Microsoft Azure Reviews

We use Microsoft Azure for many different services. For example, we use the Azure Boards for work and issue tracking. The Azure Repos is a place we store code, it is similar to a Git repository for us. Microsoft Azure has pipelines for the deployment of your applications across environments. There are different cloud services for different use cases in Microsoft Azure that I interact with on a daily basis.

Microsoft Azure has benefited our organization mostly because we moved all our infrastructure to the cloud. That has helped with cost optimization. We don't have to worry about operational maintenance for things such as patching or updates for any of the servers because everything is handled by the cloud itself. We are always using the latest version.

Microsoft Azure has hundred of services that they offer on the platform.

The Microsoft Azure platform in itself is very good. The documentation that is available I find very handy and the community behind it is helpful. If you have any problems or anything, you can easily reach Microsoft's community, and then there would be someone who would be willing to help. That's a very good plus point for Microsoft Azure.

There are times when using a service in Microsoft Azure can be confusing because you have four or five options that do similar operations. It would be helpful if there was a clear decision tree around those features. Microsoft does provide a lot of decision trees around a lot of their services, but it's not for everything.

This would be helpful for the users because sometimes it gets confusing what to use, what not to use. Then you start with something, and then after two months, you think you should have used something else. There are approximately 200 services and I have found this issue with approximately 10 of them.

I have been using Microsoft Azure for approximately seven years.

Microsoft Azure is stable, I did not encounter any issues or anything in the platform. The uptime is very good. 

When you design your solution, you can make sure that everything is accounted for in your design, such as all the options are there. Microsoft Azure in itself is rarely down. If there is a complete blackout it can happen, but normally no. It's very reliable.

The scalability of Microsoft Azure is unlimited. You never have to be concerned with scalability. You only have to pay for it and then the scaling is available for you.

I have approximately 50 to 100 people using this solution in my organization. I use the solution on a daily basis.

I have not needed to contact the technical to Microsoft in my current experience. In the past, I have contacted Microsoft once or twice, but the process is straightforward. You raise a ticket, and then Microsoft's people reach out to you.

The initial setup of Microsoft Azure is very straightforward. You don't have to do any setup. You only have to sign up on the Microsoft Portal, and then you can start using it.

I did the implementation of Microsoft Azure myself.

There is not any maintenance required for this solution. If we build any solution on top of Microsoft Azure, then that's something that we have to take care of and maintain. The Microsoft Azure platform in itself does not need any maintenance from us.

Microsoft Azure is not expensive. You pay for what you use. If you are using it everything could be expensive.

We choose Microsoft Azure after doing the proper comparisons and proof of concepts. We did a complete pros and cons list for our vendor selection process.

I would highly recommend Microsoft Azure to others.

I would advise others that one of the most important points to make is to make sure that the security and governance of the platform have been thought of before you start building everything around it. Make sure you build your security framework and the governance framework around the platform that suits your company. Every company is different. Everyone will have different security and governance rules.

I rate Microsoft Azure a nine out of ten.

We use Microsoft Azure in two places. The first use case involves the Chatbot framework, and we've been using that for 18 months. This is what we predominately use it for.

Our second use involves hosting some of our critical applications. It allows us to address some of our human resource use cases in the area of policy queries, as well as some backend actions.

The automated connectors to some of our critical enterprise systems are an important feature. These are very large, critical, global HCM systems.

The library of predefined use cases is very helpful and we found the HR use case that we needed within it.

There are improvements needed from a roadmap standpoint. Some of the roadmap items that they typically publish don't move at the same pace.

The predominant area in need of improvement is support.

Microsoft needs to continue working on out-of-the-box connectors to contemporary products in the market, specific to different verticals such as finance and HR. Investing in this would be helpful because it means deploying solutions faster. We've had challenges in terms of having to custom-build some of it and at the same time, the roadmap contains more connectors.

We have been using Microsoft Azure for the past 18 months.

This is definitely a stable platform. I haven't seen issues in that respect.

Azure is a scalable platform. We have more than 10,000 people in the organization that use it from an application standpoint. The end-users could be managers or other employees in a variety of roles.

Our in-house administration team has fewer than 40 people that work with it.

At the moment, we have no plans to increase our usage.

The primary support needs to be improved. I would rate them as moderate because from a technical and service guarantee perspective, they are pretty good. However, when it comes to new roadmap items or handling requests, or adding new activities, they are moderate.

This is the first such solution that we put into place.

The initial setup is pretty much straightforward.

Our initial deployment took between six and eight weeks. This period had more to do with our setup being compliant with some of the features on Azure. 

We worked with the Microsoft consulting team during the deployment.

The team was knowledgeable but there were some areas that they could have done better. For example, we had issues with our enrollment and some of our IT requirements at the organizational level. We could have perhaps used some architecting skills.

For permanent maintenance, so we have a hybrid model when it comes to maintenance. We've outsourced some of it, and that really comes from a fixed contract so we don't control the number of people that work on it.

Internally, we have two people; one who manages the services, and the other one is more of an administrator.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Microsoft Azure is to first, very clearly agree on the terms of deployment. Second, get the initial design and prototypes for your specific implementation vetted and signed off at an early stage because this will help with security clearances and data privacy clearances. These were the two major learning points for us.

In summary, this is a good platform but there are several areas for improvement.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure

The fully integrated capabilities of a PaaS service.

Basically we would not be building the Healthcare IT application if it were not for Azure.

The management console needs work and the pricing calculator is truly user hostile.

I have been using the solution 3 years.

We have some issues with functional differences between Azure Active Directory and how Ad is implemented on a standalone server.

We have had a few outages with Visual Studio Online – though they have not been a major work impact.

None so far.

Customer Service: Mixed. Microsoft still has too many support queues and if you end up in the wrong one you can spend hours being bounced from one to the other. OTOH once you figure out how to get to the Business support queue – response times are fantastic for “business outage” issues.Technical Support: When in the right queue – the understanding is unparalleled.

I have previously used AWS and Amazon Elastic Beanstalk. Azure is a PaaS whereas AWS is a server stack environment and thus AWS does not provide the OpEx cost reductions that Azure does. Elastic Beanstalk is a PaaS but it is not as fully developed as Azure.NET is.

Very straightforward. In fact almost too much so. Its easy to try and overthink the setup and waste time looking for things you don’t need to be looking for.

Combination of in-house and vendor. Vendor team was new to Azure.

Full ROI on the current project is still to be determined as we are not shipping yet. But I would estimate a 100% cost reduction over the traditional way of building a server based app.

Our monthly dev costs for infrastucture are running $300-$500 for the initial work and we expect to have full OpEx costs of $1,000-$3,000/mo once we are launched.

AWS and Elastic Beanstalk.

Have a team that understands .NET development and particularly someone who understands Active Directory very well

We use Microsoft Azure for hosting websites. It provides comprehensive control over our infrastructure and services.

Azure is easy to use and visualize.

It should improve database performance and make the platform more user-friendly. Additionally, providing more tools for seamless migration from AWS to Azure would be beneficial. Performance testing should ensure that systems remain reliable and transactions do not drop unexpectedly.

It should be thoroughly testet before release. Additionally, in Kubernetes, detailed documentation should be included, especially for STO.

I have been using Microsoft Azure for five years.

The solution is stable.

Microsoft Azure is highly scalable. It enhance the application's performance by managing increased demand efficiently. For instance, if around one thousand requests per second are coming in, Azure can handle this load seamlessly. Its scalability ensures consistent performance even under heavy traffic.

If you have an issue with Microsoft Azure, they will help me resolve it.

Positive

We use Terraform to deploy and configure our infrastructure on Microsoft Azure, following a hub-and-spoke model for networking.

It is a continuous process. Mostly, it takes about one and a half months for approval and around one month for deployment. Based on customer requirements or new needs, we continuously update the resources within the Azure infrastructure.

If I create a Terraform script, it significantly reduces the need for support. Typically, just two or three people are needed to manage it.

Azure is a strong competitor to AWS. AWS has a competitive pricing strategy, but Azure offers unique benefits. Azure provides credits, which can reduce costs for a certain period. For example, you might receive yearly credits, resulting in zero infrastructure investment for that year. 

In comparison to AWS, Azure is user-friendly and has lower cost. Azure also provides good performance over time.

In Kubernetes, what we are using offers different features, which is good. We are enabling more drivers and integrations, which is beneficial. Regarding virtual machines, they also perform very well.

We are using cognitive services include the Face API.

We have built a comprehensive AI search feature, specifically Cognitive Search, and implemented it in our application.

If a product is supposed to include certain features, it performs as expected. The support team ensures it is a reliable product, without parts that don't work. Products are thoroughly tested to ensure quality. However, in Azure, maintaining new products can be challenging and requires significant work. AWS fixes these issues more efficiently. 

Some startups choose Azure because they may not have much funding. These startups find Azure services beneficial and cost-effective.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Microsoft Azure is our principal could environment.

We use Microsoft Azure for Hosting Apps, Sites, and Blogs.

Advantages of Azure over On-Premises: Improved Performance and Cost Benefits.

It is easy to deploy.

The technical support is good.

The price is good.

I would like to see Internet content filtering included.

I have been working with Microsoft Azure for two years.

I am working with the latest version.

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

I have plans to increase my usage in the future.

Technical support is good.

I would rate them a ten out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward.

It is easy to deploy.

We have seen a return on investment.

The pricing is reasonable.

I Conducted Evaluations of Google Cloud (GCP), Oracle Cloud (OCP), and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

We opted for Azure based on familiarity and expertise as a Microsoft-driven organization.

It's a good product and the correct choice.

I would rate Microsoft Azure a nine out of ten.

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. 

Hybrid Cloud

I am a manager of a team and we will have approximately 18 applications that will be cloud-based using this solution.

One of the most valuable features of Microsoft Azure is the compatibility with all of our Windows applications and other Microsoft technologies.

I have been using Microsoft Azure for approximately one year.

The solution could improve the stability. However, this could be a configuration issue that we are not been trained.

There is good community support available.

I have previously used AWS and GCP.

Microsoft Azure is more expensive than other solutions, such as GCP. We have found that GCP offers more utilities at a very reasonable price. I think the reason we are having a discount is because of the bank contract we have.

I would recommend this solution.

I rate Microsoft Azure a seven out of ten.

Public Cloud

We have a private cloud, but we are interested in having a hybrid cloud that includes Microsoft Azure. This use of it as an Infrastructure as a Service will help us to expand our scale using our hardware.

Primarily, we use Azure to test services and solutions that we want to use on the public cloud. Nothing in production is being used on Azure yet because of latency.

Azure is helpful when you want to set up a server, such as a Linux test server. For example, we can transfer our code to the test server and do a comparison.

This solution is easy to use. It has quite a good interface for things like provisioning a server.

Provisioning a server is fast, taking only one or two minutes before it is ready. In our private cloud, this process still takes longer.

At this point, the latency is too high to use Azure in our production environment.

I would like to see support for data streaming in the future because I understand that currently, data streaming is not there. It would work like Kafka does, in Microsoft Azure. If they can provide the Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service, it will be better.

For example, if want to use Kafka, I should be able to purchase Microsoft Azure and then use my Kafka license. This would also give me support. Right now, using it requires first getting a server through Infrastructure as a Service, then getting a Kafka license, then installing the server in the cloud.

We started using Microsoft Azure last year.

Azure is a scalable product. We are not using it extensively yet because we just started exploring it for use as a testing server. However, if we are satisfied with the security and issues with latency then we are going to set up performance tests.

We have not had any issues with support. The interface is quite user-friendly, so we have not needed to contact them. I think that they do have assistance available for onboarding, or creating a server.

We did evaluate other solutions but that is the job of another team in the company. I was only told that we also tried Google Cloud.

The initial setup is straightforward. Microsoft Azure provides an easy interface to log in and create a server.

The pricing is flexible. Our company engaged in negotiations to get a better price, which resulted in a two-year contract.

It seems that the cost of using the service in the short term is definitely good. However, in the long-term it is different. The long-term cost is higher than if you set up the servers on-premises, which is something that could be improved through more competitive pricing.

Our usage is rather limited right now but for what we use it for, the product is quite good and we are satisfied with the services. This is a product that I can recommend for anybody who does not want to invest a lot of money in their own hardware.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure