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Microsoft Azure vs vCloud Air comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 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

Microsoft Azure
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
324
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (1st)
vCloud Air
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
21st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 9.0%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vCloud Air is 1.1%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure9.0%
vCloud Air1.1%
Other89.9%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Syed Abid  - PeerSpot reviewer
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
Versatile integrations and reliable customer satisfaction elevate cloud service experience
For Microsoft Azure improvement, they need to enhance their support system. The first level of support should be improved in terms of quality and response time. They need more technical support at the first level, as there are currently only one or two technical people among five to ten staff members at this level. They should ensure that the first level support is more technical because we normally provide services to technical users ourselves. When an issue arises, it usually escalates to the second or third level. When facing first level support, they may have limited knowledge and only collect screenshots to forward to their seniors. They should ensure that the first level support is aligned with L2 and L3 to better assist us, especially since we mention in the ticket that our issues are related to specific problems and require that sort of support.
SC
Director Solutions Architect - EMEA & APAC at Blue Medora
With the VPC, you can run your workloads in an active state, use it for development work and for hosting SQL/Exchange Servers in IaaS; RaaS/DaaS for DR activities.
All three components of the vCloud Air are equally valuable and important, i.e., IaaS, DaaS and RaaS. I like the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) offering compared to the Dedicated Cloud. It gives me the flexibility to utilize the pay-as-you-go option. You can run your workloads in an active state at reasonable prices. I have seen lots of companies use it for their development work, as well as for hosting SQL and Exchange Servers, i.e., in the active-passive mode instead of Replication (RaaS). Disaster Recovery is also a great feature that is affordable and easy to use. Disaster Recovery is a great component of the vCloud Air, where you can protect the on-premises cloud infrastructure, by providing self-service recovery options using the vSphere Replication. Some of the features that really stand out and I have used in my projects are: * Direct Connect: It provides high speed and private line connectivity. * Offline Data Transfer: For encrypted bulk data transport.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft Azure is flexible and the performance is great."
"To store 5Gb of data, with 5Gb of egress and to issue 10 million transactions against that data would cost: £0.5105 per month."
"I think the most useful feature has been the remote desktop. It has been very helpful when customers have old applications that are not architected to run remotely."
"The most valuable feature is the possibility of using Microsoft and non-Microsoft services on one environment."
"It is quick and easy to deploy, it is flexible, and we can deploy a resource anytime."
"The valuable features of Microsoft Azure are that it is cloud-based and has good storage, the storage is completely managed by Azure, we do not need to do any patching of security because it is handled by Azure which is a benefit, the solution is fully compatible with the Microsoft technology stack, and it is very scalable."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is its ease of use."
"In general, the entire suite of PaaS is valuable. It enables a true breakdown of IT siloes and allows an organization to embrace DevOps."
"The Cloud DRaaS solution provided the organization with new levels of flexibility and cost control, together with rapid expansion capability."
"VMware Workstation has an interesting feature to manage vSphere infrastructure (and also stand-alone ESXi hosts) that is really powerful and useful, for example to avoid to install the vSphere client (or the integration plugin) just to open one VM console or to change the power status for some VM."
"This is the part that should be making admins and CIOs smile."
 

Cons

"A problem with Azure is that the architecture that they have is not really compliant — not really connecting with the endpoint Cloud."
"I think better accelerators and better tools that can be used to migrate and leverage the existing models and data schemas are needed."
"Sometimes technical support is not as fast as I needed on the first call, but once they are engaged, it is really easy to get an answer."
"Some of the capabilities available in an on-premise SQL Server aren't available in Azure. For instance, we found Azure Managed Instance to be lacking in certain aspects."
"Performance could be improved."
"I would like to see all of the cloud providers be more compatible with each other."
"The quality of some components of Microsoft Azure is not that great. For example, Microsoft has not fixed issues in Microsoft Teams for many years. There are well-known issues that are submitted by customers two years ago and they still are not fixed."
"I would like to see better policy-based management and everything related to security management could have been better integrated."
"I feel the user interface/portal can be improved further. I did experience timeout issues and the UI was performing slowly at times."
"It’s a really good idea, but the current implementation is very limited: you can simply see your VMs and just open the VM console."
"I don’t think it is quite where EC2 is with regard to capabilities and features but VMware is investing a lot in vCloud Air."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution does require a license."
"The price of the solution could be reduced. There should be a loyalty cost reduction model. If customers have been using the service year after year they should receive a discount."
"The price of the solution can be expensive."
"In countries experiencing high inflation, the cost of Azure services can be significantly impacted. This can result in higher expenses compared to other regions."
"Its costing can be improved. Its licensing is monthly. In addition to the standard license fee, there is a transactional cost."
"The pricing of Microsoft Azure is not very flexible."
"Pricing is very difficult to guesstimate. With so many a la carte options and individual pricing it can be a hassle to understand."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
Information not available
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Aug 14, 2013
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
University
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business141
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise151
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...
Which is better - SAP Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure?
One of the best features of SAP Cloud Platform is that it is web-based and you can log in from anywhere in the world. SAP Cloud Platform is suitable for companies of any size; it works well with bo...
How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?
I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure...
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Also Known As

Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Lumeta, LifeSite, Clear Tec Solutions, National Physician Services, Queens University of Charlotte, California Natural Resources Agency, Pacific Disaster Center, Seventy Seven Energy Inc., Columbia Sportswear , CSS Corp
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and others in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS). Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.