Microsoft Azure Reviews

We are working with the latest version.

PaaS is a valuable feature, which allows for management visibility of Microsoft. Everything is very good by way of performance. Many of my customers are using SaaS and PaaS and are happy with its tasks and performance. There are many tools, such as monitoring. The security can change along with your defender. 

From the perspective of management, the solution has functional apps that are running, SQL as a service. Everything is pretty good. 

In my role as a service provider the vendor appointment may be required from the Microsoft plan. Occasionally, the response time is inadequate. It would be nice to have faster support. 

I have been using and providing Microsoft Azure services since 2000. As of 2011 I have been providing PaaS and IaaS services. 

The solution is stable under the right circumstances. 

The solution is scalable. 

The initial setup is not complex. The solution is user-friendly. A good working knowledge enables one to do a pretty good job in comparison with AWS. 

Microsoft is in the process of implementing a vast security apparatus. Their security features are really good. The ones that are part of Microsoft Azure allow for vulnerability assessment, with good security features. In the event of someone deploying a red flag or app they get in contact with you and take action. 

Our customers run the gamut from small, medium to enterprise businesses. SMB comprise our major customers, with two or three being enterprise. 

As I am a Microsoft partner, I recommend Microsoft exclusively. 

I rate Microsoft Azure as a ten out of ten. 

It could be used for overall migration from on-premises systems for data ingestion to data processing, data modeling, advanced analytics, and high-end reporting. Microsoft Azure can be used to move from conventional, on-premises relational and traditional data systems and big data systems to the cloud.

I have found cost advantage and faster execution to be valuable features. Overall, Microsoft products are budget-friendly. 

The cycle development time is pretty fast, and there's very good coupling within the whole set of Microsoft tools, from the database to the ETL engine, ingestion through Azure Data Factory, then modeling with Synapse Analytics, and reporting through Power BI.

You also have the ability to integrate with external tools if required. For instance, if you don't want to model on Synapse Analytics, which is a Microsoft product, you can use Snowflake. So, it allows customers to adopt a hybrid approach of mix and match when needed.

As for improvement, I think better accelerators and better tools that can be used to migrate and leverage the existing models and data schemas are needed. 

Also, on the ETL side, we can convert data pipelines that are already setup on-premises and business tools that already exist. If we can migrate and automate these into Azure faster, it would be great. I think a faster migration path will help. There is a lot of scope for improvement in this area.

Better reporting capabilities would be good also, because as of now, Microsoft Azure has its own path with Power BI. However, better integration with other enterprise reporting platforms would help.

I've been using Microsoft Azure for two to three years.

Technical support is good for all cloud platforms since it is at a global level. So, it is very professional.

Installation is very fast and can take a few minutes to an hour. A lot of documentation is available, so it could be done in-house.

Microsoft Azure comes with a long-term license and trial licenses as well.

I would rate this solution at nine on a scale from one to ten.

The strategy we are employing is to adopt a hybrid approach rather than switching all at once. We are moving in small bits and having both environments for business continuity. Then, once we and the users are feeling more confident, we will totally switch to the cloud.

We're using the product as an infrastructure as a service. I'm basically using it to host services.

The product is very easy to provision. This is one of its most valuable aspects.

The solution offers pretty good integration capabilities at this time.

We've found the pricing to be pretty good so far. It's not too expensive.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The stability is quite good. It's a reliable product.

We have found the scalability to be very good.

The solution offers very good upgrades and updates regularly.

The product can be a bit confusing at times. It's not well laid out. The interface, for example, can be a bit hard to figure out and they seem to be constantly changing things on us.

It's a rather new product and therefore lacks the maturity of other options. There is much they can do to add to it and to improve it. That may likely come with more time.

Up until two or so years ago, they weren't even accepting customer feedback on the solution. They've just started to do so, and they have given users a sense that improvements will be on the way sometime in the future.

Technical support is lacking right now. It needs to be better.

We've been using the solution for more than 12 months at this point. It's been a while.

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance, overall, has been rather reliable for our organization.

The product has the capability to expand. If a company needs to scale it, it can do so. It's not a problem.

Technical support needs to be better. We are not quite satisfied with their level of support. They need to be more responsive to use when we have queries. 

We actually use Amazon as well. We did use it before, however, we are also still using it. We use both Azure and Amazon at this time.

We did not find the initial setup to be too complex. It's pretty straightforward. A company should be able to handle the deployment without too many issues.

The pricing is decent. We don't find that they are charging too much. It's pretty fair.

As a cloud deployment, the solution is constantly updating itself, therefore we always have access to the latest release.

We have about 300 to 400 users on it currently. It's a business unit with various users of different job descriptions.

We are planning to increase the usage in the future.

I'm not sure if the company will use this solution for the long term or if they are considering trying something new. That is yet to be determined.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We're mostly quite happy with it in general.

Our whole data center is on this basically. We are UK Export Finance, so we've got financial products there. All of our servers are hosted in Azure.

We are using an Azure subscription. We are on Azure Public Cloud, but we have got our own private subscription.

We've got multiple tools on Azure, which is a very good feature of Azure. Our Palo Alto firewall and other things are hosted in Azure. We're using Sentinel as well, which is a security tool that is being used by our SOC teams.

I've also used AWS, and I find Azure to be more Windows-driven. Although Azure is newer as compared to AWS, it is growing fast. Microsoft is working towards the betterment of Azure.

As compared to AWS, Azure can improve its functionality. In terms of the feature list, it is still lacking a bit as compared to AWS. AWS supports lots of types of operating systems, which Azure is still catching up with. Azure is mainly focused on the Windows system, and it is not yet there in terms of integration with other operating systems like Linux, Unix. Azure is slowly catching up.

I've been working with Azure for the last five years.

Lots of glitches are still there. Microsoft is constantly working to resolve those. It is a new product as compared to AWS, so, obviously, it would have some glitches. Three years ago, it was full of bugs. It is much better and stable now.

It is scalable. We've got around 450 users.

Their technical support is very good. Their response is very good. At the end of the day, we're a business, and their business support is pretty good.

The setup is quite straightforward. It is not at all hard.

We've got a third-party maintenance company that actually maintains our Azure space. 

It is not cheap. Its price could be a little bit less.

It is a cloud solution at the end of the day. People can pick up any cloud solution, but Azure is renowned. Azure and AWS are the main competitors in the cloud market now. AWS comes first, and Azure comes after that. If your solution is predominantly in the Linux space, you should go for AWS. If you are primarily Windows-based, you should go for Azure.

I would rate Microsoft Azure an eight out of ten.

Azure Cloud App Services can be classified as a MEAP, Mobile Enterprise Application Platform. It is also a Platform As A Service solution. These Cloud PaaS services are the backbone and the back-end structure that you can use to build omnichannel applications (mobile + web SPA + Kiosk). Azure App Service eases the creation of flexible Express Node.js or .NET WCF microservices. It has an API based on OData and integrated security with OpenID Connect with federated or corporate login. If you need a quick mobile solution, particularly an enterprise mobile solution, this is a wonderful choice.

We use this solution as a template to build mobile, back-end-of-corporate-omnichannel apps. 

When mobile is a necessity for an already-running corporate system, you do not want to lose time setting up a whole new environment and platform. You need something that can help you easily put in place all the scaffolding you need, and concentrate on the business solution that you are providing. Azure does this.

The time-to-market. Once you master the technology, you can create running, mobile back-ends in a few weeks. Additionally, it easily enables integration with legacy environments (like connecting to existing servers).

Scalability is definitely in need of improvement. Azure is a very good solution but it still lacks the performance of other cloud platforms.

We had issues with the Mobile Service ORM and the Azure SQL Database (cloud version of SQL Server). At times, the queries that are created automatically from the ORM mapping are not very well optimized for this database and that can lead to performance and stability issues. On occasion, the connection manager from the ORM does not handle the database connections very well.

Azure does not handle scalability as well as its competitors. Sometimes a 10 percent increase in a server with 20 percent of CPU usage pushes the server up to 100 percent load, and you start having performance issues.

Microsoft allows you a certain number of tickets, depending on the cloud plan that you are paying for. If you have an available ticket, technical support is great, but if you happen to have none, it will be more difficult to find good support. 

Once you gain a certain level of expertise on the platform, you will be able to handle most of the problems. Also, now that the platform is very open (Node.js + Express) it is easier to access good documentation and an excellent community.

We tried many solutions. We tried Kinvey and Kony but prices were absolutely prohibitive for our customers. We also tried BAASBOX which is now a (mostly) defunct open-source MBaaS solution.

We move forward with a .NET customized solution that we created ourselves but maintenance of a general platform requires a lot of work and we couldn’t afford to charge our customers for the required amount of work.

We tried AWS Mobile Services once but our customers preferred Microsoft Azure (their existing back-end was mainly implemented in .NET, and they preferred to stay in the Microsoft world).

We also built a solution with SAP Mobile gateway which is the safest choice for companies that have huge legacy systems already running on SAP.

The initial setup is very straightforward. You can very easily have an application up-and-running almost out-of-the-box. The learning curve is steeper once you need to start building more services or when you need to take care of performance issues.

The cost-benefit equation for Azure is very good, particularly for small applications. However, Microsoft should do much, much more to improve how costs are communicated and how to forecast them. The Azure Pricing Calculator is not useful.

We checked the big players in MBaaS, particularly Kony and Kinvey. Kony was extraordinary (circa 2013) but the price was prohibitive. Kinvey was also very good and prices were slightly better but not affordable at all for our customers. We started using WAMS, Windows Azure Mobile Services, the previous version of Azure App Service, which was one of the first MBaaS solutions. Microsoft improved a lot the platform with App Service.

I would rate Azure at nine out of 10. The previous version of Microsoft's mobile cloud platform, Mobile Service, had some security and scalability problems but the new version, App Service, has many improvements in these areas. It also uses open-source tools and allows developers to work in isolated environments, in their own workstations (without all the hassles and costs of putting the cloud into the developer’s cycle).

If the mobile application is not that big (up to 15 services) and time-to-market is very important, Azure App Service is a great solution. If you need heavy integration with an existing .NET legacy system, this solution will also work very nicely and will reduce costs. If you need to implement a much bigger system, my advice is that you should think about gathering a specialized team that has a very good grasp of the platform.

App Service is the most valuable feature because it is very simple to configure compared to the other services.

Almost all of our services to the customer are run on Azure such as the video.metricarts.com.

Viewing the expenses for each service in the Azure Portal is difficult for novices to understand; this could improve.

It's a great platform, but its visual interface is sometimes difficult to understand.

I have used this solution for four years.

Azure is very stable with its services, I have never had problems with its stability.

Most services allow you to scale easily, but you have to understand the necessary resources before scaling.

Technical support is good, they usually respond on the same day that one asks them a question. I would rate them a 9 out of 10.

I've always used Azure.

The setup isn't complex; on the contrary, in less than 15 minutes I was already using Azure.

Before using any of Azure's services, investigate their prices, and in some cases, use the free plans that are available.

I evaluated the Amazon AWS option, but the simplicity of creating services was better in Azure.

Understand the scope of each service and its limitations, to avoid problems after execution.

This product helps companies to build their own infrastructure in the cloud without the need of any physical server. This is nice for new, small companies. For big companies, there are services like containers, docker, and infrastructure as a service for making their environment less heavy and saving some costs, using hybrid infrastructure and service concept.

The most valuable feature is the possibility of using Microsoft and non-Microsoft services on one environment. For example, Windows servers, Linux servers, backup solutions from Veeam, etc.

There is no one special feature for me, as it makes sense as a complete package. I would mention container services as well, as this is the most modern concept of bimodal IT. For example, doing development in companies without the need of building development servers. You can just using some special parts as micro-services and putting them together like Lego pieces. This is the real benefit of cloud and Azure.

There should definitely be some improvement in the UI. It is lacking in terms of where the end user has to click on other icons and go back to the main menu to change some small settings and then go back through many options to the main request. This is something which Microsoft is constantly working on, but still it needs improvement.

Monitoring options should be more sophisticated, as there are dashboards on which a end user is able to pin a lot of charts and a number of web parts, but for example, I would love to have some option like in Operational Management Suite. For instance, some queries and filters Maybe those are already there, but I have not been able to find them. I have to combine the Operational Management suite for Infrastructure, PowerBI for subscription and Application Insight for applications.

Alternatively, I can create a PowerBI dashboard for everything, but this is not for everybody, as it is not always so easy.

Managing of separate subscriptions if you have more than one and in separate domains, it is not so easy to manage. I can’t merge all of my subscriptions, as I am able to have only one enterprise subscription in one account.

There have been no stability issues. I have some problems related to subscription management, but this is because I have more than one subscription and there were some problems related to merging those into one management.

There were no issues related to scalability at all.

Technical support is provided by ticketing system in the portal, so you can create a ticket and a few hours after that, the support guys will contact you, and will try to call you during business hours and will help you immediately. I had really specific problems a few times that needed longer discussion with support, but standard tasks were quickly resolved.

Nice and smooth since the beginning.

Related to pricing and licensing, you have to be careful how you operate with the concept. You would like to set some automation rules for automated shutdown and start up your virtual machines so that they are not consumed costs, etc. So it is about the logic of using this solution.

We evaluated Google and Amazon.

Prepare everything before implementation. Make your plan and calculate what should be the best solution or alternative for you.

This solution is at the top of what you can get at the moment on the market. There are huge amounts of separate tools and scenarios from infrastructure monitoring and administering, to hybrid scenarios or quick service creation and maintenance. The main benefit is the possibility of creating quick services, which you can select from many Microsoft and third-party service providers as well.

• Quick and easy deployment
• Complete packaged solutions to deploy (Web Apps service)
• Clear pricing
• Low cost
• Easy scaling
• Cost effectiveness (stopping a VM when not in use)
• High availability
• Easy restore and recovery
• Integration with Active Directory and Office 365. There are many benefits. For example, there is a special customized portal for all apps and services built in Azure AD (myapps.microsoft.com) with a seamless single sign-on experience for the users in AD or Office 365.

It improved our project completion time. A new server or solution requirements are now solved in hours instead of in weeks.

What we experienced after two years with an Azure suscription is that there is good knowledge in Microsoft Partners for Azure, but generally they are too specialized and couldn't cover everything, because they allways miss something related by example to networking, database, web apps, security, or integration on Azure. So you must contract more than one Microsoft Partner to have a successful project in Azure.

I have been using Azure for two years.

We had no stability issues.

It is very easy and quick to scale up or scale out. It has automatic scaling by CPU performance or other rules.

Support is very good, fast, responsive, and effective.

We used traditional on-premises virtual machines and switched to Azure for better cost and faster deployment.

The only complexity was the initial setup of a site-to-site VPN to connect our LAN to Azure. The required Azure site-to-site VPN gateway is not fully supported on older firewalls, so you must be careful. For details please read: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

Azure’s price is very competitive with traditional hosting (in-house or outsourced). Windows and database licenses are included in the solution price or you can bring your own license (BYOL). There are also several free or open source solutions in Azure.

We looked at AWS. In our case, Microsoft had very competitive pricing due to our Office 365 agreement.

Test it for free with the advice of an experienced Microsoft partner.