Microsoft Azure Reviews

We use Microsoft Azure in two places. The first use case involves the Chatbot framework, and we've been using that for 18 months. This is what we predominately use it for.

Our second use involves hosting some of our critical applications. It allows us to address some of our human resource use cases in the area of policy queries, as well as some backend actions.

The automated connectors to some of our critical enterprise systems are an important feature. These are very large, critical, global HCM systems.

The library of predefined use cases is very helpful and we found the HR use case that we needed within it.

There are improvements needed from a roadmap standpoint. Some of the roadmap items that they typically publish don't move at the same pace.

The predominant area in need of improvement is support.

Microsoft needs to continue working on out-of-the-box connectors to contemporary products in the market, specific to different verticals such as finance and HR. Investing in this would be helpful because it means deploying solutions faster. We've had challenges in terms of having to custom-build some of it and at the same time, the roadmap contains more connectors.

We have been using Microsoft Azure for the past 18 months.

This is definitely a stable platform. I haven't seen issues in that respect.

Azure is a scalable platform. We have more than 10,000 people in the organization that use it from an application standpoint. The end-users could be managers or other employees in a variety of roles.

Our in-house administration team has fewer than 40 people that work with it.

At the moment, we have no plans to increase our usage.

The primary support needs to be improved. I would rate them as moderate because from a technical and service guarantee perspective, they are pretty good. However, when it comes to new roadmap items or handling requests, or adding new activities, they are moderate.

This is the first such solution that we put into place.

The initial setup is pretty much straightforward.

Our initial deployment took between six and eight weeks. This period had more to do with our setup being compliant with some of the features on Azure. 

We worked with the Microsoft consulting team during the deployment.

The team was knowledgeable but there were some areas that they could have done better. For example, we had issues with our enrollment and some of our IT requirements at the organizational level. We could have perhaps used some architecting skills.

For permanent maintenance, so we have a hybrid model when it comes to maintenance. We've outsourced some of it, and that really comes from a fixed contract so we don't control the number of people that work on it.

Internally, we have two people; one who manages the services, and the other one is more of an administrator.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Microsoft Azure is to first, very clearly agree on the terms of deployment. Second, get the initial design and prototypes for your specific implementation vetted and signed off at an early stage because this will help with security clearances and data privacy clearances. These were the two major learning points for us.

In summary, this is a good platform but there are several areas for improvement.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The solution does not have a specific version. We are talking more about a resource group. Whichever is the latest version is the one we use. 

The solution is used across the industry. Currently, I am working on something involving the education industry. My previous assignment focused more on clinical trials or medical data. These are two of the most recent and largest projects I have undertaken. 

The solution has given us more agility, scalability and opportunity to optimize the cost.

The solution should have better interface capabilities. 

There should be be better support for microservices and containers.

I have been using Microsoft Azure since 2010. I have used it within the past 12 months. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution gives our organization scalability. 

We have plans to increase its usage. 

Microsoft Azure's technical support is good.

We did not use another solution prior to Microsoft Azure. 

The initial setup is straightforward.

The deployment does not take long. In fact, the deployment time is not really applicable. When it comes to Azure, we are talking more about a platform than a proper product. I'm more into migration. 

In our case, it is we who are the consultants. As such, we are mostly into deployment at the moment and not maintenance. There are other providers who handle the latter. 

I am not in a position to comment on whether we have seen a return on our investment.

The licensing is pay per usage, so it can be both monthly and yearly. It supports all.

There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees. There are various licensing programs, so the customer may choose the one which aligns with his needs. 

The solution provides platform as a service and infrastructure service, both of which are good.

Since Microsoft Azure supports close to 200 or 300 products, we are not talking about a single product or solution and this makes it difficult for me to provide advice. Being a platform, there may be thousands of users who are making use of it. However, in my organization, we are talking about nearly 200. 

I don't have specific advice to give. This product lends good support when it comes to Microsoft tech. If the organization is a part of the overall Microsoft ecosystem, employing things such as O365 or M365, then Microsoft Azure does a better job than the competition. 

I rate Microsoft Azure as a nine out of ten. 

We are customers of Microsoft and I'm the IT technical manager. 

The most valuable feature for me is the high level of availability and the 99% uptime of the system. I also appreciate the technical simplicity of the system in terms of implementation.

I'm currently based in the Philippines and the availability of services locally could be improved. Technically speaking, I'd like to see more flexibility in terms of storage or resource allocation. Resourcing is currently quite fixed so that if you want to move between level two and level three resources, or customize resources, you can't do that. The discrepancy in terms of costing is around $200. If they improved flexibility for selecting resources it would be easier for us to get the costing approved.

I've been using this solution for around two years. 

The solution is stable, one of the most reliable in the Philippines. The downside is that currently all the services are outside the country. Singapore and Hong Kong provide the closest service but we have laws that prohibit certain amounts of data residing in other countries. None of that affects stability. 

One of the key takes from using cloud services is scalability and flexibility. If a company hits some roadblocks financially, they can reduce infrastructure and also reduce what they use in the cloud lowering the cost. 

I've had several outages or major issues and I've had good experience with technical support. They resolved the problems in less than a day. The only downside is that in the Philippines you're dealing with the vendor and not Microsoft direct. I have two steps of support; if the vendor can't provide the support, then they escalate to Microsoft. 

The initial setup is quite simple. We currently have 20 users on the infrastructure side in addition to 20+ developers.

We have difficulty in getting the costing approved. We pay for a virtual machine and the resources currently implemented there, then we need a license from Microsoft Windows OS and the database itself. In our latest license purchase, the manager approved a monthly fee of around $2,000 for the resources we use. If you're going to the cloud, that's currently included in the cost and will be less if you have the software assurance from Microsoft; on-prem is more expensive.

The big takeaway on this product is the high availability of the system on cloud and reduction of on-prem costing. There are no concerns about the electrical doing some redundancy in between, cooling, purchasing, procurement of IT equipment. Instead of budgeting based on CAPEX, we're doing it from an OPEX point of view. One of the key takes for moving to the cloud is the cost. You can leverage with the cloud and let go of some things required to maintain a system on-prem, the kinds of things that alleviate some complexity in doing maintenance of the system. The solution is suitable for any size company. 

I highly recommend Microsoft Azure. Everyone knows Microsoft so the learning curve is easier. I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

Within my company, there are roughly 150 employees using this solution. We need about 30-35 people for maintenance.

It's been pretty useful in terms of migration and disaster recovery strategy.

I have been working with Microsoft Azure for roughly four years.

This solution is quite stable. We haven't had any issues stability-wise.

Scalability is good. I would rate it high, scalability-wise.

Microsoft's technical support could be improved.

There are certain areas on the Level 1 to Level 2 support-side that are not exactly great. We have issues with our Linux operating system. I don't think we've had delays as such but I would say that's one area there might be some scope for improvement.

I personally used to work with AWS, but that was at another company.

The initial setup was fairly easy. Pretty much all the services are easy to deploy — not very complicated as such. 

The cost could definitely be lower.

You have to look out for the external storage costs — it can be a bit of a surprise. You have to do your budgeting. We didn't really anticipate that the storage expenses would be so much higher than anything else. That's something people have to budget and account for before they migrate to the cloud.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this soluting a rating of eight.

We use the solution to set up access to process queuing, configure virtual instances, obtain a domain name, acquire the necessary certificates, and deploy the web server to the internet.

Microsoft Azure has proven to be beneficial for our organization due to its quick deployment capabilities. Setting up virtual machines or any required infrastructure is fast. 

The tool needs to improve its navigation. 

I have been using the product for two to three years. 

Microsoft Azure's stability depends on the resources allocated. If you provision sufficient resources, it tends to be stable. However, choosing lower resources, like two gigs of RAM and CPUs, might lead to less stability.

The product is scalable. My company has five users. 

I haven't contacted the technical team yet. 

Microsoft Azure's deployment is straightforward for me, given my experience and understanding of the Azure system. It is not difficult for me to handle.

The tool's deployment was done in-house. 

I rate the product an eight out of ten. 

Our people are familiar with Microsoft Azure, and we use it for our day-to-day operations.

We use Microsoft Azure for operations, email, and office applications.

The solution’s learning curve could be improved.

I have been using Microsoft Azure for two to three years.

Microsoft Azure is a stable solution.

Around nine people use the solution in our organization.

We contact our local partners so that they can help us with our issues. For some difficulties, we try forums and open support. We don't contact enterprise support because we don't have it.

The solution’s initial setup is very straightforward.

We implemented Microsoft Azure through an in-house team consisting of two to three people. The solution’s deployment takes a few weeks.

Microsoft Azure is deployed on the cloud in our organization.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven or eight out of ten.

Our primary use case for Azure is for workload, database, and service migrations. I use Azure to migrate services to serverless Azure services. Some of the services I utilize within Azure are Azure SQL database, managed database, Cosmos, virtual machines, service accounts, and infrastructure as a code for migration.

I'd like to see improvements with the price calculator tool. I would like to get a forward-looking view of the services I want to cost. For example, if I want a bigger machine with two CPU's and eight gigabytes of RAM, maybe the calculator can allow me to input my recipe, the tool can then give me a list of virtual machines that have that specification, and it will be easier for me to choose the virtual machine I want. 

There are no additional features at this time I can suggest for future releases.

I have worked with Microsoft Azure for 7 years.

Microsoft Azure is very stable, it has a SLA of 99.9%.

The Azure services are very scalable.

Microsoft have varying types of support levels. Depending on what level of support you have , this determines the response time from them.

We implement in-house.

All services in the cloud are easy to set up, the services are ready to use from the outset. For example, it would take me 5 minutes to deploy one virtual machine in Azure, or a Sharepoint cluster may take me 4 hours. The cloud deployments are normally automatic once you start.

Regarding licensing, always look to optimize costs with the use of Azure Advisor.

We use Microsoft Azure and AWS, depending on what the client wants. Some clients like to compare prices between the two, it depends on the workload that my client would like to migrate also.

Microsoft Azure is for customers who want to move to cloud-based solutions, take advantage of licensing e.g. hardware or software licensing benefits, and other cloud-related benefits, e.g. Azure container benefits, making their applications more scalable, etc.

This solution shows good performance. There were learning hiccups initially, but now it's okay.

More integration with other platforms is what I would like included in the next release for this solution.

We've been implementing Microsoft Azure for our customers for four years.

Microsoft Azure is a stable solution.

I found Microsoft Azure to be scalable.

We don't directly interact with technical support because the licenses are bought by our customers, so it's our customers who interact with them, but we didn't see any major issues with Microsoft Azure, on the ground.

As Microsoft Azure is a cloud-based solution, installation was easy.

Our team implemented this solution. The technical team, particularly those with knowledge about Microsoft Azure should be able to implement it well. We used our engineers to implement it.

We've been using different Microsoft solutions. Microsoft has solutions. It starts from Azure data sending, data storage, and other Azure related solutions. other Microsoft solutions that everybody uses include Office, Outlook, C#, .Net, etc., from the technical side.

It is our customers who use Microsoft Azure. They wanted to move to Microsoft Azure, so we moved them. We just maintain it for them, and also do the development and the support for their applications.

For people who want to start using this solution, if they are currently using the Microsoft Stack on-premises, moving to Microsoft Azure will be good.

'm giving Microsoft Azure a score of eight out of ten.