Azure Stack Reviews

We have a product that helps with billing on Azure Stack. Our solution makes it easier for users to manage internal chargebacks or for resellers to provide a billing system for Azure Stack.

We have our own tool that supports Azure Stack as a platform. We've been supporting it for almost four years now. We are an ISP partner for Microsoft.

Our solution is industry-agnostic, as Azure Stack itself has broad applicability.

Our billing support is helping a lot of customers. We've been able to consolidate billing onto a single platform, our Cloud platform. This is supporting many clients, as Azure doesn't have a native billing component. We provide that, and we can handle billing for both Azure Stack and Azure within a single platform. That's our product.

For example, if a reseller has deployed Azure Stack for a customer, we provide the billing functionality. Our tool can manage billing for both Azure Stack and Azure through a single platform. We're actually multi-cloud; our consolidated platform supports AWS, Azure, Azure Stack, GCP, OCI, and more – all the billing can be done through one interface.

We're quite unique. We haven't seen any competitors offering what we do right now – multi-cloud billing with extensive on-premises support. We're in the process of adding VMware as well. With this, we become a truly complete billing platform, also offering optimizations and other features both on-premises and in the cloud. That's what we do, and why we work with multiple clouds.

For hybrid cloud operations, the seamless transition it enables is key. Most enterprises have a lot of workloads on-premises, and they want a smooth way to move into the cloud. 

Some things are on-prem, and some things are on the cloud.  Azure Stack bridges that gap with solutions that work well for their existing on-premises infrastructure.

I like that it's hyper-converged, so you can have everything in one compact solution. That's the major advantage.

The integration capabilities of Azure Stack works well. In our experience, integrations are easy and function reliably.

It is not easy to set up. Technical expertise is required.

We have been using it for four years. 

Our experience has been positive. So, it offers good stability. 

It is a scalable solution. I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. 

We have mostly enterprise businesses as our clients. 

The quality of support depends on the level you're paying for. For enterprise customers with high support tiers, it's usually not a problem.

It's not the easiest to set up, but with technical expertise, it's possible. The deployment take several days. 

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a seven out of ten, with ten being easy.

Technical expertise is required. It's a complete solution, so you need a dedicated hardware stack. It's not a simple task, but once it's done, the ongoing costs are generally lower than a purely cloud-based solution.

It's very cost-effective because other clouds are often more expensive. If you can use a consolidated solution including Azure Stack, it becomes both cost-effective and user-friendly.

I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive. It's one of the more affordable solutions on the market, but Azure pricing has a lot of factors.

Azure Stack isn't a single product. The cost depends on the specific solution you build. So, it has been cost-effective for us. 

Plan carefully. It's best for scenarios where you need to keep data on-premises or have an easy path to the cloud. You need to do thorough planning initially to create the right solution and architecture. My recommendation is to have a good architect design the solution before you purchase to avoid issues.

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

We use Microsoft 365 for email, PowerPoint, Word, and Dynamics 365 for financial needs.

I appreciate that all the tools are available natively within Azure. It's all set up nicely. It's all minor.

There is room for improvement in terms of security. The security tooling could be better. It could be easy to drive. The alerts could be a lot quicker in delivery because it's coming out of Azure Stack, it's coming out of their tools. It it could could be a lot better.  It could could be a lot more straightforward. Okay.

Additionally, having clear pricing in the marketplace would be beneficial. In this marketplace, everything comes with a price tag. If something isn't initially priced, you can try it for free, but we'll let you know the cost after the trial period.  

I have been using this solution for a couple of years. I worked with it in my previous position and now in my current one.

So, it has been around five years. 

It is a stable solution.

For our use cases, the solution is scalable. There are around 300 end users in our company. We mostly work with medium-sized businesses. 

We don't have direct technical support with them; we go through our partners.

The initial setup is easy. It is in the clear. We have a multi-tenant environment. 

I can set it up in a few hours, but configuring everything may take a few days.

We have a service provider that handles the deployment and maintenance of the solution for us. Our experience with the provider was good.

Maintenance is easy and fairly straightforward, mainly point-and-click.

The licensing costs are expensive. I pay on a monthly basis. We pay through our managed partner. So, it's bundled with other services provided by our partner.

In the past, I used AWS. Personally, I prefer Azure Stack because it offers scalability across availability zones, elastic computing, and a robust marketplace with options for bringing your own license. It's user-friendly and has readily available scripts and patterns. Everything is there for me.

I would advise you to clearly define your objectives and what you want to get out of it. It may not be the silver bullet that you might be looking for, as it requires shared responsibility.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. If you look at the documentation set, there are rims and rims of it. You try to drive something from the console, and it's quite complex. It's not it's not easy and straightforward. You've gotta sit down and review it, look at the documentation, and work your way through it. It's not intuitive.

We use the solution to run our ERP software and mail servers.

The product has impacted our edge computing needs in a good way.

The best thing about the product is that it is very complex. Microsoft has a solution for everything we need. We just need to use it. The tool has simplified our application development. Integrating and managing on-premises resources using Azure Stack is easier than other platforms like Canonical and OpenShift. The solution is more mature than its competitors.

Some tools do not run without the internet. If we have connectivity problems or need to install an application without the internet, we cannot do it.

I have been using the solution for four to five years.

The tool is very stable.

The tool is very scalable. We have around 50 users in our organization.

The tool is very simple to deploy. The deployment takes two to three hours. It is easy to maintain the product. We need a team of two to three persons with expertise in networking, storage and server setup, virtualization, and Kubernetes.

The pricing model is consumption-based. We pay as we go. Our overall cost is lower. Some things in the pricing model are a bit confusing. The vendor has two pricing systems. One is for Azure Stack, which is on the cloud. We also install and use it on-premises. The difference in price for the two is not very clear most of the time in the documentation. The tool is affordable.

Overall, Azure is better than Canonical and OpenShift. The overall portfolio is better. Canonical and OpenShift have limited product lines. I also need to use third-party products along with them. With Azure, everything can be installed from the dashboard, and Microsoft has a very rich product portfolio.

We are using Microsoft products. We also bundle it with some of the solutions we provide to our customers. We don't need compliance at this moment. Azure Stack is not very popular in the HCI industry. We have used VMware and Nutanix. Compared to them, Azure Stack is a better solution. When it comes to Kubernetes, Microsoft is a leader in Gartner. It is very mature. Overall, I rate the products a nine out of ten.

My company uses Azure Stack to host the records management software.

The most valuable features of the solution are scalability, ease of use, and its ongoing maintenance process that takes away a lot of trouble when one has to do an on-premises installation.

I feel that Azure Stack has so many different variables which are not very clear. Unless you have a great deal of knowledge or a really good integrator, you may encounter a few surprises when you begin with the implementation phase of Azure Stack. In general, the initial setup phase of Azure Stack is an area with concern that needs improvement. The initial setup affected me the most from the point of view of the cost structures related to Azure Stack.

I can't comment if I would like to see any additional functionalities added to the solution since I currently don't use even 10 percent of its capabilities.

I have been using Azure Stack for six months. My company just uses the product internally.

The product has remained stable so far in our company.

It is a scalable solution.

There are around 30 users of the product in our company, and I get it to the needs of approximately 250 clients of our company who use the solution.

My company does not necessarily plan to increase the use of the solution in the near future. The usage of the solution will organically grow if required.

I have faced no issues with the technical support provided by Microsoft. I haven't had direct contact with Microsoft since it is the vendor from Microsoft that provides me with good technical support. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I currently use Fortinet FortiGate.

I haven't previously worked with products similar to Azure Stack since every product in our company was deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution was initially deployed on an on-premises model, and currently, my company is shifting the product to the cloud.

The solution's implementation phase took place over a span of approximately two and a half months.

People from Azure managed the deployment of the solution in our company from their end, so I don't know the efforts people put in to deploy the solution.

I have a consultant who takes care of the deployment, configuration, and migration part of the solution. I haven't faced any issues with the solution's deployment, configuration, and migration phases since I got help from a third-party integrator, who was very helpful.

I have not seen any return on investment from the use of the solution in my company.

Azure Stack's price falls on the higher side of the spectrum. The licensing costs for Azure Stack in our region range somewhere between 40,000 to 50,000 USD. Though my company makes monthly payments towards the licensing costs of Azure Stack, I have plans to purchase a three-year plan in the future. The licensing costs for Azure Stack include the cost of the additional facilities it provides, like maintenance and support.

I am satisfied with the overall product.

I recommend those who plan to use the product in the future to do their homework and learn everything about it before purchasing it.

I rate the overall product a seven out of ten.

We primarily utilize Azure Stack for hybrid cloud deployments, mainly for scaling up compute resources quickly when needed. This involves spinning up instances on the public cloud, specifically Azure, to manage workloads distributed across on-premises and the public cloud. Additionally, we employ Azure Stack for certain floor-based or edge computing solutions, particularly in locations such as factories, to store, maintain, and support specific operations.

Azure Stack serves a crucial role in our hybrid cloud strategy because we can't place all our data in the public cloud for various reasons. One key use case for Azure Stack is data localization, especially in countries like Australia and Denmark where strict data regulations are in place. For applications and data that cannot leave the country, we rely on Azure Stack to maintain and manage them locally. Meanwhile, for other workloads, we leverage the public cloud, predominantly Azure, to meet our requirements.

One of the features I really appreciate is the Hybrid Cloud Extension UI. It simplifies the management of workloads across on-premises, public cloud, and edge locations through a single interface. This functionality streamlines the management process for me. Another aspect I find valuable is the consistency Azure Stack offers. It provides a uniform experience, from service names to user interface, whether I'm working in the cloud, on-premises, or at the edge. This consistency is crucial in managing various deployment scenarios. Lastly, Azure Stack's ability to function in isolated or remote areas, such as factory and plant locations with limited network connectivity, is highly valuable. This synced operation capability ensures smooth operations even in challenging environments.

One aspect that I consider a drawback is the cost associated with Azure Stack, as its deployment expenses tend to be on the higher side compared to other solutions. Another significant challenge is integration, especially with third-party products. While Azure Stack seamlessly integrates with Microsoft's own tools and platforms, there is room for improvement in its compatibility with third-party solutions. Lastly, although updating and patching Azure Stack is more straightforward than in older Windows versions, there is still room for enhancement in the upgrade and patch management process.

I have been using the solution for more than 18 months.

It is definitely stable and I would rate it nine or eight out of ten.

It's a bit complex to scale and I would rate it a seven out of ten.

The customer service is good. 

Positive

The reason we lean towards Azure Stack over competitors is that it offers strong integration with the public cloud, specifically Azure. Many of our clients use Microsoft 365, and this leads to a significant presence of Azure workloads. Additionally, a substantial portion of our servers run on Windows. These factors make Azure Stack a favorable choice for us. When comparing it to Nutanix, Azure Stack stands out in terms of its integration with the public cloud and, in some cases, cost-effectiveness.

The initial setup is moderate, not extremely simple but not very complex. It is hybrid but depends on the requirements of the client. The percentage of workloads on Azure Stack varies across our customers, ranging from ten percent to sixty percent. We opt for Azure Stack as a hybrid solution when a customer has some workloads on the public cloud. Typically, we set up Azure Stack in an on-premises data center and migrate workloads from existing environments, such as VMware or Hyper-V, to Azure Stack. 

However, if the workloads are primarily for the public cloud, we migrate them directly to the public cloud. The choice between Azure Stack and public cloud migration depends on various factors, including connectivity, compliance, costs, and other specific requirements. In essence, our Azure Stack environments are hybrid, with around thirty to forty percent of workloads residing on-premises and the remaining fifty to sixty percent in the public cloud.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

The pricing falls in the middle. It serves as a mediator between being expensive and being affordable, but it's not exactly cheap either. I would rate it a six out of ten.

I would overall rate it an eight out of ten. 

We have a client using Azure Exchange for their organization, including emails and Outlook. This is the most recent use case. 

And another client has a lot of cloud migrations at the moment. Some are from the Azure Stack to the Oracle Cloud, and others from the Alibaba Cloud to the Azure Stack. There are different projects ongoing at the moment, which are mostly targeted over the migration of the cloud to and from Azure and onwards.

The benefit for any company using Azure Stack or any of the cloud, even AWS, is that everything is managed by the service provider - in this case, Microsoft.

Azure, normally it's not an on-prem; it's the Microsoft cloud mostly based in California or in the Middle East, depending on the different geolocations of the cloud.

Microsoft has one data center in the Middle East, and most of the time, most of the local services for the Azure Stack are hosted from this location. Otherwise, it's mostly coming from Europe.

There are lots of great features.

The Office 365 migration from old accounts to new accounts is great. It is helpful for organizations, actually. If a user wants to upgrade Office 365 from any of the packages, there is no disruption happening during migration, and the data is kept safe. There's no loss of data. Previously, data loss was always a concern. 

Basically, the most beneficial feature I found in Azure is that any migration ensures data is always safe and secure.

It's easy to set up.

Improvement is already happening based on the strategy of Microsoft. 

Normally, in many countries, especially in the Middle East, there are government regulations for information technology itself. If government organizations want to host the cloud, they cannot take it from Microsoft directly; they must go through the local internet service providers, ISPs, or cloud solution providers locally. They should have a local data center in the Middle East, and the data should not move out of the Middle East. This is one of the restrictions we face.

Having said that, Microsoft is working with the governments in the Middle East. 

At the end of the day, it's all about the composition between the cloud service provider giants, including Microsoft. There is a growing market for Alibaba Cloud in the Middle East. It's growing more popular compared to Azure. The reason is that the governments are more focused on Chinese technology rather than Microsoft in certain areas.

I've used the solution for the past five years. 

The solution is extremely stable. 

It's extremely stable unless and until someone from the operations team messes with it.

In a heavy-load cloud environment, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Microsoft data centers are tier-four data centers. Tier four is a certification from the Uptime Institute, which makes sure that the data center standards are being met in regard to the end customer service availability. Tier four has the highest rating, which is the 99.49% of service availability. This means that if anything goes wrong at the data center in the Microsoft infrastructure, they have a failover backup so that the customer wouldn't even feel that the service is down and there would be not any interruption for the end customer.

The solution is extremely scalable. The cloud is based on the concept of scalability. If the cloud is not scalable, there's no need even to call it a cloud.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten in terms of scalability. 

On one of our deployments, the number of users is between 300 and 500. Our deployments vary in size. That includes the Azure Exchange only. There are other parts running on the Azure Stack.

The solution is suitable for all sizes of businesses. If they are looking for a solution that is flexible and scalable, this is a good option. It would be good, for example, for a logistics company where the Stack is mission-critical. 

If something goes down, switching operations happen in milliseconds or microseconds, maybe. Therefore, even if the virtual machine is down, the end user, the logistics service, will not be interrupted.

Technical support is good. Normally, whatever the Azure Stack case is, we open up a ticket. It's a system in Microsoft. The call agent will open a ticket for specific troubleshooting, and it'll remain open until the issue is resolved. They have an SLA for that specific reason.

The technical support rating on the consumer level with Microsoft is very generic, as per my experience. Normally they keep on looping stuff instead of resolving the issues. For the business customer, it's different since it's a business; it's a matter of money. In that regard, their service is quite good, actually. 

However, on the consumer side, when I worked with Outlook or Azure, there was an Azure resource for which the issue came up. I checked with my operations team and they said the issue was from Microsoft and we had to open a ticket with them. I opened a ticket, and it took one or two days, and it kept on looping, and eventually, we solved the problem by ourselves.

There's a cloud called Virtual Stream, which was acquired by Dell EMC. Dell EMC was our partner. 

We had a Virtual Stream Cloud for mobile that we were providing to our business customers in the different big companies. In the end, we sold the cloud. It was a bit complex compared to other cloud technologies. That said, it was quite reliable, actually.

The initial setup depends on the situation. Typically, it is simple. Suppose you're buying and provisioning Azure Cloud sources from the Microsoft website and have the online payment through Mastercard. In that case, you can build up your own customized cloud through the Microsoft website, and they will provision your cloud for you, and it'll be ready within a few minutes or hours, depending on the requirement. 

In some cases, it depends on the customer's solution and what our customer is looking for. Sometimes, there are some compatibility feature sets from other service providers that have to be deployed in the Azure Cloud, and how much time Azure Cloud would take to complete its provisioning. 

It is simple if you need one virtual machine or block storage from Azure, and you need to have the Windows operating system and the RAM or memory you require. It's one click away and done within a few seconds.

However, if you are building up a solution for some product that requires, for example, 300 virtual machines and there are a lot of resources that involve some third-party SaaS, this might take some time. 

Overall, it is straightforward, and I'd rate the implementation process eight out of ten. With cloud service providers, many things are automated, and everything is happening virtually. That relieves a lot of the complexity. Anyone who understands cloud technology should have very many issues. 

We have ten to 15 people who can handle deployment and maintenance tasks.

We have a team that deploys the solution. Sometimes I'm enrolled with the team, sometimes, the team handles things alone. It's an operation team for the customer, and we usually provide them with managed services for their cloud, where we do all the technical operations on the cloud by ourselves. We implement it according to the client's authorization.

The licensing model is different in different regions. For the Middle East, it's different than it is for China, for example. Once you go to the Azure website and you want to have the Azure Stack resources provisioned, they let you look at the different regions, and the pricing for different resources, for the block storage, computing, virtual machines, memory, et cetera. All the pricing scenario is in US dollars since they're selling it internationally. 

While it's different in different regions, it's quite affordable compared to other products.

Similar competitors, like Alibaba and Amazon, have a similar pricing strategy. They also offer regional-based pricing once you are assuring the cloud resources on their platforms. It's flexible pricing for Azure. That said, in most cases, I see that Azure is a bit high compared to Alibaba or Amazon.

Most small and medium-sized customers are budget-conscious. If they want to have Azure, they might think, "Okay, it's better to move to Amazon, or to Alibaba, or to some other cloud since the price difference is quite high when looking at Azure Stack."

We have a partnership with Microsoft.

We are likely using the latest version of the solution. Typically, we get scheduled updates from the cloud. 

As far as my experience is concerned, Azure is a very flexible and very stable solution. If you want quality and stability, you should move to the Azure Stack.

Of course, everything depends on the customer's requirements and what exactly he is looking for in the Azure Stack. Not all customers will use the full Azure Stack. Most likely, they will have third-party applications based on their current infrastructure, which they will want to deploy in the Azure Stack. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten overall. Amazon has more market share than Azure. Alibaba is beginning to challenge both.

We have used the solution for IPS, IDS, and security incident response. We have used Defender as an antivirus, anti-malware, and intrusion detection. We used Intune for endpoint management and endpoint detection response. We use Purview for insider threats, data leakage detection and response, and data classification.

You can use the Azure security policies to enforce your compliance objectives. We also used web firewalls and identity governance, which is a security feature or can be used as such.

The solution's front door and web application firewalls have proven most beneficial for our edge computing needs. The solution provides end-to-end comprehensive protection across the services.

You have vulnerability management tools as well. The way this solution gives you steps to follow to remediate vulnerability is not very well done. It can't be an idealized process. It needs to deal with what really exists and provide more support to people who are remediating.

The main challenge with the tool for a security person is protecting the data in transit between the on-premises or hybrid application and the public cloud. Knowing how to move the data securely at a reasonable cost was difficult.

I have been using Azure Stack for eight years.

Sometimes, Microsoft services fail without warning. The solution sends you a warning, but it's not enough of a warning in advance, which they could improve. Sometimes, we would think our application failed, but it would actually be the underlying Microsoft services that failed.

Azure Stack is a highly scalable solution. Our organization had around 500 users using the solution. We had plans to increase its usage to minimize the use of third-party tools because of cost considerations.

Sometimes, the technical support was excellent, and sometimes, they knew nothing. It's not that the people on the support team were not good, but they were not necessarily well-informed about new services.

Neutral

The solution's initial setup is usually straightforward. However, it's not simple unless you have experience in that field. The only complexity I encountered was integrating it with Business Intelligence (BI). However, that could have been my own ignorance about BI rather than Microsoft.

When I tried to scrape data out of the rest of the services and dump it into BI to analyze it, I didn't find it very helpful. I also didn't find the documentation helpful, but that's probably my ignorance. If I had known more about data analysis, I would probably have had an easier time.

The solution's deployment time took about nine months, but there were many significant enterprise-level applications to migrate. The holdup was more about the application team ensuring they could meet the business's needs before migrating.

To deploy the solution, you follow a typical business analysis process, where you gather requirements from the business, the cybersecurity team, or stakeholders. Then, you work in the cloud to find out how to meet those requirements using that solution. Earlier, you had to have a third-party VPN, but now they have their own VPN. The cloud was not quite mature until the last few years.

I find Azure Stack to be very costly. The people who manage the budgets are satisfied with the solution’s medium pricing, which is neither very expensive nor very cheap. I think the solution has a reasonably good value for what it provides.

The solution's integration with other Azure Services is extremely valuable. Since everything is designed to fit together, you don't have to do a lot of work to integrate the services with the security protections or vice versa.

The way the solution handles data sovereignty could use some work. You still need to do a lot of work to determine where the processing occurs. Suppose you have a Canadian residency requirement. Many services still have processing in the United States or Asia, where sensitive data can be an issue. It would be better if the tool were more forthright about where processing occurs or could actually move processing into the countries where sovereignty is required.

Some third-party tools were well-adapted for integration with the solution. However, this was the result of the third parties' work, not of Microsoft's. The third parties ensured that all the work was done to integrate them with Azure Stack.

The solution consistently provides support and integration. Azure Stack tries to consider and meet the needs of cybersecurity professionals as best it can. Also, I like how the tool adapted to shift left, where security became the responsibility of the whole IT team, and they met that need very well.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We use the solution for data lake and storage. We also use Fabric. We have some applications running in Oracle. We take the data from there and bring it into Azure for storage. We use Synapse Analytics to build the tables. We do the data analysis and data cleansing and visualize it using Power BI.

The product is easy to use. It is fantastic. It's integrated directly with Azure DevOps and Visual Studio. It is easy to integrate the product with other solutions. It makes our AI projects easier. We can use SQL or machine learning.

We face some challenges with database rebuilding.

I have been using the solution for six months.

The product is stable. I rate the stability an eight or nine out of ten. In the software industry, nothing is ten out of ten. Everything has room for improvement.

The product is very flexible and elastic. Around 100 developers use the solution in our organization.

The initial setup is very easy. We can use the cloud infrastructure and the Azure template to deploy the solution. Or else, we can use the GUI and click till the installation is finished. The ease of setup depends on how skillful the person is in deploying the product.

We also use tools like Power BI. The system should be dynamic after the process change. The data and table must be fully responsive dynamically. The rebuilt table command must be scheduled. After that, the statistics must be collected dynamically. Many people working with data management do not know this process and say that Azure Stack has delay issues.

The engineering team in our organization has ten people, including the manager. The machine learning and AI team has 15 people. The database, Oracle, and operating systems teams have 15 people each. I recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

The solution is cheap and helps consolidate infrastructure to a converged space compatible with medium customers. 

Azure Stack needs to improve integrations. 

I have been working with the solution for three to four months. 

I rate the tool's stability an eight out of ten. 

I rate Azure Stack's deployment a ten out of ten. My company has one customer for the solution. 

I rate the product's deployment a six out of ten. It took about a month's time to complete. 

I rate the tool's pricing a seven out of ten. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

We use the analytics side of Azure Stack extensively. I use Azure Stack for advanced analytics, AI machine learning, and business intelligence to report and interpret data. We also use the solution to store our data repositories from a data lake perspective.

The most valuable feature of Azure Stack is its ability to store and process large amounts of data. The analytics side of Azure Stack is pretty influential to our business.

Azure Stack is an expensive product that should be made more cost-effective.

I have been using Azure Stack for five years.

I rate Azure Stack a ten out of ten for stability. Azure Stack is very stable. We just had one glitch in five years, and the glitch was for a couple of hours. So, Azure Stack's stability is very good.

I rate Azure Stack a ten out of ten for scalability. Azure Stack is very scalable. Around 100 IT users are using Azure Stack in my company. Finance engineers are using it for reporting. From a finance perspective, Azure Stack is extensively used by cost accountants.

Fortunately, we used a partner to set up Azure Stack instead of doing it ourselves. It was relatively simple for them to set up the solution. If we had done it ourselves, it would be pretty complex. The partners who set up Azure Stack for us have done it for a number of organizations. It was pretty quick, and it took a matter of weeks to set it up.

Azure Stack definitely gave us a return on investment in my previous organization. My previous organization was a mining organization, and the value we got from the system was improved utilization of fleets. We could monitor and improve fleet utilization, which had a monetary return but was never quantified. We managed monthly to increase the utilization closer to a significant eighty percent from about forty or fifty percent.

Azure Stack has an annual licensing fee, which is very expensive. We pay service costs to the integrator or the partner to support and maintain Azure Stack.

We have a Microsoft Edge device to transfer data between the cloud and on-premise. However, the backing for Azure Stack is purely cloud-based.

The deployment of Azure Stack was done through an integrator. The first step in deploying Azure Stack was to set up the Azure platform in the back end, to put down temporary Edge devices, and then later on, the actual dedicated Edge devices were shipped from Microsoft.

Fortunately, the deployment and maintenance of Azure Sack are done by an integration partner. They maintain it, and we pay them a service level agreement. I don't know what they've got operating in the back end, but a relatively small team of no more than five people keeps it running.

Regarding Azure Stack, I would ask users to be very mindful of what services they consume. It is like a buffet. So the more services you subscribe to, the higher the cost. So, the cost can escalate quite rapidly. There's a lot of convenience, but it comes at a cost.

Overall, I rate Azure Stack an eight out of ten.