Microsoft Azure DevOps Reviews

We use the solution mostly for automation, deployment, generating build, and creating virtual machines.

The build and release management features are valuable. The deployment packages are also valuable.

Requirements traceability must be customizable. It is very difficult to integrate the product with third-party tools. It is all proprietary. It's not very customizable. It should be managed better. The product is not sufficient to generate documentation automatically.

I have been using the solution for three to four years.

The tool’s stability is good. I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

We have around 60 users in our organization.

The turnaround time is high.

Positive

My team set up the solution. It took one and a half years to stabilize.

The tool helps us save reasonably.

The solution is expensive.

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

We are a team of 12 consultants specializing in this solution. We have customers with approximately 200 users each, and we have been able to reduce our customers' deployment time by using Azure DevOps or TFS.

Additionally, our customers have been able to measure and improve their development process, by generating some KPI's as 'average defect fixing time', 'effort deviation', and 'velocity' among others, due to the continuous use of Azure DevOps.

The integration of the whole cycle is the main strength of the tool. If I want to control the cycle with other tools on the market, I would have to use several tools. However, this is not the case with Azure DevOps or TFS.

The ability to extend work items was more flexible than it is now. Talking version control, one of our customers had some issues because they found it very difficult to manage more than 1000 repositories for one team project.

Additionally, I would like to see more powerful dashboards that could be used instead of Power BI. Azure DevOps or TFS does not support graphics from hierarchy queries. It would be powerful to have because some customers don't have Power BI licenses.

We have been working with Azure DevOps or TFS for the past 11 years.

It is totally stable.

The documentation is good and thus, we have not had to contact technical support very often. However, when we have escalated an issue to technical support, they have been good.

The initial setup can be straightforward if the consultant is knowledgeable.

The pricing is very competitive because of the whole development cycle by Azure DevOps. You don't have to buy and integrate several different tools.

Azure DevOps or TFS is a very good tool for development teams. It's easy to use. However, you would need the help of a consultant who has a lot of experience with the tool. This is because the tool let's you do things in many ways, but not all of them will be the right way to do it. It would be better to invest in the services of an experienced consultant.

Overall, I would rate TFS or Azure DevOps at nine out of ten.

I work for a telecommunication company that offered television via IPTV. 

IPTV is an internet protocol television, such as AT&T U-verse or Fios from Verizon.

All of the IPTV systems are proprietary, meaning that's not open to the customer, only to the infrastructure. Before Microsoft Azure DevOps, customers only use what are called set-top boxes. When you are deploying Microsoft Azure DevOps, you don't need the set-top box anymore. You only need a client that can go in, but you have to deploy it. You have to understand what the customer has and what they needed to have in place for on-premise, hybrid, or in production.

Microsoft Azure DevOps does not use the set-top boxes. You have something else that is called OTT or over the top. What that means is the deployment that you're going to do depends on the client the customer is going to use. The deployment has to be tested, and that's why we have the different deployments available, on-premise, cloud, and hybrid.

The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure DevOps are high-level protection. The protection is very important to the customers to prevent eavesdropping. eavesdropping is when a hacker tries to get into the solution. With this solution is it difficult for them to do it.

In the hybrid deployment, you can test everything. The customer was perfectly happy that developed the code, and when they put it in the hybrid Microsoft Azure DevOps and tested it as if it were in real production. That's the part that I've really enjoyed the most, is seeing how a product that was developed by the customer was tested perfectly. If something is wrong, we come back to Microsoft Azure DevOps for whatever they need to do. If they need to go deeper, they can use TFS which is part of DevOps and show it to the program manager or developer.

Microsoft Azure DevOps needs to be updated in my time. In the application that I was managing myself in the deployment and support, it was updated every six weeks. The customer had new features or new batches. Batching is an update of the software. Unfortunately, some of the DevOps or some of the people that were working on that part, do not have the final experience from what customers have. This is something that I did with several teams in Microsoft. We told the product unit manager if you want to understand what is happening from a customer standpoint you need to start from the beginning. Having customers find a problem can not be the only way to find issues to resolve them. 

Testing is very important. Microsoft Azure DevOps tests very well. However,  DevOps teams need to be aware of what they are impacting when someone updates anything on the system.

I have been using Microsoft Azure DevOps for approximately 

It's important to know what kind of DevOps you are going to have. If they're going to work with Microsoft Azure DevOps, they need to understand the solution very well. They cannot just start doing things because they wanted to try and do them.

Microsoft Azure DevOps is scalable if you have everything in place, such as the service map and processes. Before you do anything, you have to understand what the impact will be on the customer.

We had over 10 million people using this solution worldwide. I have worked in many countries, such as the Americas, Canada, and Chile. Many of our product groups were in China, India, France, and Israel.

I have used Amazon AWS previously.

When I compare when Microsoft Azure with Amazon AWS. The two of them offer the same features. You have the storage, performance, connectivity, et cetera. However, on the hybrid, Microsoft Azure DevOps is a lot better than Amazon AWS because you can emulate it perfectly. The hop counts matter, which is how many times one communication connects on its travels from one device to another.

There are three ways to deploy Microsoft Azure DevOps. To set up all three deployments is very similar but different. The on-premise deployment is where the customer owns the code. What Microsoft Azure DevOps does lets you develop your code, and when you have finished your code, you have to put it in the cloud for the hybrid. Then you can test it in an environment that is similar to production. I was in charge of making sure that everything was set up correctly.

I was involved from the beginning of the implementation. I'm a project manager myself too. I don't have certification, but I've been doing project management all my life. One important element when doing the implementation is the voice of the customer. No matter what you're configuring or setting up, if the voice of the customer is not there, but the voice of the business and the employees is, that is only two-thirds of what you have to do.

For example, I want my customers to run this application even if they are in the jungle. If they have access to WiFi, cellular signal, or hotspots, they can have access to anything that Microsoft Azure DevOps can give to them. Except they need a client, and that's the other part. You need to understand what clients the customers are going to need. The clients depend on three things. You need to know the infrastructure of the customers, their immediate needs, and the needs of their customers. We're developing something for the customer who has customers. Unfortunately is not only DevOps, it's everything. DevOps is only one part.

DevOps has one issue. There are components that are produced and supported by other teams somewhere else. Service maps are very important to develop with DevOps teams. When we develop the service map, they know what to do. However, some DevOps do not like to have service maps, because they say that they know what to do. That's what the problem is, they need to understand that they're not alone.

I have worked with integrators, vendors, resellers, consultants, and in-house teams.  

You have to be a very good project, delivery, and program manager, in order to understand how to work with vendors.

For example, you need to know how to work with people who, are going to cable a house, building, or something similar. You need to understand specifically what are the requirements that they have as a company. Additionally, you need to understand the company to know the requirements of the customers. If you are not familiar with any one of those, the deployment is going to be a total fiasco. You have to know what is going on. 

You have to know the vendor. The vendor can tell you a lot. For example, when the materials are available, if there is a problem with the supply chain, what do in this circumstance. The vendor knows about the RMS or the return of the devices. You have to know everything from the deployment, such as RMS to return back, refunds, purchase orders, and goods received.

The return on investment from Microsoft Azure DevOps depends on how many customers you have and how fast are you going to be able to have something ready for your customers.

I have a customer who wanted to start quickly on the cloud. They have about three million customers working in one area, and only when 100,000 started did they receive a return on investment. It was not immediate but in approximately a year or a year and a half, they had a return on investment with every single customer.

The reason that customers are going to the cloud is that it provides the ability to reduce the license cost. For example, when purchasing Office 365 it is bundled with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and many other applications. In the past, purchasing a license was approximately $600. Today it's only $35 or $45 per customer, per client, or per user, plus the storage. It's less expensive for companies today, to use something, such as Microsoft Azure DevOps, and provide the software to all the employees needing a license. It's better to go with the cloud than just to buy the licenses by themselves.

There are some additional costs. You pay for how much space you are using. If you don't use too much space, then the price will be very little. If you use a lot of space, you have to pay for it. Additionally, they offer readiness training. It is not included directly in what is called a statement of work when you are doing business with customers. This is when things can be a little more difficult because it can be expensive for customers if they want to change deployments from on-premises to cloud or hybrid.

The voice of the customer is very important. Develop the software based on the voice of the customer.

I rate Microsoft Azure DevOps a seven out of ten.

We use Azure Repos for most things. It integrates with Azure Boards. 

It's good for the ticketing part and for saving the Azure Repos. We use Terraform.

Azure DevOps integrations with other tools have streamlined our workflows.

The centralized code repository is a major part. We store code and collaborate, and everyone can see what others are doing and what code they're adding. We can review the code and make changes if needed. 

The same code used for implementation is visible to other team members, allowing them to contribute. Additionally, the Azure board interface helps create tickets and assign workloads, keeping everyone informed about progress.

Azure DevOps is effective for repository management and code collaboration. We can create branches, differentiate between code versions, save and review code later, get PR approvals, and more. All these features are valuable.

There is room for improvement in customer service and support. Sometimes, I create a ticket for a specific issue, and they tell me it's not relevant to that ticket. 

They ask me to create a different one, basically saying they can't help with the current one. It's a communication gap. We're troubleshooting, so we don't always know the exact issue. They should let us stick with the same ticket and maybe assign a different engineer if needed. These areas definitely need improvement.

Another area is the Azure monitoring agent for Citrix machines. There's room for improvement there too.

I have been using this solution for four months. 

It's a very refined tool from Microsoft, so there haven't been any problems with stability for us.

Scalability is great. We can add as much code as we need, and the deployed code volume can also be scaled. 

The scalability comes in the sense of creating virtual machines using IaaS, which works really well within the suite.

I'm on the DevOps team, and around 25 to 30 of us in the team itself use Azure DevOps. So, overall, there are a lot of end users in my company. 

The customer service and support are good, but there are some issues when we're doing a deployment and need clarification. They're not very helpful there. Maybe there's a separate team for that. 

But in general, for project creation and work, after everything is deployed, Microsoft can help with a general support ticket. But they won't help with the planning phase. They're more like big management. So, there's a gap in the assistance we need for new project deployments.

Neutral

For ticketing, we use ServiceNow. Both solve the same problem in that regard. And for code repositories, we use GitHub. So, it's not an all-in-one solution like Azure DevOps, which has a lot of features bundled together.

Since Azure DevOps offers everything in one place, it feels more convenient. It does a bit of everything. So it's a good option because it replaces various individual tools and provides all their services in one package.

It is very straightforward. It was easy for me to deploy. 

The deployment depends on the workloads we have. For example, deployment for setting up Azure DevOps or the application itself isn't the same.

It takes a lot of time to get the setup ready. 

Regarding setup, connecting it to Visual Studio was smooth on both Mac and Windows. Integrations are quite good. 

Deployments depend on the workload. We create virtual machines using Terraform, so it's usually fast, especially when downloading repos from Azure Repos.

Smaller tasks like deploying a prepared code for a single service wouldn't require additional engineers. Many workflows can be handled by one person. 

Architecture is different, as the architect designs the infrastructure, which needs to be followed.

ROI depends on the cost optimization we can achieve. Sometimes, clients use heavier resources than they actually need. So it depends. 

If the environment is fully optimized, there can be significant savings, leading to a good return on investment. But they would also be paying for partner management. 

For Microsoft, it can get expensive when you need heavy-duty machines. But compared to on-premises solutions or the hardware we used before, it's still much more convenient for us. So even though it can be pricey, the benefits outweigh the cost in our case.

Maybe some more flexible payment options could improve the pricing. 

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We rely on Azure DevOps for our CI/CD workflows. We use it extensively in our daily operations, particularly for deployments and other IT tasks. We use it for project management and collaboration throughout our software development lifecycle. Our task is to determine if the workflow within our networks is integrated with our ITSM or focused management, enabling us to initiate tracking for these tasks.

The reporting and analytics features of Azure DevOps significantly improve our project visibility and decision-making process. This includes a reporting dashboard and integrated monitoring capabilities. We utilize Prometheus and other tools for monitoring, and Azure DevOps seamlessly integrates with various solutions, ensuring flexibility in usage while maintaining consistent concepts.

Azure DevOps has significantly enhanced the productivity and efficiency of our development team, especially considering our high volume of daily deployments. Developers find it invaluable for tracking changes, generating logs, and creating reports effortlessly. Automation of deployments is particularly crucial for us, given our extensive environment with over two thousand fifty-three instances. The most significant benefit is the reduction in time and effort, leading to a decrease in human errors.

Integrating our pipeline with Jenkins is seamless, particularly for code management using Git repositories. Additionally, for cloud-based applications, we already have native network integration with Azure Active Directory.

As we frequently deploy numerous applications, ensuring the protection and fine-tuning of these applications once they are in production is crucial for minimizing downtime and enhancing availability.

The features of Azure Repos that we find most impactful are those related to source control management within our DevOps code management processes.

If the pipeline isn't properly configured, it indicates a potential gap in the team's understanding of DevOps principles, which can lead to deployment issues. Incorporating security tools directly into DevOps is crucial, as many existing DevOps solutions lack robust security features.

I have been working with it for nine years.

We encountered certain downtime.

It doesn't provide the level of scalability as Jenkins provides. We have approximately forty users in our company. I would rate it six out of ten.

The technical support is relatively satisfactory. I would rate it five out of ten.

Neutral

Deploying GitLab or Jenkins is much easier and involves fewer requirements. Integration with various tools is readily available, especially with Jenkins Blue Ocean, which offers extensive enterprise integrations. When it comes to Azure DevOps, integration with non-Microsoft tools may pose challenges.

For any Microsoft product, Active Directory is a prerequisite, and ensuring its availability on the Azure Standard and Database is essential. This configuration is necessary for setting up the application effectively.

Maintenance is essential due to occasional exclusivity with business connectivity, leading to various issues such as data rate problems and database availability issues.

When compared to other vendors, it is cheaper.

I would recommend other tools like GitLab or Jenkins. Overall, I would rate it seven out of ten.

My clients use Azure DevOps primarily for managing code deployment pipelines. We follow a structured process of pushing code from the development environment to testing and then to production, and Azure DevOps is crucial in this workflow. We leverage its version control capabilities to maintain and track our codebase efficiently. Additionally, we make use of its dashboard service to monitor and manage employee hours, helping us keep a close eye on project timelines and resource allocation.

The most valuable aspect of Azure DevOps for me is its robust version control functionality, which is critical for our workflow. I find it particularly useful how easy it is to automate pipelines. When we push code changes, the system automatically runs the entire pipeline, and the clear visualization of logs is a great benefit. This feature allows us to quickly pinpoint issues and understand what went wrong with our processes or tools, making troubleshooting much more efficient.

While there is always room for improvement, I don't have any urgent issues or specific feature requests right now. I'm content with Azure DevOps as it is. Its functions are standard and easy to use for those familiar with such tools. However, the only thing that could be improved is the stability of the solution.

I have been using Microsoft Azure DevOps for two months.

The solution is generally stable but not entirely issue-free. While problems do occur occasionally, they have become less frequent, occurring around six times less often than before. For example, a recent issue occurred when a dependency was updated, causing the pipeline to crash. However, with the help of logs and troubleshooting, we were able to identify and resolve the problem by making adjustments to the Docker file. I would rate the stability as an eight out of ten. There is room for improvement in terms of stability, as there are occasional issues that require manual intervention to address. While progress has been made, there is a desire to achieve a level of stability where network removal is not necessary in the first place.

Azure DevOps is highly scalable and works effectively even for large-scale projects. It can handle the demands of extensive engineering work and is generally robust in terms of scalability.

The technical support is good and quite responsive.

I have experience with using GitLab. Comparing GitLab and Azure DevOps, GitLab excels in functionality and offers excellent integration capabilities with Azure DevOps. However, Azure DevOps has a more user-friendly UI. The choice between the two depends on specific project needs and preferences.

The installation of Azure DevOps is straightforward because it is a web-based platform. You don't need to create solutions or go through complex setup procedures, making it a user-friendly option. Maintenance for Azure DevOps is minimal, especially if you have automated processes in place. If your solution uses Docker and you have set up automated updates on Docker Hub, the environment can essentially upgrade itself without much proactive maintenance. However, if issues arise, you can make adjustments to the configurations as needed, allowing for a more reactive approach to maintenance.

My advice to those looking to use Azure DevOps would be to make good use of the documentation available on their website. It is a valuable resource that can help answer questions and provide clarity on various aspects of the platform. Overall, I would rate Microsoft Azure DevOps as an eight out of ten.

There are many valuable features including dashboards, sprints, queries, pipelines, artifacts, and the cover repository.

I would like to see improvement in the metrics and the dependencies. I would also like to see the option to define the dependencies within all teams in the same project. We have a team level, a program level, and a portfolio level. For the metrics portion, I would like to see some drag-and-drop features for the dashboards that would make it possible to aggregate data from the different teams.

The plugin for the iteration walls can also use improvement as it does not work well.

I have been using the solution for three years.

It is stable. Whenever there has been an issue the solution slowed down but there was never any data loss.

The solution appears to be scalable.

I am not familiar with the initial setup.

The implementation was done in-house.

The cost is reasonable. For the basic license, it is around five euros per month. 

I rate the solution nine out of ten.

If someone is considering developing and deploying the infrastructure in this solution, then using this tool is perfect because it's fully integrated with the pipelines and with a server core repository. When you are building infrastructure, then you are able to use the same tool to deploy the server, deploy infrastructure, and all within a few minutes. This gives you access to the same tool, task management, dashboards, pipelines, and the server core repository. So everything you need to develop a server is integrated into the same tool.

We use Microsoft Azure DevOps for CICD, and to organize it in order to visualize the ongoing work.

It allows you to save time while also providing a governance visualization of ongoing activities and transparency.

The most valuable feature of this solution is that it saves time.

The price could be reduced. It is expensive, especially when it comes to infrastructure.

The integration could be better. Being more technology-agnostic through ease of integration would be beneficial. Once you start working for Microsoft, you are frequently tied to Microsoft.

I have been using Microsoft Azure DevOps for the last ten years.

Microsoft Azure DevOps is a stable solution.

Microsoft Azure DevOps is scalable.

I would say the technical support is fine, but I have not had any trouble with the solution.

I have some experience using Jira.

It is very expensive in comparison to others.

As the cost structure is per user, I would recommend paying the cost structure based on the amount of data you use rather than the number of users.

I have recently researched Jira, Microsoft DevOps, TFS, and Micro Focus.

Mostly, because of the pricing, I would rate Microsoft Azure DevOps a seven out of ten.