We use Microsoft Azure for PaaS, SaaS, and IaaS solutions. It is used in a broad spectrum of business applications for general use.
Team Manager - Public Cloud & Operations at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Scales well, reliable, has good support and you pay for what you use
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of this solution is the integration between all of the components in Azure."
- "I would like to see better policy-based management and everything related to security management could have been better integrated."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of this solution is the integration between all of the components in Azure.
What needs improvement?
There are always areas for improvement. The integration is good but it can always be better.
The openness and the security policies can be better. It is missing a bit in everything related to the policies.
I would like to see better policy-based management and everything related to security management could have been better integrated.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Microsoft Azure for six years, and in my current company for more than two years.
We are using the latest version. It is a SaaS solution it is always updated
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Microsoft Azure is stable and it's a reliable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is absolutely scalable. It is one of the major reasons we adopted public clouds, to have that scalability.
We have approximately 10,000 users who use at least some of the features of this solution.
How are customer service and support?
We have contacted technical support. Overall we are pretty happy, but sometimes they are responsive and other times they are less responsive.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is complex but it is more to do with the nature of what we want to achieve and less to do with the nature of the product.
To a certain extent, it is complex, but on the other hand, once you know what you are doing, nothing is complex.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Licensing is on a monthly basis. It is paid on a per-use basis.
I am quite happy with the pricing. You pay for what you get.
What other advice do I have?
I would absolutely recommend this solution to others who are interested in this solution.
I would rate Microsoft Azure an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Senior Solutions Specialist (Network & Security) at Ooredoo Qatar
Feature-rich, flexible, scales well, reasonably priced, and has good support
Pros and Cons
- "I like that it is user-friendly and flexible."
- "I would like to see the console improved."
What is our primary use case?
We use Microsoft Azure for enterprise applications.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Microsoft Azure for two years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Microsoft Azure is a valuable feature.
We have approximately 50 users in our organization and plan to increase our usage.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support is good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, I was using AWS.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
I completed the installation myself. I did not use an integrator or consultant.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We have a subscription and the price is reasonable.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Microsoft Azure
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Azure. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
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Solution Architect at KIAN company
Can be used for disaster recovery and business continuity
Pros and Cons
- "In terms of computer resource management and reduced cost, it is very, very effective. In large environments, it gives you a lot of flexibility to provide different services, like disaster recovery and business continuity with simple and great options because you don't have to spend a lot of time for maintenance, upgrades, and security."
- "I think Azure Active Directory and also the backup solutions provided in Azure need to be improved by Microsoft. The backup solution is not a very enterprise solution, and it is very simple. I think in comparison with other backup solutions like Nakivo and Veeam Backup, it can be improved to have a lot of options."
What is our primary use case?
It is great for computer resource management at reduced cost. Also in a large environment, it gives you a lot of flexibility to provide different services, like disaster recovery and business continuity.
What is most valuable?
In terms of computer resource management and reduced cost, it is very, very effective. In large environments, it gives you a lot of flexibility to provide different services, like disaster recovery and business continuity with simple and great options because you don't have to spend a lot of time for maintenance, upgrades, and security. Also, Microsoft Azure provides a lot of services that can be managed by Microsoft like NetApp and SQL Server on a database.
Microsoft Azure has services such as ACS, Azure Container Service. This is very useful for improvements in running applications in a scalable environment. You will not need to spend time building the cluster on-premises, and you can improve your clusters with a lot of administration options.
What needs improvement?
I think Azure Active Directory and also the backup solutions provided in Azure need to be improved by Microsoft. The backup solution is not a very enterprise solution, and it is very simple. I think in comparison with other backup solutions like Nakivo and Veeam Backup, it can be improved to have a lot of options.
Along with this, one of the lack of options in Azure is managing antiviruses in virtual machines in the Azure environment. For example, if we have a lot of virtual machines on-premises and have to migrate them in Azure, there is no handy tool for the central management of antivirus software in all virtual machines in Azure.
On-premises, we have a lot of options like Kaspersky, Norton, and a lot of others, but in the Azure environment, you are limited to Windows ATP.
Windows ATP solutions are limited and can be improved by Microsoft, specifically the central management of the GUI for configuring agents on virtual machines.
I think Microsoft Azure should provide more innovation and new services to get better performance in the market.
The documentation for how to connect to CLI could also be improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using Microsoft Azure for around three years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is very scalable and can be distributed to different regions.
How are customer service and technical support?
I'm not involved in using technical support because I directly work with an Azure architect on my team who is responsible for providing support and leading the team as well as contacting the Microsoft support team. In general, however, I think, one of the best advantages of Microsoft services is the support team made up of technical engineers who help solve problems.
How was the initial setup?
As for the initial setup, the GUI in Microsoft is very simple and very handy, but in Azure Container Service, it is not very handy and is very complex. You would need to go forward with CLI.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Microsoft Azure at eight on a scale from one to ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Head Of Information Technology at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
A cloud computing service that makes remote working a seamless experience
Pros and Cons
- "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."
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
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.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have just migrated our infrastructure. I have been using Microsoft Azure for a couple of months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I can guarantee that it's 100% reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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.
How are customer service and technical support?
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.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Senior IT Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 1-10 employees
Easy to use, good integration with Active Directory, and quick support
Pros and Cons
- "The feature that we like best is integration with Active Directory."
- "It would be advantageous if the dashboard had more clarity, in terms of the visibility that it provides."
What is our primary use case?
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.
What is most valuable?
The feature that we like best is integration with Active Directory.
Azure is easy to use.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Microsoft Azure for more than three years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
This is a scalable product. We have between 50 and 100 people who are using it, and most of them are software developers.
How are customer service and technical support?
The support is very good, and they respond within an hour.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We use AWS as well as Azure.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
We deploy this product ourselves and we have a DevOps engineer who takes care of the maintenance.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
A humongous amount of features are available. It is difficult to keep up with the continuous improvements that they do.
What is most valuable?
The availability of the humongous amount of features and solutions in Azure are most valuable to us.
How has it helped my organization?
The continuous improvement of Microsoft is amazing. The agility and speed at which Microsoft is doing all this is really amazing.
What needs improvement?
The improvements are more on the partner's part than on the product's part. It is difficult to keep up with the continuous improvements that Microsoft is doing.
Issues were seen in the size and unclear configuration settings. If the bandwidth is limited, it can be an issue when migrating from on-prem to off-prem.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have implemented this for our customers since the very beginning.
How are customer service and technical support?
This depends on the support contract which you subscribe to. The free support is bad, but the paid versions have better support, i.e., more you pay, the better the support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
The other solutions that we had used before were on-premise solutions. We saw a major shift of the resources towards Microsoft Azure.
How was the initial setup?
The setup was straightforward; with the help of TechNet, if there were any issues then they were easily solvable.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
In regards to the pricing and licensing, you need to be aware of what to do. If it fits in your current licensing contract, add it to that contract. If not, then depending on the company's size, ask the reseller with whom you are doing business (or ask me) for advice on this issue.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did evaluate other solutions and, in some cases, we also advised for this product, as it is specific to certain workloads. AWS and Google are the other vendors that we looked at.
What other advice do I have?
Have a vendor agnostic partner to look at your environment and discuss the vision you have on this.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are partnes with Microsoft, Amazon and Google.
Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Learning curve to get it up and running but it's scalable and flexible.
What is most valuable?
Scalability, affordability and the flexibility of the product.
How has it helped my organization?
- You can off-site required services to help mitigate risk
- You can take advantage of the scalability to have short term high intensive processes be used by their services
- You can totally take away the need for any server hardware in your organisation
What needs improvement?
Probably the 2 main areas where things could be improved are getting direct console access to VM's and its Azure backup solution to add backup types (eg System State).
For how long have I used the solution?
3 months
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We went with the volume license of credits and still find it difficult to activate those credits as there is a particular website you have to go to.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There has been documented issues with stability, however we did not experience it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No issues encountered.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
Good, I can shoot email questions and get responses in a good amount of time.
Technical Support:I haven't had to raise a technical support for Azure though for Office 365 I have and I've found it excellent.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We looked at AWS, a locally based cloud provider and a datacentre.
How was the initial setup?
It was a learning curve to get it up and running. If I had prior training I would have found it straight forward but the time lines for implementation meant I had to "dive in".
What about the implementation team?
In-house
What was our ROI?
We are able to provide services to clients that allows us get a good ROI once we have deployed Azure to them.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
- Setup cost with Azure is minimal for what they are supplying. Everything takes less than 10 minutes to deploy.
- Day to Day costs is what you use, we can now review those costs and look at the new features (Automation) to make those costs even more efficient.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at AWS, a locally based cloud provider and a datacentre.
What other advice do I have?
Get onboard with Microsoft and the Azure team and listen out to their partner training. They did a big Azure for IT Pros via their channel 9 msdn a few weeks ago. There is plenty of webinars and e-books which will teach you what you want to know.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Microsoft Partner
Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Building Private Clouds with Windows Azure Pack (WAP)
The model of elastic self-service deployment of VMs and applications that come with the Azure public cloud are changing the way IT departments allocate servers. Rather than tying servers to a specific application, IT departments now look to provide a pool of shared and dynamically self-allocated resources. There are compelling needs to run on premise a private version of the Azure Cloud that provides a lot of the multi-tenant services and benefits of the public Cloud. There are a lot of hosting partners that want to offer these Azure Cloud OS services to their customers. MS wants to give a consistent platform across hosting providers, private DCs, and Azure Cloud. The newly released Windows Azure Pack (WAP) decouples and brings a few of Azure OS features and a modified portal with common code base into the private Cloud. It allows an enterprises to assume the role of service providers. It removes limitations to allow service providers to try and garner enterprise workloads.
Using WAP, your IT department can install these new features. (This was previously Windows Azure Services for Windows Server released at start of 2013 with System Center). The Azure Pack is built on top of Windows Server 2012 and System Center R2/ with Service Provider Foundation. An IT Dept. that builds on w2012 and Sys Center can move to WAP anytime. One of WAP’s goals is to drive a consistent IT ops and developer experience. These technologies will evolve over time. Some features for Azure will be released first in WAP and rolled into Azure Cloud, and vice versa. WAP comes at no cost for datacenters running System Center and Windows Server 2012.
Here are the services/workloads in the first release of Windows Azure Pack.
1. Web sites
• IIS currently is a server-centric platform but needs to evolve to be Cloud-first. IIS team rebuilt a new hosting PaaS with LB and scaling on-demand, dev0ps optimized. High-density supports 1000s of users on less of a cost than IIS with new capabilities. This is a good motivation to move into the on premise Cloud instead of running original IIS.
• Multi-machine PaaS container with data and app tier and Load balancing. The platform can talk to many source code providers. As an IT Ops person you just deploy the Web PaaS and don’t have to mess with configuration issues.
2. Service Bus
• Been on premise awhile but had restrictions. Now is same messaging architecture as Azure Cloud service bus with no limitations.
• Reliable messaging to build a cloud app that scales and communicates with other apps or across other boundaries. Messaging allows a way to pass and receive messages cross platform.
• Supports publish and subscribe messaging patterns across a variety of access points on multiple platforms using standard protocols.
3. Virtual Machines (IaaS)
• Allows you to provision and manage VMs as a consumer and define your networking. Gallery of apps and fully self-service experience for provisioning VMs.
• Consistent Azure VM API on premise and in Cloud so you can access VMs the same way regardless of where DC is that you are using.
• Adds a new Azure feature called Virtual Machine Roles (like AMIs in AWS which are Amazon EC2 Virtual Machine Templates). A VM Role provides a way to scale VMs elastically and define metadata for its container and its parameters. They are VM templates the IT Department can define to make available for self-provisioning and can scale. Templates can be versioned and take initial container info such as instance count, VM size, and hard disk. Provide admin credentials and OS version, IP address type and allocation method for IP address. You can specify app specific settings as well.
• Virtual Networks allows you to define VMs. Site to Site connectivity allows customers to connect their Cloud networks to their private networks. Good for hosters as well as the enterprise.
4. Service Management Portal and API
• Federate identities, Active Directory, and standards based.
• Take same portal as in Azure, decouple it, and run it in the on premise DC and talks to the consistent Service Management API.
Service Consumers
Service consumers are those who consume apps (developers) and infrastructure (IT Ops) from Service Providers. They need self-service admin and want to acquire capacity upon demand within limits defined by IT Dept. or hosting provider (have an internal approval process to increase beyond limits). Need predictable costs and get up and running quickly.
IT Depts. are now moving internally using a charge-back model (internal dollars vs. credit card) where IT Ops are charging back to different departments, almost like internal hosters. Today some internal IT requests lead internal folks to go out of band to get their job done via external hosting providers or acquire HW/SW without IT approval. WAP helps with simple and quick self-provisioning so no longer need to acquire hosting hardware outside IT budget.
Additional Consumer Services
• Integration with AD for the enterprise. ADFS and co-admins that are critical for the enterprise (Not for service providers).
• Integration with SQL Server and MySQL. Support for SQL Server always on to make DBs highly available across cluster.
• Co-Admins in WAP allows you now to associate an IT group with a co-admin account. This does not exists in Azure Cloud yet.
• Console Connect – Today Remote desktop in Azure Cloud IaaS will only work on a public network (RDP for Windows VM or SSH for Linux). If you can’t get to it publicly you can’t remote into VM. Now, with WAP, you have a new feature called “Console Connect” through a secure channel that allows you to connect into a machine that is not running on a public network but in an enterprise on premise network.
Service Providers
Service Providers want to provide the most service at lowest cost to service consumers. Providers want to use hardware efficiency by automating everything. Also may desire to provide differentiate on SLAs and profiles for different environments – thus different SLAs per workload that is not present in public cloud.
As the enterprise looks to move from capital to operational expenditures service providers see a window of opportunity to acquire enterprise business in the leased model of a private Cloud. WAP allows service providers to easily shift their offerings in this direction to attract this business from the enterprise.
Provider Portal
WAP supplies a Provider Portal for the cloud services that Service providers can offer their tenants (for enterprises or hosters). Can provides different SLAs to customers through portal and tailor how you offer those services. The Provider portal runs inside the enterprise firewall. It manages a different set of objects than the normal portal. You can manage a high-level PaaS Web hosting container that hosts multiple Web sites. You can connect to VM clouds and service bus deployments along with their health. There is an automation tab that integrates with run books in System Center and you can edit workbook jobs and schedule them, and tie them to events coming from System Center.
Additional Provider Services
In the Provider portal there is a Plans service that allows providers to decide what types of plans a customer can access. Providers pick services to make available and then define a set of constraints and quotas for each subscription for subscribers. Providers can pick the VM template and Gallery items available. Maps capabilities to backend infrastructure.
• Public plan allows subscribers to try out a plan
• Private plan allows you to manually permit a subscription.
Additionally in the Provider Portal there is a User Accounts service allowing providers to manage users and add co-admins or suspend/delete a subscription.
For additional information on the Windows Azure Pack go to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/windows-azure-pack.aspx.
Disclosure: The company I work for is a Microsoft Partner - http://www.aditi.com/about-us/alliance/
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Updated: November 2024
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