Microsoft Azure Reviews

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.

Compared to other cloud platforms, I find the Azure portal very user-friendly. It's more intuitive and clearer than some, but it depends on your specific needs because Azure offers many services. 

For instance, working with Synapse, a complex technology with diverse processing engines, requires deep knowledge. In our experience with clients, using Databricks, a third-party service, on top of Azure can be helpful.

There's an ongoing development, particularly concerning the Data Fabric offering launched a few months ago.

Data Fabric is an additional offering which is Software as a service "as a service" application, unlike the core Azure platform initially focused on "platform as a service." It sits on top of Azure. 

We thought Azure could be more flexible and cost-effective, but our experience suggests this separation might simplify things for some customers. It's worth exploring as a potential improvement for specific needs.

I have been using it for several years. We have used it, or we have architectures. We consult about Azure. 

We do a lot here in this area because it's also a big topic for us. But it's a more general consulting topic for me. I have some experience with it, but I do not implement it. Internally, we use some Azure services. 

We have all kinds of typically, ranging more towards larger size customers, midsized customers, and a lot in the financial area. 

For example, with a Synapse environment, we might need to switch to Databricks for better scalability. But overall, the platform itself scales very well. Based on my experience, I'd give it an eight out of ten.

Azure is the best in Germany compared to AWS or Google. It has the best German footprint, so the support is better locally.

But globally, it's good, not always the best. Some users have very good experiences with Google's support as well.  

Neutral

From the consulting perspective, we consult on every technology on the market. For example, Snowflake is a big topic on our side.  

I have a lot of history in SAP. With current or former SAP solutions.  

In our company, we are more Microsoft-based and Microsoft CRM.

The technical part of setting up such a platform is typically the smaller part. And for an experienced consultant, it's okay. It's nothing special. It's more about the processes and organization, which is important to consider here.

So, I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, with ten being easy. 

Typically, in Germany, we see that setting up is very complex; enterprises work well with Azure setups if users are already experienced at different points with Azure. But it's a little bit more easy compared to Google or Amazon. But it depends a little bit on the service and the environment you need.

From a technical perspective, it can set up something in a day or in some hours. That's not a problem. 

The thing is more the organizational level here, what is allowed, who can do it, where the costs are going, and so on. The process is typically much more about the deployment or, depending on whether you have already built a platform and just have to automate the deployment process. 

For example, it works very well, typically, but the initial setup of a platform is more for organizational things, but this is not what I do. 

Overall, I would rate the solution an 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.

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.

Azure is very flexible.

Any time you use a cloud service, there are increased security risks. If you want more security, you have to have private hosting.

I've been using Azure for about five or six years.

In general, I think Microsoft support is strong.

Azure could be cheaper. Of course, if you ask anyone, they'll always say it could be cheaper. We are paying monthly.

I rate Azure nine out of 10. I would recommend it to others.