Microsoft Azure Reviews

Our use cases are basically cost agility and efficiency.

Microsoft Azure really enforces the automation capabilities of our workforce. It drives us towards a new operating model in terms of delivering services more quickly and more automatically.

I think Azure's level of automation to achieve efficiency or agility is valuable. I also like the change capability cadence, the showback capabilities, and understanding what our costs are. We don't have that in our on-premise environment. That whole showback capability is very interesting for us. It helps to hold the stakeholders accountable for our spending. 

Talking about improvement is like a double-edged sword. We like that they have the new capabilities, but sometimes they're deprecating capabilities faster than we can handle. If we had to improve it, we would want to stay on some of these older capabilities a bit longer. It's a brilliant platform for our staff to be more agile and more efficient but probably doesn't match with us in terms of maturity.

For example, they offer this tagging capability, but they keep introducing new platforms without it. We've become heavily reliant on tagging, but in the case of NetApp, they introduced it into the environment, and now we're not able to get the showback off of that. 

If they introduce new capabilities, they have to have all the features and functions on that new capability. They're not very good at that. If they introduce new capabilities, all the feature sets on these new capabilities should be available immediately. From my perspective, that's where they need to improve.

We have been using Microsoft Azure for about a year.

Stability is very good.

Microsoft Azure is very scalable. Our data center staff are using the solution, and then the application teams are engaging the data center staff to use that solution. We've just had a few use cases in there, and now we're just gaining experience.

Like with any new technology, we're currently re-skilling staff. It's the way we're approaching it on a six to 12-month journey before we start to get to the product and the benefits.

Technical support is average.

The initial setup isn't straightforward. You need to bring in an experienced system integrator to help you with the knowledge transfer. That's the approach we took.

We brought in an experienced system integrator that helped us build the environment and did the knowledge transfer into our workforce. I think that's a requirement. We had a very positive experience with our system integrator. The setup, we call it the Azure landing zone, and it's the data center. To set up the foundational build was a three-month engagement.

The system integrator is the intermediary between Microsoft and us. That's the value proposition of a system integrator. The system integrator helps cut through some of that. Microsoft is a big organization, and it's sometimes very hard to get to the right resources with the right knowledge. The challenge with Microsoft is that they have multiple solutions, and it's up to you to pick the right solution path. That's very hard for most organizations to do.

It's a metered environment, and it's pay-as-you-go. That's the big challenge with a metered environment. The challenge is optimizing how you use that to reduce your meter costs. It's like your children have to be good at not leaving the lights on in their bedroom to save on the power bill. That's a cultural change. 

You have to change your consumption patterns, and that's hard to do. You can get a very big bill because your consumption patterns aren't very good. We're no different than any other organization that's gone to a public cloud. You get these surprise bills, and then you've got to figure out how to manage them down appropriately.

For us, the additional cost is connectivity to the Azure data center. They said that we had to set up an Equinix data center to get from our location here in Regina, Saskatchewan, to Toronto down East. Those are some big new communication charges that we didn't have before.

That adds a significant cost to that. Private internet connectivity to a cloud is a big expense. That can be a very big cost, especially for remote businesses that are co-located to cloud data centers.

Microsoft Azure was a strategic choice. We wanted to go with a multi-cloud model, but we felt like we didn't know enough about clouds. We just kind of thought Microsoft was one of our strategic partners and decided to go with them and learn before we took the multi-cloud approach.

The advice I would give potential users would be to focus on their cost management skills and metering skills. It's all about managing your consumption. You've got to understand your consumption patterns and then learn how to manage consumption patterns going forward.

It's a really good product. In terms of leading hyperscalers, they offer very competitive features, functions, and rates compared to AWS and Google. They continue to advance their technical capabilities as rapidly or more rapidly than the other two hyperscalers. So, I would rate Microsoft Azure very high.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Microsoft Azure a nine.

The existing infrastructure of our customers is on-prem. We will be migrating or moving from on-prem to Microsoft Azure cloud.

We don't have to spend money to purchase the hardware, set up a data center, get people to work on it, and maintain security. We don't have to spend any money on these things. It is ready to use, and resources are available for us. We just create an account on Azure and start using the services. 

The time to market is very fast. We just supply the resources, virtual machines, and databases, and our applications are up and running. This helps our customers and us to be more future-ready and cloud-ready.

Its scalability is valuable. Depending on our requirements, we can add as many virtual machines as we want. We are able to get high availability for services. Services are always available, and they have the maximum uptime. If there is any issue with one of the services, another service is always available. 

It is pay-as-you-go. You don't have to spend any money upfront. You use the service and pay after one month or a couple of hours of use.

For deploying multiple resources in a big number, such as in hundreds, we need a streamlined process and more user-friendly scrips. The scripts have to be more user-friendly, and they should also supply some standard templates to deploy multiple resources at a time. Currently, it is very easy to deploy a couple of resources, but if you want to deploy multiple resources, it becomes complex.

The material that they provide for integration with an existing on-prem data center is complex. They have to make them user-friendly. The scripts related to resource management need to be simplified.

I have been using this solution for one year. In our company, we have been using it for four to five years.

It has a very high uptime for services. They are able to provide as per Service Level Agreement (SLA). We are not seeing any downtime for our applications. Our users have not reported any issues. 

They have their internal redundancy for hardware and software. If there is an issue with any hardware, another hardware is ready to take the load.

It is very scalable. We can add as many virtual machines as we want. We have 400 to 500 people who are using this solution.

I have not worked with support. We work in a design team where we have a dedicated Microsoft account partner to provide support. That support is fine. If there is an issue with running virtual machines or there are any infrastructure issues, another team takes care of that. I've not got any complaints from them that their support is not working.

Previously, we had the regular on-prem solution with our own data center. We had to deploy physical servers, networks, databases, and everything else. We needed flexibility and scalability for our customers and applications, and that's why we moved to the cloud.

The initial setup was easy. 

It is operational expenditure (OPEX). There is no cost upfront. When you start using it, you have to pay the charges. Initially, the cost is less, but after you start using it more and more, the cost will go higher. It is a little bit costly, but that is okay because you get better resources. You also get better support in terms of how you create the resources. Documentation is available, and the SLAs are met. 

Companies are now starting to switch over to Azure, and before doing any kind of migration, they need to plan each and everything from scratch. They should have a Microsoft consultant or somebody from Microsoft so that they can plan well before using Azure. Otherwise, they will not be aware of where they are spending and how they can reduce the spending. They would also not know whether their security compliances are being met and whether their network is being fully utilized or having some issues. Proper planning has to be done before using Azure. 

I would rate Microsoft Azure an eight out of ten.

Within my company, there are roughly 150 employees using this solution. We need about 30-35 people for maintenance.

It's been pretty useful in terms of migration and disaster recovery strategy.

I have been working with Microsoft Azure for roughly four years.

This solution is quite stable. We haven't had any issues stability-wise.

Scalability is good. I would rate it high, scalability-wise.

Microsoft's technical support could be improved.

There are certain areas on the Level 1 to Level 2 support-side that are not exactly great. We have issues with our Linux operating system. I don't think we've had delays as such but I would say that's one area there might be some scope for improvement.

I personally used to work with AWS, but that was at another company.

The initial setup was fairly easy. Pretty much all the services are easy to deploy — not very complicated as such. 

The cost could definitely be lower.

You have to look out for the external storage costs — it can be a bit of a surprise. You have to do your budgeting. We didn't really anticipate that the storage expenses would be so much higher than anything else. That's something people have to budget and account for before they migrate to the cloud.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this soluting a rating of eight.

The primary use case of this solution is generally for infrastructure service, and also for VC-migrations and district modernization using the platform service. We're a consulting firm so we use this solution and also deploy it for our customers. I'm an architect/project manager and we are partners of Microsoft.

The main beneficial features the product provides are security, scalability, and elasticity.

The technical support could be improved. When we leave tickets, it can take some days before the issue is dealt with. 

I've been using this solution for four years. 

We haven't had any issues with stability in the last 12 months, prior to that there were some small problems. 

The scalability is good, most of our clients are enterprise size organizations. 

The initial setup is straightforward, the environment is mature with a lot of documentation. 

The price of the solution is okay although it depends on the region of the deployment.

A company should look at the suitability for their use case before choosing a solution. 

I rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

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. 

We use this solution for IaaS, SaaS, PaaS security, identity, and Kubernetes.

I like everything, overall.

It's a cloud platform so it's alive.

There are many different components such as SaaS, PaaS, and API, so every month they are releasing a few hundred new features.

It is constantly updating. There are weekly releases, sometimes daily releases, and there should be fewer that are consolidated into one.

I have been using Microsoft Azure for six years.

We are using the latest version.

The stability is very good.

It's a very scalable solution. It is not really the number of users we have, but rather, it is more a case of service PCs. We have 70,000 or more.

My experience with technical support has been good. They are very supportive.

It's as complex as it wants to be. There's nothing initial about it.

It's an OPEX model, you pay as you go, or you can reserve funds.

Pricing can always be better.

It's a good product and I recommend it to others.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We are vendors. We are neutral from the technologies. We provide solutions to our clients as well as implement the customer needs with the different technologies.

We have a multi-channel mobile app solution that we implement, and we have an API deployed on Azure cloud. We use API management in the Azure cloud.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the ease of use.

The Azure APIs is monetization. Its support, monetization for prepaid and postpaid are good features that we look for.

I would like to see this solution support integration.

We have been selling Microsoft Azure for a couple of years.

We are implementing the latest version.

Microsoft Azure is stable.

It's a scalable solution. We have approximately 1,000 users who are using this solution.

Technical support is awesome! It's very good.

We have installed many competitive products, such as Appigee and IBM, but Microsoft Azure is the easiest one to install.

While I was not a part of the deployment, I know it took them less than a week.

We have a team of 10 to 15 for the deployment, customization, and implementation of this solution.

For anyone who is interested in using this solution, I would recommend it.

I would rate Microsoft Azure a nine out of ten.

We are customers of Microsoft and I'm an IT architect.

The solution reduces work for our IT teams. They don't have to keep things up to date, and we can concentrate on our mission. The best feature for us is the help we get from Microsoft to migrate applications to the latest release and support efforts. It saves us a lot of time. 

The cost is a big issue, it can quickly go up if you don't control things. We've set up a system that shuts down machines regularly so we don't run up costs. Sometimes our development teams start up machines and forget to shut them down, and we see our costs go up quite rapidly with monthly surcharges. It would be helpful if Microsoft didn't change the control panels quite so often. It means we need to retrain personnel whenever things change and that seems to have an impact on our IT teams.

We've been using this solution for nearly four years. 

Stability is good and the solution is easy to maintain. 

Scalability is really awesome. We don't have to worry about it at all, we're really impressed. Everyone in the company uses Azure. 

Tech support is great. I find that we get answers quickly. It's just the first line of support that I criticize sometimes because it seems that whenever we open a ticket, they give us a run around with certain questions that basically we've answered. But as soon as we get into the next level of support, it's more advanced and questions are answered quite rapidly. Our tech guys know how to open a ticket and basically provide all the available information that they need. We sometimes have to get through that initial loop, and answer the same questions again and again, until they push us to another level of support.

Four years ago the initial setup was quite complex but lately I find it's becoming increasingly easier, and the set up rules for securities are a lot simpler. These are things that are improving all the time. 

Licensing is on an annual basis. 

If a company wants to concentrate more on their mission and less on supporting infrastructure, they should give Azure a go. I find that it saves us a lot of time.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.