Exec Manager IT Security & Risk at a non-tech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Has good stability and an easy setup
Pros and Cons
  • "The stability is good. We haven't had any issues with the viability or scalability. It's been good so far."
  • "As opposed to AWS, Azure is a costly solution. It's on par with AWS more than anything else."

What is our primary use case?

Our use case is for accessing central records and updating the backend system.

What needs improvement?

When you compare AWS to Azure adding on all the security components you require to protect your application and data AWS is by far the cheaper alternative, like the cost of Defender and ATPm, MCAS, ADFS, etc.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. We haven't had any issues with the viability or scalability. It's been good so far.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. We have a business unit that specializes in this and they set it up from scratch.

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May 2024
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What other advice do I have?

My only comment would be to look at your use case and just weigh up both AWS and Azure to see which one best suits your use case and your budget. If you go with Microsoft Azure and you use all the security tools and everything that Azure offers, it will be an expensive proposition. Whereas AWS gives you all the security tools but it's less expensive. They both offer a similar service. It's just the cost differential.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. Not a perfect ten because of the price. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
CyberSecurity Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Stable with a straightforward setup and fair pricing
Pros and Cons
  • "The setup is very straightforward and it's quite stable."
  • "The solution could use more training materials to help users understand how to use the product effectively. Online training would also be a beneficial addition to the product."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for everything from VM storage to networking to app services.

What is most valuable?

We use almost every aspect of the solution. Overall, it's quite a valuable product for our organization.

The setup is very straightforward and it's quite stable.

What needs improvement?

I can't think of any area in which the solution is currently lacking.

The solution could use more training materials to help users understand how to use the product effectively. Online training would also be a beneficial addition to the product.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for about five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is quite stable. We've never faced any issues so far.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability potential of the solution is very good.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support has been good so far. We have been satisfied with the level of service they've provided to us. They've always answered our questions, and, depending on the severity of the issue, they've been able to resolve things quite quickly.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We didn't previously use a different solution.

How was the initial setup?

We've found the initial setup to be quite straightforward and simple to execute.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing of the solution is quite fair. It's not too expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I'd advise those who don't want to spend money on hardware to try the solution out. I'd recommend it to others.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten overall.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
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Azure Stack
May 2024
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Director, Managed Services at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Includes a valuable Azure Active Directory feature
Pros and Cons
  • "Azure Active Directory is the most valuable feature."
  • "The technical support team's response time needs improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution to include Deployments of VM security, Sentinel Storage, and VPN tunnels.

What is most valuable?

Azure Active Directory is the most valuable feature. 

What needs improvement?

The technical support team's response time needs improvement. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Azure Stack for ten plus years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is an eight out of ten. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is reasonable. 

What other advice do I have?

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

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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PeerSpot user
Lead solution architect at a recreational facilities/services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
User friendly, not code intensive, and secure
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution is easy to use, especially for individuals who are not familiar with coding and has security built-in."
  • "The user interface could be more user friendly."

What is our primary use case?

Last year I used the solution to develop phone applications. We did some work with AAD which is the Azure Active Directory. We used the solution to its full potential.

What is most valuable?

The solution is easy to use, especially for individuals who are not familiar with coding and has security built-in.

What needs improvement?

The user interface could be more user friendly.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for more than six years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have a team of five that use the solution in our organization and they do all the development for us.

How are customer service and technical support?

The support for the solution is very helpful. They are responsive and return with resolutions quickly.

How was the initial setup?

The installation is easy, there are only a few clicks.

What about the implementation team?

I did the installation myself.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend the solution to others.

I rate Azure Stack a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Managing Partner at Data Beyond
Real User
Intuitive and user-friendly dashboarding and management reporting features
Pros and Cons
  • "The best thing about this product is that it is user-friendly and intuitive."
  • "The setup for Azure becomes more complex when you have multiple users and multiple organizations using the same solution, but this is to be expected."

What is our primary use case?

We use Azure primarily for sales management. Specifically, we use it to help us manage the delivery of digital solutions that we provide to clients.  

We also use it for our own internal accounting, tracking our CRM document management, and we have developed different tailor-made solutions through which we provide additional services to our clients.  

How has it helped my organization?

It allows us to creatively integrate solutions easily.  

What is most valuable?

The best thing about this product is that it is user-friendly and intuitive. That is true, especially for dashboarding and management reporting. The low code development tooling that they provide allows us to do rapid development. They also have some interesting features for self-learning, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.  

It is a complete stack that helps us to easily link various components together so that the whole component-based development connects to other open-source components. This helps make the rapid development of general solutions possible.  

What needs improvement?

As far as what we would like to see added, there are no burning issues right now. If we are looking for certain areas of improvement and we want to have specific features or functions, the flexibility of the environment allows us to easily add the functionality we want.  

There are always things that you have to find out for yourself. That creates complexity. Could Microsoft make the product easier to use? Probably by adding more scenarios, but Microsoft already has guidelines on when to use what feature. In the area of training, Microsoft already offers a lot of opportunities to further your skills with its products. These resources make it possible to get started quickly. The product is never going to do your learning for you in that way.  

I do not have any recommendations as to how the product should be enhanced as some of that is the user's responsibility and opportunity.  

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Azure for one and a half years now. That was half a year after we originally embarked on using the Microsoft suite.  

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This product is stable. I would say 'yes' to that twice over.  

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

So far we have not found any problems with scalability. Azure Stack was easily extendable. We started with a small cloud environment, we had to extend it over time and it grows as we do.  

Our client base is growing rapidly. We are now above a hundred clients and on average there are two to three users per client.  

How are customer service and technical support?

I have not been in touch with technical support myself but other people in our organization have. More or less, I think they were satisfied with the tech support services.  

For most users, the support experience depends on the subscription you have and on experience. We have some experience with Microsoft Stack people within our network. That makes a big difference. Because of that we hardly ever really need to use technical support services.  

How was the initial setup?

The setup for Azure becomes more complex when you have multiple users. When you have multiple organizations, with multiple users working or using the same solution, data storage needs to be very well separated because of privacy. That is a piece of complexity that is embedded in the way we provide our services. There is no link to Microsoft or any software provider service. We defined how to make it work that way.  

What other advice do I have?

Given the current direction and strategy of Microsoft, I think Azure Stack is one of the most comprehensive solution platforms available today.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as an eight of ten. In my case, there really is very little Microsoft can do to make the score better. I could really never give a software product a perfect score. There is always something that can be improved. If you work in a flexible, dynamic environment, you have to make choices in terms of how to design things. You have to decide which additional components to use or incorporate, or to not use what are considered standard features that most other people use. Users' choices will be different depending on their needs, application, and adaptation.  

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
‎VP Product Management at Telkomtelstra
User
The cost of Azure Stack is much cheaper than VCE
Pros and Cons
    • "Azure Stack is relatively new and lacks the features compared to public Azure."
    • "It should provide more core on the VM and support multi-scale units."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are a managed cloud service provider and provide Azure hybrid cloud services. We operate Azure Stack on our data center and resell Azure publicly.

    How has it helped my organization?

    Beside providing to our customers, we use Azure Stack for internal use as well. We are gradually migrating our internal application from VCE to Azure Stack because the cost of Azure Stack is much cheaper than VCE.

    What is most valuable?

    • The PaaS that we use as our web service.
    • IaaS (VMs)
    • SQL service
    • Development
    • Media service
    • Firewall

      What needs improvement?

      Azure Stack is relatively new and lacks the features compared to public Azure. Hopefully, it will provide more core on the VM and support multi-scale units.

      For how long have I used the solution?

      Less than one year.
      Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are a cloud service provider and provide Azure hybrid cloud services on our data center.
      PeerSpot user
      Systems Engineer at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
      Real User
      Easy to deploy services and has good online support
      Pros and Cons
      • "The most valuable feature is the ease of deployment for services such as SSH, creating a web site, and Azure billing services to measure the consumption of resources."
      • "I would like to see better support for containers."

      What is our primary use case?

      We are using the Microsoft Azure Stack Development Kit (ASDK) in an evaluation environment issued by Microsoft, and not in a production environment. It is deployed within a VM on top of the Azure public cloud.

      The goal of our evaluation is to see if it is sufficient to support becoming a cloud provider for companies in our local market.

      What is most valuable?

      The most valuable feature is the ease of deployment for services such as SSH, creating a web site, and Azure billing services to measure the consumption of resources.

      What needs improvement?

      I would like to see better support for containers.

      Containers and the IoT hub that exists in Azure Stack should be usable on-premises.

      For how long have I used the solution?

      I am currently evaluating Azure Stack and have been testing it for one week.

      What do I think about the stability of the solution?

      I cannot really tell what the stability is like because I am only using the Azure Stack in an evaluation environment. I have just now put it under a heavy workload to test whether it is stable enough for our production environment.

      What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

      I am the only person who is using this solution in my company, as I test the features that I think we will need.

      How are customer service and technical support?

      I have not used technical support for this solution. However, I have found with other Microsoft products, their support is very helpful and was able to solve my problems.

      Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

      Azure Stack is the first solution of this type that I am testing.

      How was the initial setup?

      The initial setup started in a straightforward manner, but I faced some issues during the deployment. I was able to solve these problems with the information that I found on the Microsoft website when I searched for the errors using Google. Once I followed the steps the solution seems to be fine.

      What about the implementation team?

      I deployed this solution on my own, using the Microsft website as a reference.

      Which other solutions did I evaluate?

      I plan to test VMware vRealize, but I have not done it yet.

      What other advice do I have?

      I think that this is a good tool for cloud operating systems.

      I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

      Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

      Public Cloud

      If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

      Microsoft Azure
      Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
      PeerSpot user
      it_user883662 - PeerSpot reviewer
      Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
      Real User
      It is stable and effective and large companies will definitely benefit from it
      Pros and Cons
      • "The initial setup is very, very simple."
      • "I think the monitoring tools needs some improvement."

      What is our primary use case?

      Our primary use case of Azure Stack is for a customer that's an ISP. They supply services to their clients where they offer the Azure Stack capability.

      What is most valuable?

      The most valuable thing of Azure Stack is the means of giving my customers or my clients the capability of using Microsoft products on a public or a private cloud, but not in the Microsoft public cloud. So it is an on-premise private cloud, but it's like being on the public cloud.

      I like the ease of making use of Microsoft products, and instead of being directly connected to Microsoft using My Clients, keeping them the same kinds of values.

      What needs improvement?

      Pricing is always a hot topic, so the pricing can always improve. And I'm not too sure if the Microsoft technical capabilities are very good because I don't make use of it. So, for me personally, pricing would probably be the only factor that needs to improve.

      I also think the monitoring tools needs some improvement.

      What do I think about the stability of the solution?

      The program is very stable.

      What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

      I think the scalability is pretty good because from an IP point of view we can scale this solution to become very massive. You can start with the full node and go to 60 or 80 nodes very easily. So the scalability is very good.

      How was the initial setup?

      The initial setup is very, very simple because it comes fully integrated from HP with Microsoft integration. That makes the setup very straightforward.

      What other advice do I have?

      I will definitely recommended this solution to others, especially for large companies, because I think it's a wonderful solution. It will also work great for people that has multiple companies inside the group. One should use Azure Stack as an on-premise private cloud solution because it is a very effective solution.

      On a scale of one to ten, this solution earns a good eight. In the next version I would like to see an improvement in the monitoring tools.

      Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
      PeerSpot user
      Buyer's Guide
      Download our free Azure Stack Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
      Updated: May 2024
      Buyer's Guide
      Download our free Azure Stack Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.