Microsoft Azure Reviews

We use Microsoft Azure for enterprise applications.

I like that it is user-friendly and flexible.

It's done a really good job. It's an up-to-the-mark product.

There are many features available in Azure, including hundreds of products. There are more than 200. It is difficult to find fault in this product.

While Microsoft Azure is user-friendly, some of the other cloud products I use are more user-friendly. I use AWS and I like it more than I like Microsoft Azure.

I would like to see the console improved.

I have been using Microsoft Azure for two years.

The scalability of Microsoft Azure is a valuable feature.

We have approximately 50 users in our organization and plan to increase our usage.

Technical support is good.

Previously, I was using AWS.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The installation time varies; it can take as little as five minutes or as long as several hours.

Because there are so many products, we have quite the team. We have anywhere from five to ten people to manage and maintain the complete infrastructure.

I completed the installation myself. I did not use an integrator or consultant.

We have a subscription and the price is reasonable.

I would recommend Microsoft Azure to others who are interested in using it. It's a good product.

I would rate Microsoft Azure an eight out of ten.

Our use cases are basically cost agility and efficiency.

Microsoft Azure really enforces the automation capabilities of our workforce. It drives us towards a new operating model in terms of delivering services more quickly and more automatically.

I think Azure's level of automation to achieve efficiency or agility is valuable. I also like the change capability cadence, the showback capabilities, and understanding what our costs are. We don't have that in our on-premise environment. That whole showback capability is very interesting for us. It helps to hold the stakeholders accountable for our spending. 

Talking about improvement is like a double-edged sword. We like that they have the new capabilities, but sometimes they're deprecating capabilities faster than we can handle. If we had to improve it, we would want to stay on some of these older capabilities a bit longer. It's a brilliant platform for our staff to be more agile and more efficient but probably doesn't match with us in terms of maturity.

For example, they offer this tagging capability, but they keep introducing new platforms without it. We've become heavily reliant on tagging, but in the case of NetApp, they introduced it into the environment, and now we're not able to get the showback off of that. 

If they introduce new capabilities, they have to have all the features and functions on that new capability. They're not very good at that. If they introduce new capabilities, all the feature sets on these new capabilities should be available immediately. From my perspective, that's where they need to improve.

We have been using Microsoft Azure for about a year.

Stability is very good.

Microsoft Azure is very scalable. Our data center staff are using the solution, and then the application teams are engaging the data center staff to use that solution. We've just had a few use cases in there, and now we're just gaining experience.

Like with any new technology, we're currently re-skilling staff. It's the way we're approaching it on a six to 12-month journey before we start to get to the product and the benefits.

Technical support is average.

The initial setup isn't straightforward. You need to bring in an experienced system integrator to help you with the knowledge transfer. That's the approach we took.

We brought in an experienced system integrator that helped us build the environment and did the knowledge transfer into our workforce. I think that's a requirement. We had a very positive experience with our system integrator. The setup, we call it the Azure landing zone, and it's the data center. To set up the foundational build was a three-month engagement.

The system integrator is the intermediary between Microsoft and us. That's the value proposition of a system integrator. The system integrator helps cut through some of that. Microsoft is a big organization, and it's sometimes very hard to get to the right resources with the right knowledge. The challenge with Microsoft is that they have multiple solutions, and it's up to you to pick the right solution path. That's very hard for most organizations to do.

It's a metered environment, and it's pay-as-you-go. That's the big challenge with a metered environment. The challenge is optimizing how you use that to reduce your meter costs. It's like your children have to be good at not leaving the lights on in their bedroom to save on the power bill. That's a cultural change. 

You have to change your consumption patterns, and that's hard to do. You can get a very big bill because your consumption patterns aren't very good. We're no different than any other organization that's gone to a public cloud. You get these surprise bills, and then you've got to figure out how to manage them down appropriately.

For us, the additional cost is connectivity to the Azure data center. They said that we had to set up an Equinix data center to get from our location here in Regina, Saskatchewan, to Toronto down East. Those are some big new communication charges that we didn't have before.

That adds a significant cost to that. Private internet connectivity to a cloud is a big expense. That can be a very big cost, especially for remote businesses that are co-located to cloud data centers.

Microsoft Azure was a strategic choice. We wanted to go with a multi-cloud model, but we felt like we didn't know enough about clouds. We just kind of thought Microsoft was one of our strategic partners and decided to go with them and learn before we took the multi-cloud approach.

The advice I would give potential users would be to focus on their cost management skills and metering skills. It's all about managing your consumption. You've got to understand your consumption patterns and then learn how to manage consumption patterns going forward.

It's a really good product. In terms of leading hyperscalers, they offer very competitive features, functions, and rates compared to AWS and Google. They continue to advance their technical capabilities as rapidly or more rapidly than the other two hyperscalers. So, I would rate Microsoft Azure very high.

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

We use Azure for storage, virtual machines, virtual networking, and our VPN.

We have the Microsoft Firewall set up, and we use Blob Storage.

There are many different features we use, based on different requirements.

The feature that we like best is integration with Active Directory.

Azure is easy to use.

It would be advantageous if the dashboard had more clarity, in terms of the visibility that it provides. The challenge that we are facing has to do with resources and the grouping of them. We have different services that we use and we cannot see all of them until we filter the resource group.

Having inbuilt security would be an improvement. As it is now, Microsoft has a sentinel as a security tool, where you need to integrate it.

I have been using Microsoft Azure for more than three years.

This is a scalable product. We have between 50 and 100 people who are using it, and most of them are software developers.

The support is very good, and they respond within an hour.

We use AWS as well as Azure.

Normally, we log in and then we roll out the services for instances that we want, based on the requirements. It only takes a couple of minutes to deploy.

We deploy this product ourselves and we have a DevOps engineer who takes care of the maintenance.

Overall, this is a good product. We definitely plan to continue using it in the future and I recommend it to others.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We have been using Azure for DevOps and non-production environments. It is great when you want to deploy apps in your staging environment first using deployment slots. This allows you to flick the switch very quickly between your current prod app and the newly developed in staging to see how it behaves in the real world. If something goes wrong, you can easily switch it back.

Azure is a platform which allows our organization to be agile. It very quickly provisions servers, infrastructure, and apps on the fly and complies with security requirements and data safety.

Azure Active Directory, Azure VMs, Azure network security groups (NSG), and  monitoring endpoints across different regions to check how your platform operates from different geographic locations. Azure backups are another feature which are quite useful, especially since they allow us to backup our Azure VMs and our on-premise servers. Data can be backed up to Azure, saving time, space, and using clunky tapes to restore data, when needed.

Azure ARM console can be a bit overwhelming at the beginning. 

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.

I have had no stability issues. It is a very stable platform and very resilient. It comes down how you set up your geo-redundant options for backups, SQL replication. and VMs which run your services/apps.

I have had no scalability issues. It is an elastic platform. It all depends how you set up your scale up options to address heavy loads, but the options are there for you to use.

Microsoft Premier support is great to deal with. They understand very quickly the scenarios and how critical a scenario can be. They provide info, support, and knowledge to address issues. 

We did not have a particular issue when implementing. It was mostly understanding all the options Azure had. We used Premier support to generate inquiries with Microsoft seeking clarification about what option was best suited for what we wanted to do.

I used AWS (Amazon Web Services), but mostly because I was involved in a project. AWS is also a great solution, but I found Azure was easier to use and it had a native integration with my current platform (Windows).

The key here is design. You need to design and orchestrate how you want your VMs (geo-redundant, in an availability set, size of VMs, etc.). It is the key to understanding the costs of each set of VMs available to you in terms of size and computing resources. Also, understand what type of storage will be required for you to deploy your virtual infrastructure SSD storage and larger disks. Plan to use this (Standard, Basic, or Premium) and it needs to be taken into consideration depending of what you want to use Azure for.

In-house deployment, as there were Azure skills on the team.

Not applicable.

Use Azure price calculator before embarking on an Azure deployment. This will help you understand straight away what your cost expectations are on a regular basis. You can always run Azure on a 30 day trial, see how you feel about it, then make the decision to switch to the full Azure usage.

In addition to AWS, I also trialed Oracle Cloud (on a smaller scale) and it is great if you are running Oracle Databases. You can also stand up your VMs and build your environment. A cool feature of Oracle Cloud is you can run a private cloud version in your data center, exactly the same experience if you are running it on a private or public cloud. The private cloud solution comes in the form of an Oracle appliance which gets configured, deployed and installed by Oracle directly in your data center.

Run Azure on a 30 day trial and see how you feel about it, then make the decision to switch to the full Azure usage. You see the reason when you view the benefits of using its cloud solution, especially one that integrates so seamlessly with your environment, collaboration tools, and apps.

Microsoft Azure assists in lowering the cost of on-premises infrastructure as well as improving performance.

The most valuable aspect of this solution is its ease of use.

It is quite easy to configure, including the resources.

We don't have any expectations. We have recently stabilized our application in terms of moving to the Cloud. We are still exploring the features available in Microsoft Azure, so determining what could be improved is difficult.

More integration may be required in the future, but I don't believe it is necessary for us at this time. We would be working with a hybrid platform more than anything else.

From a security perspective, there is always something that can be improved as we serve our customers.

I have been using Microsoft Azure for approximately one year.

Microsoft Azure is a stable solution.

Microsoft Azure is a scalable product.

In our organization, we have more than 5,000 employees who use this solution. The organization itself has moved onto the Microsoft Azure Platform.

At this time we will not be increasing our usage.

I have not contacted technical support, but perhaps the infrastructure team has.

All of our applications are developed using Microsoft.NET Technologies. We prefer to use the Microsoft Platform.

Salesforce CRM is a tool that we use internally, as well as Symantec.

For virtual meetings we use Teams.

I was not involved with the initial setup. We have a team of two members to deploy and maintain the infrastructure.

There are no licensing fees.

I would recommend this solution to anyone thinking about using it.

In my opinion, everything is fine, I would rate Microsoft Azure a ten out of ten.

The use case varies by client. Sometimes it's financial tools or websites. We build tools for DevOps applications too. Our most recent use cases are retail and construction.

Virtual machine services, in SaaS services, M365, and Data Lake are all popular with our clients. 

When you use one feature in six months or a year, it changes for the others, and it isn't very easy. The filters are too complicated. I'd like to see better integration with S/4HANA integrated and other services, like monitoring, for example.

I've used Microsoft Azure for approximately two or three years.

Azure is highly scalable.

In my experience, Microsoft support is outstanding. We're Microsoft partners, so when we need support, we get it immediately. 

I think the setup is complicated, but if you have experience with other Microsoft products, you should be able to figure it out. The time needed for deployment depends on the client and the solution. For example, it's very different in the case of Data Analytics, which took us two or three months to deliver the solution. 

The price of Azure is competitive with other cloud providers. 

I rate Azure nine out of 10. 

We have many use cases of Azure. For example, in this project, we usually use Jira for tracking the tasks, stories, etc., but in this case we used Azure. We used it for the whole scrum process. We also used it as our deployment environment for testing the software and production. The production was also deployed on the Azure cloud. 

One of the most valuable features of Azure is that it's a very integrated solution. You have to learn how to use it properly, but it's not that hard, and you can define your whole scrum process and deploy it from one place. It was a really nice surprise to see how easily integrated this tool is.

I would say an improvement could be allowing for more external, third-party tools. However, I think that's their vision, how they develop the product. 

I have been using Azure for about a year. 

This solution is stable. We were quite happy with Azure's performance.

Azure is scalable. 

I have also used AWS. To put it this way, I don't think Azure is worse than AWS—certainly it's not the same, so if you're used to using one, it may initially be different, but it's not hard to learn. Maybe if I use it more, I can give some specifics, but I think Azure is a very good solution. 

Azure is a cloud tool, so the installation is a very easy process. 

Their licensing costs might be a little bit lower, compared to AWS, but I'm not sure. I think we get licenses, especially on long-term projects, on a yearly basis. It could be cheaper. 

I rate Microsoft Azure an eight out of ten. There is some hype in the industry around AWS, but I think Azure is quite powerful and could be a really nice alternative to AWS. 

We are primarily using the solution for the active directory, and Microsoft TPM. 

The product has helped in managing laptops during COVID. It is very useful to work from home. It offers useful products like Microsoft Teams, used by 100% of our company. Due to the fact that it's all on the cloud, we don't have to be in the office to access and manage everything. 

The management aspect of the solution has been good. We've been able to align it with our laptop servers and Microsoft 10 configurations. 

The solution continues to improve itself. 

The monitoring of the product is good.

Scalability is there if you need it. 

The solution is stable. 

Technical support has been good over the years. 

The pricing could be better. 

If you don't understand Microsoft, the initial setup can be a bit difficult. You have to be slightly technical. 

I've been using the solution for about four years. It's been a while. I've had some time to get to know the solution. 

The stability of the solution has been excellent. There are no bugs or glitches. It's reliable. It doesn't crash or free. the performance is good. 

The scalability is very good. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. it's not a problem. 

Technical support is good. We haven't had any issues with them. We're satisfied with the level of support we get. 

The initial setup is easy if you understand Microsoft and have some experience. Otherwise, it is very difficult.

We'd prefer lower pricing. Microsoft can be costly. Due to COVID, many small companies can't handle the costs that Microsoft is charging. They need to be more flexible. If customers were going through cloud solutions, they should get more of a discount. 

We are Microsoft customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with the company. 

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've mostly been quite please with the product and its capabilities.