149
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...
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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: April 2026.
890,124 professionals have used our research since 2012.