I've worked with clients who have multiple multifunction solutions, where some solutions use some technologies, and some use some.

We did a survey for seeing what technologies were in the market. We ended up with Microsoft because of the general business requirements. Also, we could add the components to the solution for product management. We could add document management, for example, and many other alternatives that covered various business requirements. We ended up with this solution because of the ability to utilize the components. We also had the flexibility of using other plug-ins that helped with the commercial aspects of the business.

We are a Microsoft shop. The biggest thing that we probably looked at was AWS. We also looked at some of the Oracle cloud solutions, but we went with Azure only because it just integrates with all of our stuff, and it cuts our costs.

I have done some studies of SalesForce AWS among others .

We evaluated the SQL Server in addition to this solution, but we ultimately chose Azure mainly to have everything on one platform.

We considered local cloud and physical install options. These options were expensive and less effective.

This solution is more expensive than some others, but not as expensive as Amazon, Google and Oracle, which all have a lot of extra costs involved. 

I didn't really evaluate Amazon or Google. I just read up on them as Microsoft competitors. 

As we are planning to move to the cloud, we are looking at other options, including PostgreSQL or Microsoft SQL Server. It's my understanding that there is not a big difference between Microsoft SQL on Cloud and the Microsoft SQL Server. We still have lots of experience on Microsoft's SQL Server, and likely our company is still prepared to use Microsoft SQL on Azure, not PostgreSQL. On the other hand, a lot of ERPs nowadays on the market using PostgreSQL. So our developers in the company have experience with this product, PostgreSQL.

Alternatives tended to be IaaS offerings hammered or butchered to be PaaS. So, frankly, the answer is that I don't know of other PaaS alternatives.

We did not evaluate any other options.

We considered Postgres in AWS as well as AWS Redshift and AWS Athena.

I did not evaluate anything else. I started using SQL Azure through teaching some MOC courses that included it, in early 2013. I had the chance to get to really know the product and the service.