Microsoft Azure Reviews

We have some services that are customer-facing that was put on a public cloud. We also have some of the applications that we use in-house, and we put that in our private environment.

Currently, because we have migrated our infrastructure to the cloud, we boosted some of our core applications in the Windows virtual environment. We also make use of it for our call center solution.

I like a lot of features. For example, the Windows virtual solution has helped in such a way that our client-based application was converted into a web-based version through the use of the Windows Virtual Desktop. It makes life very easy for our users when working remotely from anywhere. Because of Azure, the work from home policy makes our work feel seamless. We make use of SharePoint, and collaboration has been very smooth and wonderful. We also make use of Microsoft Teams. It's been wonderful. It's been very awesome.

With Microsoft, our only concern is exchange rates because we're paying in dollars. It's very expensive for us because of the exchange rates. It would help if they partnered with someone locally so we can pay in our local currency. That's the only major area that we wanted them to look into. At least for exchange rate purposes, they should try to do something.

We have just migrated our infrastructure. I have been using Microsoft Azure for a couple of months.

I can guarantee that it's 100% reliable.

It's very easy, and we don't regret this step at all. It's very scalable, and sometimes if we don't need the VM that we set up, we can quickly decommission it. Then if you wanted it back up again, we could bring it up quickly. It's very scalable. We have an average of 50 users at the moment.

Technical support is very good. I like that they have local partners and local support in our own country and not someone in another geographical region. When we wanted to do the setup with the Microsoft partner, we had some issues, and we reported it to them. They were very responsive. 

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The implementation was straightforward because Microsoft had some partners here. To be a good Microsoft partner, you would have done a lot of training with all this stuff, making our deployment and migrations very seamless.

We're paying in dollars, and it's very expensive for us because of the exchange rates. We have all kinds of agreements with the partner, and we'll be paying quarterly. But it depends on how you want to pay. It depends on the option that's flexible for you.

We would recommend this solution to potential users. I would advise them to analyze the infrastructure and what they want to achieve. After that, they should be able to get across to a good partner. 

That will help them a lot because they would need a good supportive partner. Migration can be very miserable, so they should consider a good partner. They should also have their own internal strategy on what they want to achieve. This will help the partners help them. 

We wanted to do a whole lot of things that cost us even more. But because we were able to get a reliable partner, they were able to guide us very well, and we were able to get some significant cost savings.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Microsoft Azure a ten.

We are an SD-WAN vendor and we deal with a lot of networks. Microsoft Azure is one that I use regularly.

It's application migration. We run a network as a service from Azure. People are migrating to Azure, either it's MS SQL, SAP on Azure deployments or just running on Azure that we connect. 

The primary use case is to provide the SD-WAN to connect their remote offices and users to Azure and the data center.

Azure is pretty good and in fact, we have about 100 customers who are using Azure on our technology. These are some of the largest manufacturing companies in this region.

Azure is a good networking solution from a WAN perspective.

Features and functionality from a scale perspective, at least in the top three, are very compatible. These are AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

I would like to see all of the cloud providers be more compatible with each other. All of the big organizations, such as large manufacturing and banking and financials, use Azure, while other places will use Google Cloud to AWS. Compatability between these is important.

I have been associated with Microsoft Azure for the last three and a half years.

Azure scales like any other cloud.

As a partner, the technical support is pretty responsive.

We also use Digital Ocean, Google Cloud, AWS, and we are set up with multi-cloud.

I think Azure and AWS are similar in terms of pricing. Google Cloud is cheaper compared to either of these two. Google Cloud on the same sales chart. It is 30% to 40% cheaper than AWS or Azure. The Azure additional option is even cheaper than Google Cloud.

The initial setup was easy.

Pricing is comparable but from a cost perspective, this solution is the cheapest.

We use both Private Cloud and Public Cloud. For Banks it's generally through Private Cloud, otherwise, it's on a Public Cloud, as we deliver services as well on Azure.

This is a product that I can recommend to others.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We are a solution provider and Microsoft Azure is one of the technologies that we help our clients to implement. For example, when one of our customers wants to migrate from on-premises to the cloud, we assist them with the process. Once they decide on technology, we build the solution.

Our clients implement Azure to use as Infrastructure as a Service.

The most valuable features are the interface and customizability.

The approach used for cloud migration is something that I like.

Documentation and community support are good.

Dashboards and reporting could be improved.

I have been working with Azure for three years.

Azure is a stable system.

There are no issues with scalability. We have a range of customers that vary in size from small to medium-sized businesses, as well as enterprise-level organizations.

I am happy with the good support that we are getting. I have not been in contact with them directly but some of my colleagues have dealt with them.

The installation and initial setup are easy. We implemented over the course of a few days. 

Reducing the price would be of benefit to our customers.

My advice for anybody who is considering this solution is to do a proof of concept first. This is what I suggest to all of our customers, especially before migrating to the cloud. It will ensure that it meets the requirements.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

• IoT with C# and .NET Core 2.1. 
• Raspberry Pi with Raspbian OS.
• Docker containers
• For use in security applications in the retail sector
• Using RabbitMQ for message queueing between the internet of things and the cloud.

I compare it to AWS that I used prior to this. I find it much more intuitive, more visual, more obvious where things are and how to change their configurations, etc.  

• Being able to set up, change and configure VMs is easy - a lot easier than in AWS
• Feedback and error messages make much more sense in Azure than in AWS.

I get the impression there are a number of services offered by AWS that are not yet available on Azure, but it seems to be catching up pretty fast.

It seems to me that Azure is a little less stable than AWS but not so that it makes a difference, given how much time you save doing other stuff like configuring, etc.

Very easy to scale in and out but has unpredictable costing as a result. However, AWS is the same.

I do not use tech support. I use online forums, etc.

AWS. I started a new job.

No, it is simpler in Azure than in AWS.

In-house.

Pricing is the worst aspect of both AWS and Azure. It is very difficult to predict costs in my experience. There is often a base price (for running a VM for example), but then you have to pay for data storage costs plus data transmission costs, etc. I would prefer to have a predictable monthly cost for unlimited storage within a bandwidth for example, but there isn't an easy way to predict costs.

I evaluated Google Cloud too and compared AWS with Azure. Azure is definitely the best for me; I am more productive because I understand the tech architecture better.

If you are a C#, .NET or SQL server person, do not even think about using AWS, use Azure instead. If you are more of a Linux/PHP/Java type of person, you may consider AWS as it works much better from the command line and much more like a Linux or Java environment.

Building development and production environments to support business acrivity.

Getting resources up and running quickly and providing secure access to those resources makes life easier. Also, Microsoft Azure really does offer a great deal which allows one to completely think about software development in new ways. I love the WebApps feature and am currently learning everything I can about Logic apps.

I am really into the Everything as a Service model that Azure seems to be heading towards. Less fussing over VM's and Operating Systems.

The ability to quickly create and manage resources is critical to getting things done, Azure just makes getting things done a lot simpler.

You eventually end up with a large collection of 'bits' all working together, I find it hard to be able to create a logical 'box' and put all the 'bits' that need to be in that box / application into the one place.

We're still learning though, so odds are there's something that will help us with this already in Azure.

No, so far we've had no problems with anything we've deployed onto Microsoft Azure, rock solid.

At our early stage we've not encountered any scalability issues at all, and we're not likely to either, Azure will easily handle whatever workload we plan to throw at it.

Customer Service:

Excellent! I raised a support ticket on a question I had and got a prompt, clearly articulated and knowledgeable reply from the Microsoft Technical support person which addressed our question in a very short time-frame.

Technical Support:

Excellent! Was very impressed with the person I liaised with.

I was using an on-premises solution with servers running a HyperVisor, we were due to replace old hardware and needed to make resources available everywhere the team is, Microsoft Azure 'just made sense'.

Setting up was quite simple, before jumping in though make sure you watch some of the video's on the MVA site about virtual networking and so forth, the Azure user interface makes deploying these resources relatively straight-forward.

We went in-house, learning as we go. We're still very new to Azure and learning all the time, we'd be beginner to intermediate at most. We're not deploying to production for some time and will work with a Certified Microsoft Partner when we get to that stage.

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.

Understand and use the pricing calculator!

Learn PowerShell, a quick tip is that you can shut down and de-allocate your VM's when you are not using them, this way the VM's are not incurring charges. We absolutely love this feature, as it means that when the environment is not in use, it isn't costing much (if anything), so it lends itself to making the I.T environment more efficient.

We looked at AWS, but we chose Azure because we use a lot of Microsoft Products and it just felt more integrated.

Start with the simple things first, design your environment before deploying anything, even a simple development environment. Understand the charging model used and get to grips with the basics of PowerShell, as nice as the web based front end is, PowerShell is very handy.

In my department, we primarily use AWS. However, for single sign-on, we use Azure Directory. It helps with integration when logging into various systems. The IT operations team utilizes Microsoft Defender for tasks such as tracking various endpoints and conducting business reviews.

The tool's most valuable aspect is the account management side. This involves tasks such as assigning credentials to different individuals, managing user accounts, and implementing Privileged Access Management. 

The tool should add an interface that is similar to AWS. 

Microsoft Azure is stable. 

My company has around five to ten users for Microsoft Azure. It is scalable. 

The tool's deployment is easy. 

Microsoft Azure is expensive. 

The tool is a great product to use, and very intuitive. It is beneficial for users and enterprises. I rate it an eight out of ten. The product is easy to learn, but it may become difficult depending on your technical ability.

Our primary use case is mostly for deploying services where we do not have the local infrastructure like hardware, or where it's not necessary for us to have the knowledge about how to set up a certain service. We just want to use it without concerns regarding running the service, backup, availability, etc. That's the reason we pay Microsoft the money for its Azure services, so we can just go ahead and use the product. Some of the services they've rendered have become business critical for the company, so we're using the solution on a daily basis. 

I like the reliability of the solution and the ease of provisional services which can be a click and go. I also like the broad diversity of services that are being offered.

I find that in many cases it's more expensive than AWS, and for no good reason. The pricing itself is also quite difficult to comprehend, it's not easy to know the total cost and not worth checking the calculator because the outcome is going to be totally different anyhow. I also find it difficult that they are specific to x86 and x64 machines, I haven't found any ARM-based virtual machine images that I could run in my IP test lab, which would be a great boost for productivity because I could run the internal pipeline in the cloud and would not have to divert to locally installed devices. 

If they want to be serious with IT devices then they should find a way of deploying ARM-based devices to Azure, to get more freedom of choice with virtual machines and services. It would be hardware virtual machine image offerings to other platforms, not only PC-based or x86-based. It would make my life much easier. 

I've been using this solution for four and a half years. 

There are some glitches but it's a pretty solid solution. 

It's a scalable solution. 

Overall, I'm quite satisfied with the technical support. There were different expectations about what I had understood from the description of the support offered and what the architects of Microsoft meant to deploy. Some of the documentation for Azure is sketchy enough to leave room for questions and that had to be sorted out with support, which is not a fault that the support guys should have to concern themselves with. If the documentation is not clear and the cloud device goes, then there's clearly room for improvement.

The start was far easier than we expected it to be, but the complexity caught up with us half a year later also. It got more complex as we went along. We carried out the deployment ourselves. I'm a very experienced administrator, I know a lot about concepts of data centers. I know how they work, I know how to set them up. This is just another data center, it's just that it's not mine.

We found it difficult to train our regular Windows admins to dive into Azure things, so it's important to get the right people or the project is doomed. There are too many people who don't really want to get to grips with the cloud. I would also suggest not starting from a fully regulated basis. We have our deployment fully integrated with Azure Active Directory, which can be quite a hindrance when it comes to just playing around with things. It's essential to give people developer accounts where they can just play around, break things, work through them, like a little lab. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We don't use DevOps; we just use the Azure Cloud platform. The solution is primarily used for PaaS and FaaS.

The solution has been very stable.

We find the product to be scalable. 

The security network inside of the information on the network is very good.

Technical support, from what I understand, is quite helpful and we speak with them regularly.

There aren't really any issues with the product itself. For us, the problems are organizational and the processes inside the company, which uses Azure, aren't as clear. They need to define a good process and a good implementation strategy going forward. We only really have issues with what they want to do, and not the technology itself. Basically, the technology is not the problem. It is just the way we want to use it.

It would always be nice to have even more integration capabilities.

A company needs to have strong finance managers. It could cost a lot if you haven't got a finance function inside each company.

The installation process is complex. 

The pricing could always be better and a bit more standardized.

I've been using the solution for five years at this point. It's been a while. 

The solution is very stable and reliable. The performance is good. It's not buggy. there aren't glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The product has been very scalable. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so.

At this time, I'm not sure exactly how many people are directly using the solution.

While I haven't personally used technical support, our company does have a technical account manager on the Azure side and we are coordinating each week to identify all the topics we need to address - including our disaster recovery plan, which is important to the company right now. 

We did not previously use a different solution before we chose to work with Azure. 

The installation process is not very straightforward. 

When you want to install with a higher level of security inside the infrastructure, nothing communicates. Therefore, engineering security and network engineers need to understand what they have to do exactly, and what the problem is. With Aure, there's a learning curve for installation. You need to work with it for at least one year before you get comfortable enough and are able to troubleshoot and configure everything relatively well.

The solution has the potential to be expensive if you as a company are not careful as to how you use it. 

I'm a customer and an end-user.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. For me, it's a perfect product and I enjoy its capabilities. 

I would recommend this solution to other users and organizations.