SQL Azure Valuable Features

AM
Owner at TEQ SOLV

The SQL connector effectively syncs data to our database. 

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Praveen Chaudhary - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Delivery Manager at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

It's easy to use and maintain. If we look at the development of the maintenance team, we are not directly responsible for any infrastructure issues. We have too many positive sides to that. No maintenance, easy to use, and we'll know the limits very well. So, users cannot come and say that these are the problems we are facing.

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Al Mcpherson - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Architect at Octopus

The most valuable features of SQL Azure are its reliability and quick scalability.

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Buyer's Guide
SQL Azure
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SQL Azure. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
SC
Development manager at Amdocs

Specifically for Azure SQL, I appreciate the detailed information available for different formats and the high data availability.

The data availability and speed are impressive, especially compared to legacy systems. The loading speeds are much faster on Azure SQL.

And for other Azure databases like Snowflake, the various features are helpful for development and testing. They allow us to create environments easily and with minimal cost, while maintaining high availability.

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DineshKumar27 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution architect at Rackspace

The most valuable part of the solution stems from its scalability and its functionalities, which support high availability and are directly available as an out-of-the-box tool for users, ensuring that it provides you with business continuity features. I like the product's direct out-of-the-box features, which you don't have to go out and configure separately. In the product, you need to place a tick mark so that the solution can automatically take care of the configuration part for you. The intelligence part is pretty much built into the tool. You just have to go and enable specific settings, which automatically make those features available to you.

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SB
Founder at Druansh

The best thing about the solution is that it is tightly integrated with Azure Functions and Azure App Service, making it easy to deploy to the cloud.

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AM
Global Data Architecture and Data Science Director at FH

What I like about SQL Azure is that it's similar to your on-premises SQL databases. It's not much different, so it's easy to start quickly on the solution if you know Microsoft SQL. I find its ease of use most valuable, and I also like that SQL Azure is also easily integrated with the Azure Cloud platform.

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Raed Gharzeddine - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical advisor and software architect at Technical advisor and software architect

Microsoft recently added a JSON feature. I use all the features in a normal relational database, and they're very helpful. I prefer using Microsoft SQL Server because I like the experience and the way Microsoft handles the query tuning and security. These are really good features for database experts.

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CS
Architect of Business Intelligence Solutions at Nestle

It's user-friendly. Compared to other solutions, it's based more on clicks, not on scripts. It's easy to manage.

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Ahmed-Ramy - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at TMentors

The management and the remote access in SQL Azure are seamless.

The solution is extremely scalable.

We've found the stability to be quite good.

It's the type of product that doesn't need much technical support assistance as it works seamlessly.

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Lakshman Nimmakayala - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Cloud Architect at UBS Financial

The most valuable aspects of this solution are the integration with the darknet stack especially Microsoft, table groups, supports major capability requirements, and SQL always-on feature.

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SehrishTahir - PeerSpot reviewer
Account Manager at Jaffer Business Systems

The most valuable feature of the solution is that our customers do not have to manage the solution. Partners manage and optimize the solutions for the customers. 

The solution is also better cost-wise because if we host on hardware, we will have to change the hardware after four or five years. Also, if there is an issue with the hardware, the responsibility falls on the IT department. Customers do not like these responsibilities. With SQL Azure, everything is safe and secure. The clients pay a subscription fee and have fewer responsibilities.

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Sunil Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Engineering at GlobalLogic

SQL Azure is good with transactional systems.

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HM
Enterprise End User Operations at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

In SQL we tend to do normal queries. The features we use quite a bit are the backup and monitoring and also the export and import tools for data. We use all of these on a daily basis.

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Hammad  Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy Manager at S2 Consulting Services

We have multiple applications running for our customers that we can integrate into Azure SQL.

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Paul Elson - PeerSpot reviewer
Applications Architect at Arthur Cox

The main advantage of it is that there is no infrastructure cost. We don't have to host it here. So, there is no infrastructure cost. 

The second advantage is elasticity. We can grow it or shrink it depending on the demand. We have no restraint on capacity.

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PC
Independent Consultant at Unaikui

The platform provides valuable scalability, stability, and robustness benefits.

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Zubair_Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at Veraqor

One of the most valuable aspects is its seamless integration with Azure Data Factory. Its value lies in the significant time savings as there's minimal competition or customization challenges. This smooth integration makes it easy for me to work with both seamlessly.

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Marco Cenzato - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Architect at Wolters Kluwer

The scalability and simple management of the infrastructure are the most valuable features. 

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Raghavaraju R - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at HCL Technologies

I have limited experience with the tool. It's hard to describe its best feature. 

It's pretty helpful from a technical standpoint.  It's also dominating other clouds, including AWS and Google. It's better at improving itself. 

The product is easy to set up.

It's stable and reliable. 

I find the product to be scalable. 

The solution is pretty affordable. 

Microsoft has a lot of useful security privileges. 

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PedroNavarro - PeerSpot reviewer
BI Development & Validation Manager at JT International SA

The solution is quire more stable than other tools.

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Mangesh Masaye - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at UPL

What I found most valuable in Azure SQL are the functions related to Active Directory and the database services. You can do everything in Azure SQL.

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RV
Vice President (Technology) at Shaligram Infotech LLP

The most valuable feature from the infra point of view is you don't have to keep any on-prem infrastructure, it is available all the time whenever you want to access it.

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AB
STI Data Leader at grupo gtd

The most useful feature of Azure SQL is the queries for manipulating the data, such as the tables and the storage processors.

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Marios Christodoulou - PeerSpot reviewer
DB and Systems Engineer at JCC Payment Systems Ltd

SQL Azure is reliable and scales well.

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SR
IT Manager at European University

The solution is quite straightforward to set up.

It can scale. 

The solution is stable and reliable. 

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Samuel Lambrecht - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Industry Consultant at Intelligent Operations Solutions

The most valuable aspect of SQL Azure is the SQL language itself. It's open and everybody can use it at my company. Also, we thought in the beginning that the response time would be inadequate, but it's actually decent. It's much better than expected. Then again, I'm not a programmer, but that's what I hear from our development team. 

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Naresh Reddy - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Solutions Architect at OORWIN LABS INC

Its performance is good. It has a lot of features. It has the backup feature, which is not there in Amazon RDS. In Azure SQL, there is an option to replicate and restore a database point to point, whereas we can't do that with Amazon RDS.

It is also simpler and more powerful than Amazon RDS. It also has analytics, and it automatically suggests a few things. It has an in-built indexing function.

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AF
Lead Technical Consultant and PM Manager with 11-50 employees

The solution suits well for our server requirements. It doesn't require an extensive system to run. So, it is a fast, limited, and affordable database serving our business purpose.

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MJ
Senior Database Administrator at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Cost savings are the most valuable. The DR/high availability is also valuable. The failover group with the built-in DR/high availability features is probably one of the easiest things.

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it_user261489 - PeerSpot reviewer
Program and Project Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
  • Azure SQL database
  • Office 365 mail server
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GB
IT Support Engineer - AZURE Administrator at Mindspring Computing

The reason we moved to the cloud was for the convenience of not having any physical hardware to maintain. As a technical person, this has reduced the amount of maintenance I need to do, allowing me to focus more on backups since the Azure infrastructure takes care of itself. Additionally, this is cost-effective for the organization since we are not spending much time on servicing infrastructure. Furthermore, it is convenient because we only pay for the time we use the solution, and are not billed for the time we are not using it.

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EI
Subject Matter Expert at Vision Software

The administration console in Azure, all in one is the most valuable feature. Monitoring the transactions in Azure and the elasticity when we need to grow the databases for our customers.

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RM
Senior Information Technology Manager at a aerospace/defense firm with 10,001+ employees

We primarily and generally use it only for DB purposes. When it comes to the Azure part, we can easily provision, scale up, and scale down the generator machine. This kind of flexibility is the USP of SQL Azure.

Its interface and ease of use are also valuable. It is very easy to use and integrate with multiple databases. If I need to pull in or import some data from my on-premises database, the ease with which you can connect and pull the data, not only from SQL Server but also from other flavors of MySQL or even Oracle, is very good. 

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AM
Global Data Architecture and Data Science Director at FH

It is good for scalability and high availability. It is also secure because of Microsoft's cloud investment.

It is easy to use because it is on the cloud. Creation or making it available through web services is super easy. Azure SQL can be quickly published as web services for APIs to connect with other applications. Because it is in Microsoft Cloud, you can easily integrate with Microsoft stack.

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SJ
Chief Technology Officer & Vice President, Delivery at a recruiting/HR firm with 1-10 employees

It is easily scalable, and it is faster than SQL Server. It is also less expensive than using SQL Server. It has the pay-as-you-go model, and the charges are based on the usage.

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RT
Head, Information Technology at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

The solution offers good plugin capabilities. We're a Microsoft customer, so it fits in with everything else we work with. 

The solution can scale. 

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Daniel_Marin - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Developer at Generate Impact

The most valuable feature of SQL Azure is centralized authentication because I'm using the domain, user name, and password, for Microsoft 365 account with multifactor authentication and the security has been working well.

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CE
Project Manager at a educational organization with 11-50 employees

We have come from hosting on-premise for customers, or they've done it themselves with SQL. We've now taken a cloud offering for the equivalent services of standard database management and the inbuilt backup and restore offerings. The scalability is probably the biggest feature that we are benefiting from by being in the cloud.

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SE
Cloud Solution Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Its cost benefit is most valuable because you are charged per data unit instead of licensing. You can easily migrate your on-premise SQL to the cloud with a managed instance. That's what it is designed to do. It is easy to take your on-premise or older SQL instance and move it to the cloud. It makes it easy to get off your on-premise SQL and start utilizing the cost benefit of the cloud.

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Marco Cenzato - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Architect at Wolters Kluwer

The most valuable feature of Azure Database is the read-scaleout one: in Premium and Business tiers, the logic single DB consists of 4 identical DBs, the main one (writable) and three read-only synchronized copies; in our application we can use the three read-only copies for almost all of the read-only query and this allows workload distribution and minimizes the concurrency in write operations.

They have good documentation. It's concentrated information. 

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PW
Manager of Architecture/Design with 51-200 employees
  • Cloud products reduce the cost of the production of software products
  • You do not have to buy the product at the up-front market cost
  • You pay for it as you use the product
  • You can develop a product on your own premises
  • Just give the key to the vendor, so that there are no separate deployment costs.
  • You save on travel and meals, as well as housing required for a development team required for deployment and implementation.
  • The distance between the client and development team is invisible.
  • You may arrange virtual-real trainings/demos based on the affordability of the client’s budget.
  • There is no requirement of special hardware, as costs and additional software are bared by the cloud platform. You can spend as you need based on what the client’s needs are and scale hardware and software up to the client’s needs.
  • Cost of the platform and the software upgrades are covered under the service contract.
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KS
Data Engineer at a consultancy with self employed

The hardware is all managed by Microsoft.

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ST
software engineer at a university with 11-50 employees

SQL Azure is efficient and very easy to use. The programming facility is very good and the solution is great at solving problems. 

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Alvaro Olivares - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Cloud Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The backup features are the most valuable.

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VK
Solution architect at ACS

The most valuable feature of SQL Azure is the user-friendly VMs.

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Rafael Veloso - PeerSpot reviewer
Analyst Cloud Support Consultant at SoftwareONE

The backup solution in Azure is great, the firewall settings in SQL are very easy to use and work very well. Additionally, the turning process is very good and has improved the SQL services and queries.

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ML
Business Analyst at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Emergency mode is quite useful.

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MA
Director of IT at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

The DR for this solution is Active/Active.

This solution offers high availability, and business continuity is in place.

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SR
IT Manager at European University

What I like the most is the processes and the easiness of deployments.

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JS
Solution Principal at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The solution is easily integrated into other SQL solutions. It's flexible in that sense.

The solution is a fairly mature product. It provides good stability.

The initial setup isn't too difficult.

There is very good documentation. It's unbelievable, the amount of documentation on offer through Microsoft's site.

The security features are quite good.

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RS
Team Lead, Enterprise Computing Platforms at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

We don't have to manage it much. It is managed by Microsoft, which makes it easy for us because there is no admin overhead for managing the servers. 

It is also easily scalable. During peak hours, it can scale higher.

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KG
Associate Manager at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees

I am delighted to use this solution.

The most valuable feature is the moment of data. It's infused data where we can pull the data and post it immediately.

Also, it can connect to different sources. It's a storage mechanism where you can consume the data and post it into the target systems.

The interface is awesome. It's ready and easy to use.

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PK
IT

The environment is user friendly and there is good flexibility for adding modules or features. 

The solution effectively handles storing and maintaining information in databases. 

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KV
Data Architect at ACPAS Loan Management Software

Azure Portal is most valuable.

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MF
Information Technology Manager at OrchidaSoft

The solution is very easy to use. It's quite user-friendly.

The product is quite stable. The performance is great and it's reliable.

It's very good as an on-premises deployment.

We've found the solution to be scalable and easy to expand.

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MT
IT Manager at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

We like the ease of integrating it with our on-premises environment. We use a hybrid model. We have a SQL Server on-premises, and we have an integration with the cloud version. We do CPU or disk intensive processes on-premises. For accessibility, we offload onto the cloud. When you do a lot of IO and things like that in the cloud, Microsoft charges for the CPU activity.

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NN
Development Manager at Incepta

I like the reliability of SQL Server and the solution has become easier to use over time, and I believe it will become more popular in the future. It's also reasonably priced. As a competitor, Oracle may have 10% of the features that SQL Server cannot offer but those features are for high-end database and high-end applications. Most clients don't need those extras and shouldn't have to pay for high-end features like the redundancy.

SQL has become more versatile because of features they continue to add. Every new version has new features and it pretty much covers everything in terms of memory, database, the caching, the redundancy, and high availability. I would say MS SQL server fully meets the requirement of 95% of my clients out there.

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MS
Owner at Alopex ONE UG

This solution has all of the advantages that are available in a normal SQL server, except it is presented in an online environment that can be used from everywhere. It provides fast access to data because the SQL server can calculate where the data is. It is a complexity of order one. So, it does not depend on the size of the table. This is why SQL servers are the favorite data source for any website.

This solution provides more comfort to the end-user compared to a normal SQL server.

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CA
Master of Information Technology at a individual & family service with 201-500 employees

The features I like most is that it offers a lot of securitt verification and backup from our side as well as from within SQL Azure.

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it_user660030 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Management Architect at a healthcare company with 201-500 employees

There is significant abstraction from beginner to intermediate database administration responsibilities. In this way, I can focus on my business objectives, as opposed to heavy upfront cost of ownership when compared to on-premises or IaaS alternatives.

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it_user402807 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
  • Availability and scalability
  • Ability to understand the application and not necessarily the structure of your database
  • Natural replication of the SaaS service provides efficient availability
  • You can choose the geographical replication: Simply open a map and tag the new location of a replication
  • Scale tab: You can change the plan of the service in terms of DTUs, point of restore, and auditing
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Akin Ayodele - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Because the solution is cloud-based it's highly manageable, it makes maintenance of logs, space, storage, and backups much easier compared to a traditional SQL server installation.

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AV
Practice Lead at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The main valuable feature is the auto scaling. In addition, the security features they've implemented on cloud make it a little easier compared to on-prem SQL, they're great. It enables added scalability, and costing can be tweaked and made more reliable, flexible and cost effective.

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CO
Founder at a tech services company with self employed

The ease of provisioning and administration is most valuable.

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SP
General Manager/MVP at Yotta Infrastructure Solutions LLP

We use it for a few databases that are deployed for our own purposes. 

SQL is a simpler database. We use it more than other databases. 

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FT
IT Manager at SIMOPARMA PACKAGING ITALIA SRL

We like the collaborative nature of the solution. It's the most valuable aspect of the solution.

The stability of the solution is very good.

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it_user158343 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Architect at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
  • Memory-optimized tables
  • Elastic scale
  • Azure portal management tools
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SM
Sr. Technical Architect - Business Intelligence / Data Warehouse at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The most valuable feature is PolyBase.

The product is very user-friendly.

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NK
Senior IT Manager at Excelra

Its easy usage is the most valuable. 

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SZ
Data Platform Architect at APN Promise

What is really helpful about the Azure SQL is that when we have a problem with a query, we can trade information about what indexes we should create on tables. It's really helpful for admin and for developers.

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it_user131562 - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at AFF Group
  • It works perfectly in the cloud.
  • It made our back-end service scalable.
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KH
Program Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The solution is a stable product. It has a lot of out-of-the-box services. It provides a lot of services that we would typically have to provision on-premise. 

It's easy to use in terms of their portal, which is very nicely organized.

It's a good platform all in all.

The solution has proven to be quite scalable.

We've found the solution to be stable. 

Technical support from Microsoft is very good.

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RJ
Technical Account Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The flexibility with regards to licensing is the most valuable aspect of the solution. 

Customers can benefit from a lot of cost savings if they go for Azure.

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BB
Lead Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

This has become a very global solution. The big advantage is the UI which has been simplified. The coding doesn't require much effort so it's valuable in that sense. They have invested a lot in security and compliance so it's also a good product in that area.

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AA
DevOps Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Azure DevOps is the feature that is the most valuable aspect of the solution for us.

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SC
Data Center Operations Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

SQL Azure can integrate well with other Microsoft Windows services.

The interface for maintaining the solution is very easy to use in the portal.

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AU
Consultor Senior at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I started with Azure SQL because it's a cheaper solution. It's a good cloud solution, very easy to use on any platform and works well. Technically it's very good. 

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PL
Chief Operating Officer at humancloud

Their technical support is the most valuable.

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CL
Data Analyst at a tech company with 51-200 employees

It is very fast in replicating the data from one database to another. We do some extractions from multiple databases to a target database that we use for visualization. It has a good speed.

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Buyer's Guide
SQL Azure
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SQL Azure. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.