Microsoft Azure Reviews

Compared to other cloud platforms, I find the Azure portal very user-friendly. It's more intuitive and clearer than some, but it depends on your specific needs because Azure offers many services. 

For instance, working with Synapse, a complex technology with diverse processing engines, requires deep knowledge. In our experience with clients, using Databricks, a third-party service, on top of Azure can be helpful.

There's an ongoing development, particularly concerning the Data Fabric offering launched a few months ago.

Data Fabric is an additional offering which is Software as a service "as a service" application, unlike the core Azure platform initially focused on "platform as a service." It sits on top of Azure. 

We thought Azure could be more flexible and cost-effective, but our experience suggests this separation might simplify things for some customers. It's worth exploring as a potential improvement for specific needs.

I have been using it for several years. We have used it, or we have architectures. We consult about Azure. 

We do a lot here in this area because it's also a big topic for us. But it's a more general consulting topic for me. I have some experience with it, but I do not implement it. Internally, we use some Azure services. 

We have all kinds of typically, ranging more towards larger size customers, midsized customers, and a lot in the financial area. 

For example, with a Synapse environment, we might need to switch to Databricks for better scalability. But overall, the platform itself scales very well. Based on my experience, I'd give it an eight out of ten.

Azure is the best in Germany compared to AWS or Google. It has the best German footprint, so the support is better locally.

But globally, it's good, not always the best. Some users have very good experiences with Google's support as well.  

Neutral

From the consulting perspective, we consult on every technology on the market. For example, Snowflake is a big topic on our side.  

I have a lot of history in SAP. With current or former SAP solutions.  

In our company, we are more Microsoft-based and Microsoft CRM.

The technical part of setting up such a platform is typically the smaller part. And for an experienced consultant, it's okay. It's nothing special. It's more about the processes and organization, which is important to consider here.

So, I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, with ten being easy. 

Typically, in Germany, we see that setting up is very complex; enterprises work well with Azure setups if users are already experienced at different points with Azure. But it's a little bit more easy compared to Google or Amazon. But it depends a little bit on the service and the environment you need.

From a technical perspective, it can set up something in a day or in some hours. That's not a problem. 

The thing is more the organizational level here, what is allowed, who can do it, where the costs are going, and so on. The process is typically much more about the deployment or, depending on whether you have already built a platform and just have to automate the deployment process. 

For example, it works very well, typically, but the initial setup of a platform is more for organizational things, but this is not what I do. 

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

Our current client is in the securities business, so we deal with a lot of trading data, like securities, holdings, etc. We evaluate the data quality of the daily file that comes from the current providers and transform that data using PowerPlay and Dashworks.

We're building cloud-based data warehouses by adapting on-premises data warehouses in MySQL Server. Initially, we migrated everything to the Azure SQL Data Warehouse to take advantage of all the MPP technology and stuff. In the process, we realized it was expensive for us, and we didn't need all that capacity, so we migrated that code to a simple Azure SQL database. We made it work from that point.

In our current project, we're using Power BI with Azure. We directly import data from that SQL database into Power BI using PowerPlay and ask the client architect to do some data engineering so we have serverless capacity in Azure. Right now, we are migrating to Azure Synapse, and we are actually in the process of doing a couple of PLCs with serverless capacity. Maybe we'll also use Databricks. 

Azure Data Lake is useful. We are in the process of populating the data lake for our current project. Also, we are directly importing for Power BI to using PowerPlay.

There is room for improvement on a couple of Azure services. One that comes to mind is Data Factory. Microsoft has improved a lot of Data Factory's capabilities, so maybe it's now possible to make a green custom database within Azure and Data Factory. 

I think it would be good to keep making progress on giving users the ability to do action calls on Data Factory. Right now, it's mostly local. Perhaps Microsoft could add the ability to put some calls in the workflow. Airflow is a good example. You might say, "Why not just use Airflow?" And maybe you could use that, but I think it would be better if all these things were possible with Data Factory. 

We've been working with Azure for a couple of years. I work for a tech consultancy, so we're not tied to just one project. We work with one client for a year or so, and then we work with another client the next year. Mostly we build data warehouses with SQL using Microsoft Synapse. We also do some things with Power BI and PowerPlay.

Azure is stable. We've never had any problems. 

When you work on the cloud, it's a straightforward process. You start on a PLC and start adding more components like maybe some security with a private network and so on. It's effortless for us to scale by adding additional components. Scalability depends on the service you're going to use. For example, if you are going to change from a SQL database to another database or another inter-processing ending, it's not going to be that easy. It happens with all providers. 

It is easy to set up Azure. For deployment and maintenance, we have a team of five or six people consisting of one tech leader, three developers, and one QA.

Azure's pricing could be more competitive. Some clients mentioned that they are considering switching to AWS because of the price. And AWS can provide you with the instant capacity called SpotLink. 

I rate Microsoft Azure eight out of 10. It's okay for all the use cases we've had so far. If you are going to do it on your own, make sure you read the documentation. All the information is there. Microsoft documentation is good. But if you don't want to take on that burden of reading documentation and so on, you can contact support. They'll know better than you. This is crucial because of the cost. If you choose the wrong services, you could waste a lot of money. 

We have our data lake on it. In terms of deployment, I believe we have a hybrid deployment.

We can temporarily build out an environment for different scenarios, such as testing, and when testing is done, we can shut that environment down. So, we do not have an overhead in our own data center.

The ability to scale down is a big thing.

It can be improved in terms of ease of billing or monitoring of the billing. That gets to be a little difficult.

I have been using this solution for four years.

It is absolutely stable. Microsoft doesn't want to sell something that isn't.

Its scalability is excellent. You just turn something on, and it is there. We have not made any reservations on it. We can scale up and scale down as needed. There is nothing that we have that is a commitment.

We probably have about 500 users, and they are administrators, developers, BI folks who actually manipulate it and create reports, and then we have end-users for the data. They are the people that use those reports.

In terms of the plans to increase its usage, right now, we're going through a merger, which will impact the data a little bit. So, we are in a holding pattern in terms of scaling up anything until that merger gets completed.

We go through a third party for that, and their support is really good.

We were fully on-premise with some SaaS platforms, and we then moved to Azure for a part of that.

It was complex, and that was mostly because of the security needs. We had to understand how things fit together.

The original deployment, just for testing, took about half a day, but to really get it going and to be able to allow access to people, other than the administrators, took more time. We're a financial institution, so we had to have everything monitored and secure. It probably took about four months to get it functional on the production side.

We used a consultant. They were excellent. They knew exactly what they were talking about. They were able to give us not only what was needed presently for our deployment but also the things to think about as we let the environment grow in the future.

For its deployment and maintenance, I've got security folks who watch what's going on. They make sure that only the right people are getting the right data, and it is not being allowed to folks who shouldn't have access. I have nothing public-facing on it. I've got administrators. I've probably got three people in security and five people in the administration. We're a 24/7 business, so it is split across all of that time.

Originally, when we implemented it, it was basically in a like-for-like way, which is not the way the platform is designed. So, once we were able to really get in there and figure things out, we figured out that we could use a much smaller footprint. That helped us out quite a bit in terms of a return on investment. We are seeing probably about 75% of the regular data center cost in Azure, so there were 25% savings, but we could see that go down as testing was being eliminated over different platforms.

Currently, we do not have anything reserved. There are no reservations that we have built into the Azure environment, so all of our licensing is on a consumption basis. As things spin up, those licenses spin up.

In terms of the additional costs incurred beyond the standard licensing fee, such as for operations, it's kind of tough for me to judge because I already had a fully-staffed operations team in a fully on-premise platform environment. So, we didn't spin up anybody extra for that. It just changed what they were doing.

We evaluated other options. We decided to go with Azure because we understood the licensing and VMs and how all of that worked together. Prior to the merger, we were looking at bringing the platform onto AWS. It wasn't that we were necessarily exclusive; we just felt that this was our best first step.

I would advise understanding what data you're going to be putting out there, and what your security requirements are for that. You should be ready to have a workshop so that everyone involved knows what's going on. Get a good understanding from the accounts payable team about how the payments are coming in and how to monitor them.

I love the product. From a procurement standpoint, I don't have a lot of control over it. Unless we've got some contracting of what we plan on doing, I don't have a lot of control over licenses, etc. An administrator can just go out, do it, and put the licensing in place, and then it is like you've got to pay for it. It doesn't function well in a P2P type of environment.

I would rate it an eight out of 10.

We're using Azure Premium P1 and it hosts our website and most of the applications we use. We are an airline company and for some of our enterprise apps, it enables things like single sign-on and hosts most of our virtual machines, as well as some of our web servers for the on-prem application. Our customer mobile app for purchasing tickets is for that purpose but we also use it for enterprise apps. I use Minecraft for my email security, but I integrate it with Azure to incorporate the single sign-on, as well as for multifactor authentication in my Office 365 environment, and the productive Parti app. I'm an IT security specialist and we are customers of Azure.

The feature I appreciate is that everything is basically shift forward from a security standpoint. Most of our systems are integrated with Azure for authentication purposes. Given that I'm a security specialist I use it for that purpose. The rest of the team uses it more for things like application deployment. I also use it to determine sign-ons, and things like compliance to devices. 

Microsoft allows you, via Azure, to have different authentication methods. You can use the Microsoft Authenticator app, text or voice, or something called a FIDO, which is like a USB security key. Unfortunately, the authentication method only allows me to have up to 90 users, and there are 2,300 people in the company. When I have to push multifactor authentication, I cannot specify certain users for the authenticator app. It forces me to lock it down and say conditional access only allowed.

Another issue I have is that Microsoft notifies me retroactively about certain things. For example, when a user sends an email with over 200 recipients, it can take half an hour for me to get a notification but sometimes it can take 24 hours. I have the same issue when it comes to things like phishing attempts. It's a problem. 

I've been using Azure for three years. 

The solution is stable, although I'd like some advance warning when they make changes. It can sometimes take hours to update so that if I have a user using multifactor authentication and I take them off, it can take up to an hour for it to take effect.

Technical support is very good. 

I can only speak from my own experience and I have many Microsoft certificates, including as a Microsoft solution architect expert in Azure, so it might be easier for me than it is for others. I tend to do a lot of things on the app and I use it on a daily basis. Even if I don't know where something is, the documentation on techniques, everything is there. I wasn't involved in the deployment at this company but in my previous position, it took a couple of days, not very long. Microsoft provided support. It's just a matter of configuring the tenant.

I would recommend Azure because there's a lot of documentation available and a lot of user guides, it has everything. 

I rate the solution eight out of 10. 

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.

In our company, this solution is mainly used for configuring devices and enabling them to be used by multiple users. I'm a developer. 

The product is valuable if you don't want to spend a lot of money configuring your own devices on different machines. I like that if I only want to use limited features, I don't have to pay for it. 

The solution is not particularly user friendly so that could be improved. With Microsoft Azure it's quite difficult to do anything freely or try my hand at something new. I think the solution is also lacking in security. I'd like to see the option of a free account for carrying out a POC and the ability to play around with the solution without any restrictions. 

We've been using this solution for a year. 

This is a stable solution.

We have the server on cloud so it's scalable according to demand. All of our staff use it, and we have 15,000 users.

I previously used AWS. In comparison, Azure is a little restricted because of the security features and, as a developer, I'm not comfortable with that. AWS is more user friendly and in general, people find it easier to use. AWS is easier to install and to experiment and play around with to get a feel for the product.

There is no setup as such, it's on a server and it's a matter of configuring on the cloud. If you need, you can spawn 3,000 machines with a single execution and 10,000 or so test scripts within minutes.

I would definitely recommend this solution. 

I rate it an eight out of 10. 

Currently we are hosting custom web applications, boxed applications, Azure VMs, Azure files for shared company files, Azure blob storage, Azure Active Directory with Active Directory sync, Single Sign On, and development and testing purposes.

Creating VMs for development has been huge since we ran out of resources locally. Creating Hybrid solutions provides us with greater confidence in higher availability. Storage has made remote access to files much more painless and easy. Using SSO has also been great reducing the number of passwords and locations required to use them.

Customized Dashboard, Site-to-site and point-to-Site VPN, Virtual Machines, Web Apps, SQL, SharePoint, Storage, Test/Dev environments.

Pricing is very difficult to guesstimate. With so many a la carte options and individual pricing it can be a hassle to understand. I constantly need to go over the report to find out where I can save money and what is eating up the monthly costs.

No issues with stability. Has been rock solid.

Scalability is Microsofts big advantage. At anytime you can scale up or down your servers or services growing them or shrinking them to your needs. You can even automate this process. I personally do not get into Enterprise solutions but they continue to add larger solutions frequently.  

Customer Service:

First response is 2-4 hours. Staff is knowledgeable but can often be difficult to understand and slow. Although I do not call about routine issues and bring very complex problems there way. With that said I will say every issue does get resolved.

Technical Support:

I rate technical support 7/10. First response is 2-4 hours. Staff is knowledgeable but can often be difficult to understand. I have also found that a few of them try to e-mail you despite your request for a call. This causes much miscommunication and additional time your problem is not getting resolved.

I only give them an 7 because I have struggled a time or two with understanding their English or getting the ball rolling resolving my issue. This all really depends on the department you need.

I will say that they always get the issue resolved regardless of the complexity of the problem.

No I have not, but we chose Azure simply simply because we are Microsoft partners and get free Azure credits to work with.  Microsoft is also a power player in cloud solution and a trusted name.  

Huge learning curve for me. I found just diving in was incredibly difficult. Much lab time required to understand how things work together. Once you get going however it all makes sense.

I also find the GUI to be more intuitive then AWS and feels better.

They are constantly changing the GUI while they continue migrating the ASM model to the ARM model. Since this is a living platform it can change from one day to the next adding features. 

I implemented all the solutions myself with a little research.

Microsoft does have special pricing for Development purposes. This does help reduce the monthly costs for our team.

As our local resources reach their end of life, we have moved servers and services to Azure.  It becomes more of an operation expense as apposed to a capitol expense. 

We are MS partners. Depending on your partnership you may or may not get Visual Studio Enterprises licenses. Each license allows you to get a $150 Azure credit per month.

This has been great for our developers and I to put in to practice some Azure solutions.

There are many other free credits available as well.  Do some searching.

If you need to purchase Azure they do have a pricing calculator that may help you determine costs.  https://azure.microsoft.com/en...

I know AWS is another great solution, but have not tackled it yet. I do have plans to experiment with Amazons solution to determine for my own the differences. 

The biggest advantage to using Azure over any other cloud solution is the ability to move your domain into the cloud and be completely server free and still have domain services.

I have also found that site-to-site vpn with domain services rack up a good percentage of our monthly costs. These are the fundamentals to move your network into Azure.

We use the solution for pipelines.

Because of automation, everything from the beginning of the development project is stored on one side and brought from the development side to the production side.

Due to automation, the development process is streamlined from the beginning. 

The process involves understanding what is provided from the repository side, managing the code, and handling changes and responsibilities. This includes staging in the pipeline. 

Sometimes, I have issues configuring settings, setting up policies, and communicating with others on Microsoft Azure.

Pricing is high, especially if you plan to use it on a larger scale, with more teams, or want to include additional features. The costs can increase significantly as you add more features and expand usage.

I have been using Microsoft Azure for two years.

Stability is straightforward when combining some Linux features or Linux kernels. Additionally, integrating with other operating systems can sometimes be challenging.

It takes time to get familiar, but after, everything is fast.

When I experienced a crash, I received a response within a few days. The level of support depends on your user status. If you are a minimal or ultimate user, and if you pay more, you receive more support. Everything goes much faster.

Everything is okay if you are familiar with Teams and how it works. However, combining Teams with other tools and APIs can make things much faster. Additionally, the plugins provided by the official Microsoft site can enhance its functionality.

The deployment is manageable in one day and takes only one person.

It automates and saves time. Microsoft Azure breaks entire products into modules, making it easier to implement changes. These changes can be deployed much faster compared to traditional methods.

It is payable for what you need and how much you use.

I preferred Azure because it's more robust, it's easy to get around.

Code breaks from time to time, so maintenance is required periodically, especially for extensive codebases. Regular testing and checks are necessary to ensure reliability and performance.

I use other tools that integrate Copilot, which will soon be integrated into Microsoft Azure. I rely on other sources when I need to find information. There's also the security issue, as there's always a risk concerning where company data will ultimately be stored.

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