Microsoft Azure Reviews

We are an SD-WAN vendor and we deal with a lot of networks. Microsoft Azure is one that I use regularly.

It's application migration. We run a network as a service from Azure. People are migrating to Azure, either it's MS SQL, SAP on Azure deployments or just running on Azure that we connect. 

The primary use case is to provide the SD-WAN to connect their remote offices and users to Azure and the data center.

Azure is pretty good and in fact, we have about 100 customers who are using Azure on our technology. These are some of the largest manufacturing companies in this region.

Azure is a good networking solution from a WAN perspective.

Features and functionality from a scale perspective, at least in the top three, are very compatible. These are AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

I would like to see all of the cloud providers be more compatible with each other. All of the big organizations, such as large manufacturing and banking and financials, use Azure, while other places will use Google Cloud to AWS. Compatability between these is important.

I have been associated with Microsoft Azure for the last three and a half years.

Azure scales like any other cloud.

As a partner, the technical support is pretty responsive.

We also use Digital Ocean, Google Cloud, AWS, and we are set up with multi-cloud.

I think Azure and AWS are similar in terms of pricing. Google Cloud is cheaper compared to either of these two. Google Cloud on the same sales chart. It is 30% to 40% cheaper than AWS or Azure. The Azure additional option is even cheaper than Google Cloud.

The initial setup was easy.

Pricing is comparable but from a cost perspective, this solution is the cheapest.

We use both Private Cloud and Public Cloud. For Banks it's generally through Private Cloud, otherwise, it's on a Public Cloud, as we deliver services as well on Azure.

This is a product that I can recommend to others.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

• Virtual machines, both Windows and Linux based
• Blob storage
• Azure file storage
• SQL server

This product has facilitated development, testing, rapid deployment, spot resource needs, with a remote off-site that compliments on-premises for the hybrid cloud.

The user interface is great if you like tablet, a.k.a., Windows type functionally. The PowerShell is robust. However, there is not much in between, although you can do a lot of customizing views, dashboards, and other things.

I like the extensiveness of the new VS classic interface. At times, I still find the AWS dashboards simpler and more streamlined. Nevertheless, Azure is more elegant.

I have used the product for several years.

I had no stability issues.

There were no issues, as long as your credit card can also scale.

I don't know about technical support, as I have not had to deal with them. But the various communities, forums, and resources are outstanding.

We have deployed, and continue to use:

• AWS EC2
• EBS
• S3 Glacier
• Route 53
• Lightsail
• Google
• Bluehost DPS
• An onsite mix of Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware

We are doing hybrid to address different needs.

Having used AWS, VMware, as well as Windows, there was a little bit of a learning curve, just as there was for others.

However, navigating the UI, shells, and figuring out what was where, without spending weeks in seminars, training, and watching videos, was actually pretty intuitive.

If you are not used to working with AWS or others, or if you have some tools, Azure is actually pretty extensible and getting easier to working from Windows and vice versa.

Do your homework, understand the type and sizes of resources, see if there are any extra fees, and find out what tools are needed.

Check what level of performance, availability, capacity and economic (PACE) budget, as well as the services that are needed.

Watch your costs and look for value versus the lowest cost.

We looked at AWS, Rackspace, Google, Microsoft, Bluehost, and VMware.

Don't be scared, be prepared; do your homework.

Look beyond lower cost and instead focus on value, enablement, ease of use, compatibility, resiliency, ability to scale with the stability of performance, capacity, and availability.

Look at the extensiveness of services versus a simple check box.

You also need to identify any concerns about the cloud, categorize them, and then discuss with others how to address them, or seek a workaround.

If you cannot find somebody to chat with, drop me a note.

• Resource manager
• API
• Cloud storage
• Virtual machine hosting

Our company plans to use Azure for training and for internal use. We use ADFS and the cloud storage mostly. We are also moving to host labs in Azure to offload demand from our datacenter, when additional hosting capacity is required without notice.

The system has some limitations on resource use, such as number of cores, max transactions, I/O, maximum number of VMs etc. These limits make some things very difficult, and could be improved. Also Azure is constantly undergoing changes, and the move to Azure API v2 offers a lot of improvement, but is still rather unfinished. Once it is complete it will be great, but in the meantime there is much room for improvement. Microsoft is constantly looking for ways to improve, so many of the improvements I can think of, they are already working on.

A little over one year

There were some issues with development and the resource limitations. We also ran into a problem with networking. Network changes over the API are synchronous, and only one change can occur at any given time, locking the subscriptions networking config until the last operation completed. This was resolved in the V2 API. Most of the problems we ran into with V1 are resolved and simplified in V2.

There have been few problems with stability. Only a couple times there were outages that only impacted our development environment. Notice of these service interruptions are generally given with plenty of time to prepare.

There are limits as to how much resources you can use in Azure (as with all cloud platforms). This can be a problem if you plan to host hundreds of virtual machines with an hours’ notice. They have a process that requires a customer to go through tech support, and request/justify the need for a resource increase. If you need more than 20 networks, you will need to open a new subscription, and move resources to that subscription. They simply will not budge on some limit increases, and will on others. Currently opening up a new subscription is the solution to the resource limit problem. Azure is not really intended to handle our level of churn (creation and deletion of hundreds of VMs per minute), but we have been able to work with them and work around the problems we ran into.

The level of customer service is generally very good. They are quick to respond and resolve the problem quickly. I have had a couple of issues where the technical support staff didn’t interpret the problem correctly and moved a severe issue down from a two hour response time to a 24 hour response time. I quickly responded and told them that it was impacting ongoing business, and they moved the ticket back up, and resolved it within the two hour timespan. All other interaction with customer service has been outstanding. After a co-worker posted on Twitter making a remark about the UI, we received a call from customer service. They setup a meeting with us to discuss what problems we ran into with the new UI, and they asked us for input on what their developers could do to improve our experience. They were taking a proactive approach to customer service, not waiting for a problem to come to them, but sought out those with problems and resolved them.

I would rate their support at 8/10. A ten being perfect support without ever running into a problem, one being at a very poor level of customer support. I consider a rating of 8 to be a high rating. I should also add that the only support I have received has been for free, this only includes sales related issues and limit increases. I don’t have experience with their paid technical support which I would expect to be much better. They will charge for support even if you are a paying customer, so a rating of 8/10 reflects the support fees as well.

In the past, we used our own solution. We have datacenters where we host our in house solutions. We didn’t completely switch to Azure, but did offload some things to free up hardware for other purposes. We also want to offload hosting to Azure in times of high demand.

The setup for us is quite complex because we need to integrate it into a custom solution. The setup includes development time and changes to our core systems. This is not an easy task, but it's not at the fault of Azure or any other cloud service provider. The API has a learning curve, but anyone familiar with cloud services, and the use of a remote API should have no problem learning and implementing their system.

We implemented our solution in house. Most Azure integration is done by me. Azure is simple enough that interfacing your system with Azure can be done by a single person.

As for time to ROI I am not sure, these details are determined by upper management. The main components for the return is the idea that we will not only be able to offer a new set of training material for Azure specific material as a new product, but we can also avoid purchasing expensive equipment to satisfy a short term need for hardware and resources. Long term needs are hosted in house on our equipment. Even with the high cost of Azure hosting, purchasing additional equipment for a temporary need can result in a large amount of unnecessary costs.

Our setup costs are the costs of development time to integrate our system with Azure. Because the project is ongoing, this is difficult to determine. The cost for subscriptions in development is about $150 a month. Our MSDN subscription includes a credit which takes care of this cost. In production we forward the costs of events to the customer who is hosting the event. I don’t get the exact details on the day to day operation costs for internal subscriptions.

We evaluated the Google Cloud and AWS. All have a varying range of features and paradigms. Some appear to be cheaper, but when you add up the costs and read the fine print, you find that this may not be the case. We do plan to offer services on other platforms as well, but that is a different project. I have done research on all platforms to make sure the core system is compatible with all others. Azure is so far my favourite. The support is great, and the pricing is easy to work out. Other options had a lot of fine print and stipulations. Also the API is very easy to use, with plenty of references on MSDN.

Overall, it is a great, solution but is a bit expensive, has some minor limitations, and working around these limits can be a challenge. I still gave Azure a high score because of the support, feature set, availability, and the tools and documentation provided for the API.

My advice is to be very clear on the costs associated with what you plan to do. Most people will ask how much it costs to host their infrastructure in Azure, but that question is different for each scenario. Microsoft has an Azure price calculator that you can use to estimate the costs for your planned architecture. I would also recommend doing extensive research on the limits imposed by Microsoft. There is a page that details these limits, but there are some things that are not visible to the users. I would also recommend researching the hidden layers of the storage platform known as storage stamps, and how it can impact the copy speed of storage blobs.

Microsoft Azure is essentially an IaaS solution, we use the DMs and everything in that.

Microsoft Azure is primarily an Infrastructure as a Service product.

We are satisfied with this solution.

We have not had any issues with the performance, or the stability.

It's more user-friendly than AWS.

I have only been using it for a month, so I'm still learning about the various options that are available. They have a lot of options, but I won't be able to comment unless I use it or explore it properly. Everything is fine, but I'm still learning.

The license price could be lower. If there is anything else, I will not know unless I explore.

I have just started working with Microsoft Azure. I have been working with it for one month. I got my trial subscription and started working with it.

Microsoft Azure is a stable solution.

Microsoft Azure is a scalable product.

I use it for my own personal use.

I contacted technical support a while ago. They were also helpful. I only had one question about the file quarantine and file locking options, and they were very helpful. They have a support team that responds fairly well.

For remote work, we have been using Microsoft Teams.

We are also using McAfee Proxy, as well as Box.

We are also using Amazon AWS. 

I've only recently begun working with AWS. I started but then stopped because I didn't like the user interface. 

AWS is used and preferred by a large number of customers, but I am more comfortable working on Azure rather than AWS. This is a personal preference.

The initial configuration is straightforward. We only need an email ID and we can sign up in a matter of minutes.

We can complete the installation on our own.

Pricing is determined by how much you can use and how much you want to use it.

It's not on a per-user basis; it's on a per subscription basis. It is dependent on how much you use. It has a metering system. If you use a service, you will have to pay for it. You do not have to pay if you do not use any of the services. That's how it works.

The licensing fees could be cheaper.

I would definitely recommend this solution to others who are considering using it.

I would rate Microsoft Azure a ten out of ten.

We use Microsoft Azure to store our data and build analytical tools on the platform. Our Trade Insight Dashboards allow users to explore trade and investment data for more than 150 countries. Users can discover the most traded products of each country, where they are sent to, where do opportunities lie, and which industry has the most potential. 

Our data is kept in a secure, reliable, scalable platform. Data is easily available to our consultants and customers from anywhere around the world. We no more have on-premise servers. Azure has helped our digitalisation process and was key to our latest success. 

The ability to scale up and down the azure services when needed. We could better manage our costs. 

We work mostly with the data services and the SQL database features. We like the optimisation recommendations we get such as creation of indexes etc. What I would like to see further is  some basic data profiling stats or charts representing data stored to be integrated in the SQL database services instead of using other services such as the Azure Data Catalog.

I have been using Microsoft Azure for approximately two years.

Microsoft Azure has been stable for us, we have not faced any issues.

We have found Microsoft Azure to be scalable. Our business has not been growing very fast on the solution but it has the capability of expanding.

We can keep track of how many people are downloading the applications and there are approximately 2,000 people using the solution.

We have been in touch with technical support several times. The assistance and support provided was very good. 4 to 5 stars on average. 

The initial setup is not complicated.

My advice to others before implementing this solution is to be well-documented in your needs and to have support from a solution provider. Additionally, be aware of exactly what support you might require before starting.

I rate Microsoft Azure a seven out of ten.

We use Azure for the Active Directory and integration with Exchange Online. Our customers need it to manage, connect, and administrate the permissions from Cloudbase. Here in Egypt, we are not using or connecting with the cloud-based application, but in the last two years, we have supplied the solution for our customers. In total, we have between 10 and 20 customers using Azure.

I've been working with Microsoft Azure for about two years.

It's a cloud-based application, so installation is straightforward and doesn't take much time.

The price of the Azure license could be cheaper.

I rate Azure nine out of 10. It's a perfect application, and I would recommend it to others.

Microsoft Azure can be used for everything, including development, hosting and storage. Since it offers active directory as relates to the cloud, it can be used for directory management and logins.

We work with Azure, which is okay, but very clunky and complex. It lacks fluidity and is not intuitive. This can be problematic and require one to work with external consultants. Things can depend on the client. Not everything can be known in advance and there may be a need to make changes to the interface. Changes which are made to the functionality are not always intuitive. As such, while the solution offers very good functionality, its intuitiveness, in respect of user experience and configuration, is not the best. I should note that these are minor issues and I do not work with Azure very much, there being only a couple environments in which we employ it. 

We see the same issue with Microsoft, which is not an intuitive platform. The ways in which the various components are placed seems to be illogical. There are different screens and end-configurations. In my familiary with Microsoft, a decision was reached to do things this way and there is no way to alter this. 

As such, the solution could definitely be more intuitive. 

The solution is reasonably stable.

The solution is completely scalable. 

I have encountered no issues with Microsoft tech support. 

The setup of everything is very quick, although the real issue revolves around the speed at which the changes get synchronized. While this may take 24 hours, there are occasionally issues which arise, such as problems with the DNS or general networking issues. This requires one to involve Microsoft tech support.

The technical team required for deployment and maintenance can vary. One of the clients with whom I work is an external provider who does all the configuration in Azure. Another has a back-end of Microsoft 365 and I manage this on my own.

Everything involves an annual commitment with a monthly charge.

The solution is also cloud-based.

At present, two of my clients are using the solution. 

I would not recommend the solution to someone who does not require it, instead referring the person to AWS. Like Microsoft Azure, AWS is also not sufficiently intuitive, although it is a more robust solution in my experience. 

I rate Microsoft Azure as a six out of ten. 

We primarily use it for infrastructure and for some of its containers. It's very similar to AWS.

We moved to it as part of the initiative for the country to start using Azure services.

The solution offers many of the same features and has similar functionality to AWS.

The performance is good.

It's easy to use.

We find that it's stable. 

The solution scales quite well.

The solution is less mature than AWS. That said, it is catching up quickly.

The solution could always be cheaper. That way, it would be less expensive than AWS.

I've been dealing with the solution since 2016. It's been about five years or so. I've had some time to work with it a bit. 

The stability is very good. It's a reliable solution. There are no bugs and glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We have found the scalability to be very good. If a company needs to expand, it can do so with ease. It's not a problem at all.

Technical support has been great. They are helpful and responsive. We are pleased with the level of attention we get if we need assistance. 

We have also used AWS. We use both of them right now and like them both. They are very similar tools. 

There isn't really an initial setup. it's on the cloud and subscription-based. 

The pricing is more or less the same as AWS. They are very competitive with each other. There isn't too much of a difference, price-wise. 

In our case, the solution doesn't have a license. It's subscription-only. However, you can buy your own license separately and install it on whatever system application you're using on Azure. This is the same in the case of AWS.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. It's a good solution with a lot of potential and we've been happy with its capabilities so far. 

Whether or not I would recommend it to other companies depends on the use case. If you have a specific use case for using the cloud in general, then likely it makes sense to go with Azure.