No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IBM SoftLayer vs Microsoft Azure Block Storage comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM SoftLayer
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
20th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Block Storage
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of IBM SoftLayer is 1.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is 2.8%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure Block Storage2.8%
IBM SoftLayer1.9%
Other95.3%
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1032702 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Principal Cloud Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Stable with excellent speed and agility
The most valuable aspect of the solution is simply to have the ability to host in a cloud form and out of the data center - the IBM big iron solution. It's the speed and the agility that really sell SoftLayer. The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer. The ability to extract act from your current location, load into your future location, with limited change, and then be able to take the transfer actions slowly and methodically after you're in your new location is the part that really makes this awesome. The stability and scalability are quite good.
Ajai Jayakumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Has supported secure file sharing and data automation with minimal setup effort
The encryption feature in Microsoft Azure Block Storage is very good, and the security is excellent. It is easy to map the storage to the virtual servers and user desktops, which is also very beneficial. I can perform automations on the data, such as moving hot data and cold data, and I can select storage based on performance. The security provided by Microsoft around Microsoft Azure Block Storage is a very good function. The replication feature in Microsoft Azure Block Storage is a very good function. The analytic capabilities of Microsoft Azure Block Storage can help optimize resources. I usually work with a third-party tool; our data analytics team uses some custom-made tools for analytics data and dashboards, so we do not use the Microsoft dashboard; we are using a third-party dashboard. It is very easy to manage Microsoft Azure Block Storage. If you have good knowledge of it, it is very easy to manage. Microsoft Azure Block Storage service is a very good, 100% reliable service. It is highly scalable, and performance-wise and reliability-wise, it does not go down. It provides 99.9% uptime without downtime, so it is a very good feature. The backup and restoration efficiency of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is good.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The stability is the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."
"The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer."
"The ability to extract from your current location, load into your future location with limited change, and then be able to take the transfer actions slowly and methodically after you're in your new location is the part that really makes this awesome."
"The solution is highly stable."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is the security and the management of user access from on-premise to the cloud."
"The setup is straightforward."
"Microsoft Azure Block Storage has high-security features and is very reliable. Its maintenance is done through the cloud, which reduces costs."
"This is a very robust and flexible solution."
"Storing and then retrieving data are the most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Block Storage."
"One can easily scale with this program."
"The solution's most valuable features are its usability, scalability, and management, which is really easy."
"There are various types of storage to choose from - blob, table, and queue."
 

Cons

"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
"For us, the versioning was an issue."
"Maybe considerations on security regulations and hardware vendor information might be useful."
"Uploading of data could be improved. Currently, the only way you can upload your data is by using their storage explorer. You need to use a command line to do that. Then, maybe you can go online and you can use their explorer to check to see if it's there. If they had a third-party application to handle the upload, it would be better. Many people aren't familiar with command lines for uploading data. It makes it more difficult for many users."
"The stability of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is good but could improve."
"At the moment, I do not have anything specific in mind for improvements."
"The solution's downside is related to its documentation, which I believe can be difficult to navigate because it is hidden between or within other pages of the product's manual."
"We don't delete the other tools from the folder directly. There's no folder deletion option in Azure Block Storage. It would be nice if they could update this."
"One thing that needs improvement is authentication. They need to improve the integrated Azure Active Directory for the enterprise level. For single sign-on, we can try any authentication or portal for Block Azure Function AKS. For example, if you're an administrator or user contributor, you will generate a token, then your internal middleware connects to any Azure Cloud service. You need to generate different credentials for each service. We cannot use the same token."
"The product is not as stable as we would like it to be."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"For the first 50DB, they cost around $50. It's an open solution for everybody. Anybody can go to the Microsoft website and they can get the pricing for it. But the first 50GB of data is a default rate and then it increases for the next 500GB or something like that. It is a pay as you go solution. The more you use, the more you pay. That's normally how you pay for any cloud solutions."
"The price of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is expensive. They should provide a more efficient cost."
"Microsoft Azure Block Storage is not an expensive tool. I'm subscribed to the Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors program, so Microsoft gives me between $120 to $150 credit each month."
"Microsoft Azure Block Storage is an expensive solution and I pay monthly."
"The storage part costs us $223. That's on a monthly basis for 20TB of data storage."
"The solution is affordable, and we only pay for what we use."
"I use Microsoft Azure Block Storage's free version."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six or seven out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Public Cloud Storage Services solutions are best for your needs.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
15%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Block Storage?
Our experience with pricing has been positive. The budget for Microsoft Azure services has been within expectations for the last couple of months. The cost for Azure Data Factory ( /products/azure-...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Block Storage?
For improvement in Microsoft Azure Block Storage, they can provide tiered level storages, maybe low-cost storages for storing archive data, but it is already there. I do not think there is much to ...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Azure Block Storage?
I am using Microsoft Azure Block Storage for file sharing, automation accounts, data storage, and archiving, and those are the main use cases.
 

Also Known As

CloudLayer
MS Azure Block Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Whogohost Ltd., Skypicker, Infinity Computers and Communications Company, Grace Co. Ltd., Keyword, Uvionics Tech, Tennis Australia, immixGroup, Salesbox, Cxense ASA, Avnet Inc., Komsomolskaya Pravda, Seekr
Mazda, BlinkBox, Rakuten Showtime, Xbox One, Serko, ChronoDrive
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SoftLayer vs. Microsoft Azure Block Storage and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.