Azure Stack Reviews

We are using it in our company and the customer's company as well. So, it works on both sides. For certain development environments, we need to build our internal environment, and we need it for that. Similarly, we need to build the production environment for the customer, and we use it for that.

The beauty of Azure is that most of the features are easily accessible. It is user-friendly. Almost all resources in Azure are very easily accessible. For example, you can access a virtual machine, and you can scale it up. You can go ahead with different infrastructure-as-a-service in Azure for the platform or for the cloud. Different levels of development could be done using it.

It should be improved in terms of integrations. It could be integrated more with external tools. 

We have Azure Purview for governance, but that is for data governance. For code governance, we have to use SonarQube or WhiteSource for vulnerabilities and license management. We would like to have a native code compliance tool.

I have been working with this solution for three years. 

It is absolutely stable.

It is scalable. The resources in Azure are scalable for a smooth transaction. 

Their technical support is very good. They are always easily available when we need them.

Positive

I have been working with different automation tools such as Jenkins. Jenkins is a good tool to start with. Being a DevOps person, I had to go with Azure ADO and Azure DevOps, which basically gives you the view of how DevOps actually works.

It is easy to set up. It takes you minutes to set it up.

Azure has a subscription version. It has a pay-as-you-go subscription with a subscription ID. So, you have your particular subscription with an enterprise agreement. There is a dev-type subscription for development and testing.

The pricing seems pretty reasonable. The pricing could be per resource. For example, you have Databricks, Data Factory, Scaled DB, and Cosmos. You have everything in Azure. They have an Azure pricing calculator that you can use to check the price of every resource. It gives you a proper cost estimation. You can compare the cost and then go for the best resource for your project.

I would definitely advise others to implement it as an infrastructure service only because you get to learn more. You get to explore the code more and know different steps. You can automate more and better. You can get automation done on top of what is already there, which could lead to another invention. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We are looking to implement asset management of marks and enrollment.

The product is fine. It comes with everything. It is probably the best solution out there.

Certain elements are difficult to deploy.

My organization has been using the solution for a number of years.

The deployment is probably not easy. Certain elements are easy to deploy, but certain elements aren’t. The ease of deployment depends on the maturity of the technical teams. If they're quite mature and experienced, then it's not too much of an issue. If there is a knowledge or skill gap, then, obviously, it'll be quite an issue. However, if it is a large organization, engaging with Microsoft is probably fine since it can fill in all the gaps for the organization.

We have a dedicated Microsoft team always working within our organization.

The product is expensive, but it is fine for the value that the solution produces.

I work for the government in a department related to leasing infrastructure. We are using the latest version of the product. Intune has recently opened a lot of functionality very similar to Jamf. There's quite a big gap between what Jamf offers and what Intune offers.

People planning to use the product should engage with Microsoft quite early on and see what products would benefit them rather than trying to figure it out themselves. It would be good if Intune would offer features aligning with enrollment and asset discovery. Jamf provides these features.

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

We use the solution for its virtual machine features.

The visibility of the solution's SDN feature and transmission policy needs improvement.

We have been using the solution for five years.

I rate the solution's scalability as a ten.

Whenever we raise a ticket, it gets addressed immediately by the solution's technical support team.

Positive

The solution doesn't need configuration as it is prebuilt on hyper-converged infrastructure. Its deployment takes two to four months to complete. The process involves installing the hardware and network requirements. 

It is not a cost-friendly solution. I rate it a seven for pricing.

I advise others to appoint premise engineers to manage day to day activity of the solution. I rate it a ten as it is business-friendly and has all the features prebuilt.

Our primary use cases are computing, data platform along with migrating event-driven architecture. We use a lot of data bricks and data components. From the integration to data, and from the application deployment perspective to the platform as a service.

Azure Stack enhanced the productivity from the developers to testers to infrastructure engineers in the following way:

* Developers and the QA team focused on delivering business values rather than thinking about the build and deployment

* The infrastructure team focused more on automating the infra-build pipelines for different environments in no time 

* Azure Pipelines automated 80% of manual efforts on both the Development and Infra front. 

We have found the Kubernetes version is one of the key components which we are using heavily.

I would like to see the AI side come to one hundred percent in the near future. I would love to see a more reliable SAP improved.

I have been working with Azure Stack for the past seven years.

Azure Stack is highly stable across the globe from my experience.

Azure Stack is extremely scalable across the globe.

One of the best parts of technical support is they are really on top of all the issues. Once an incident has been raised, their team will call our technical engineers and start supporting them immediately. This is one of the major reasons why I have used Azure Stack. Azure Cloud is becoming so popular because in the end, businesses need assurance and they are always on top of it.

We were using an on-premise solution, but you know that an on-premise solution is not scalable with a cloud-based environment.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It is a lean, shallow learning curve. They can quickly grasp it and can start working on deployment. The deployment was pretty smooth because we set up the CI/CD pipeline and Azure pipeline, which automatically builds the solution. It does the unit test and performance test, and if everything goes well, it is scheduling the deployments for production quickly.

We have both in-house and third-party teams, depending on the requirements and complexity of the deployment.

The licensing is pay-as-you-go, and Azure also provides a bring-your-own-license. I believe that is a good option if anyone is looking at it and they already have a license. They can get the infrastructure and the provision in a very short time and it will save the existing licenses. 

Different applications will have different licensing needs. It depends on which tool you use. You will then need to secure that license.

We evaluated AWS and Google. It depends on the company and what the best fit is for the organization. If companies have similar requirements, they can follow us, or if they have a different requirement, I believe that Google or AWS might fit their needs as well.

I think that anybody who wants to move on to Azure Stack, needs to assess their requirements, and what business needs they have. I would rate Azure Stack an eight out of ten.

I don't have a specific feature, my customers use all of the features that are available and the entire stack.

I believe the only room for improvement is that I am based in Nairobi, if it has even a local node for Azure, I believe most customers will prefer that to reduce latencies and everything else when using the Azure Stack. They'll be better off if they can set up a local node in Nairobi, Kenya.

There are local things specific to the Kenya market, which are integrated into local development platforms available in Kenya, which would be helpful if it could be integrated with Azure Stack. We have a solution called M-Pessa, for example. If that can be done on a regular basis, I believe it is time to look for customers who want to use that channel today.

I have been working with Azure Stack for six years.

Azure Stack is a stable product.

Azure Stack is a scalable solution.

Technical support is okay. My customers have not complained about the technical support.

I actually work for an integrator company that specializes in UiPath. I primarily use UiPath, but I also use Automation Anywhere and Microsoft Power Automate.

We use Power Automate, but we also use Power BI for dashboard visualization. Then there's the standard Office 365, and we do have customers who use Azure.

I would say the initial setup is medium. It all depends on who is using it, but most customers rate it as a medium. It's not easy, but it's also not difficult. It's average. It's a medium.

In terms of pricing, my customers believe AWS is slightly more reasonably priced than Azure. They believe it is significantly less expensive than what Azure offers. It is simply a matter of pricing.

I would advise them to conduct a thorough assessment of the types of applications they want to host on Azure Stack before beginning the migration process. They must be absolutely certain. Then there are all kinds of local policies, security policies, on migrating data into the Cloud, to put it mildly. They should be on the lookout for such things. So, first and foremost, a proper assessment of what types of applications should be moved entirely to Azure Stack. Then, examine the policies, security policies, and cybersecurity that are associated with all of that.

I would rate Azure Stack an eight out of ten.

We use Azure Stack primarily for hosting customer applications .NET applications. We use mainly App Service, Blob Storage, and Cognitive Services. 

We develop applications on the Microsoft platform, infrastructure, and servers. Our servers are Windows, and we use the .NET framework and C# programming language. Everything is easier in Azure.

Azure Stack integrates well with Microsoft. It's also good for transitioning from an on-premise or hybrid setup to the cloud. It's seamless. 

Microsoft is changing the Azure Stack interface all the time, so it's sometimes hard to find the functionality or the service you're looking for. A feature was in one place and now it has moved somewhere else. 

It's because the product is quickly evolving, so they're changing constantly. I understand, but it's difficult to find things when we don't use Azure every day. It's not a big issue.

We've been using Azure Stack for seven or eight years.

Azure Stack is highly stable.

We have had a good experience with scalability. Azure Stack's replication is well-written. It's flexible. For example, you can scale it differently on workdays and weekends to reduce operating costs. We automatically reduce the sizing of the solution. We stop some services like VMs on the weekends if we can. Scaling up and stopping resources is automated based on a set schedule. This is useful.

Microsoft support is very good.

We switched from AWS to Azure. The main issues were costs and some bad experiences with temporary disks. This was a long time ago, so I cannot say if AWS is currently better or worse than Azure.

Azure Stack is also in the cloud, so it's easy. We also use the Internet Information Server. If you use the node server, it's going to be local and based on the technology you're using. We can choose between one or the other.

For example, we use Mongo Atlas service on Azure and on-premises. Both use the MongoDB Atlas service. It is architecture bound, so you have the choice of going through Azure or the on-premise solution because both have advantages.

Azure is relatively expensive, but on the other hand, you get excellent support, stability, and security, so I think it's worth it. 

I rate Azure Stack nine out of 10. It is a great tool if the technology you use is a Microsoft-based stack because Azure is Microsoft's cloud provider. 

Currently, we are just using it to plan for our proof of concept and internal testing, not for production.

I've been using Azure Stack for more than a year.

It's not stable as IBM solutions. It fully supports all the .NET solutions, but our main applications are based in Java. So in those cases, we've had some minor problems with Azure, but Microsoft always says that it can handle this stuff.

Microsoft's support isn't as good as IBM's. They are fast, but they aren't knowledgeable enough.

Setting up Azure Stack isn't as straightforward as IBM's Cloud Pack for Apps. IBM's solution uses OpenShift implementation, so it's fully automated, whereas the Microsoft solution has some hardware issues, so we had to some manual configurations. The total time for deployment was around one week, I guess.

I believe our license is yearly.

I would rate Azure six out of 10. I don't have a lot of opinions on it yet, but when we start using it in production, then I'll have a better idea.

I recommend Azure Stack 100% for hybrid cases, dev & test, banking, financial (banking, insurance) , healthcare, public sector.

Also, The assessments include the following standards:

•PCI-DSS addresses the payment card industry.

•CSA Cloud Control Matrix is a comprehensive mapping across multiple standards, including FedRAMP Moderate, ISO27001, HIPAA, HITRUST, ITAR, NIST SP800-53, and others.

•FedRAMP High for government customers.

The compliance documentation can be found on the Microsoft Service Trust Portal. The compliance guides are a protected resource and require you to sign in with your Azure cloud service credentials.

The main pillars, on which Binbox is now developing, are Cloud Solutions (public, private and hybrid Cloud) using Azure and our DataCenters (built on state-of-the-art technology), Microsoft 365 and Binbox Managed Services (including 24/7/365 support). These being said, the Azure stack has come to complete our service portfolio like a glove.

The most valuable features that make Azure Stack different are low latency (<9 ms, high performance), data sovereignty, cloud readiness, public Azure features in the private cloud. Considering all the features, the quality of service / price ratio is superior compared to any cloud option.

It would be great when Microsoft will enable WDI, AI and Cognitive Services in Azure Stack.

Binbox Global Services has been using Azure Stack since 2018 when we deployed the first Azure Stack in Central and Eastern Europe. We were the second Microsoft partener that deployed an Azure Stack in Europe.

Now we have 7+ Azure Stacks and other Azure Stacks dedicated to Public Sector.

Azure Stack is stable. 

Azure Stack Hub provides on-demand, scalable computing resources.

The initial setup was a little complicated but not too much. 

We went through both a private vendor and Microsoft. The private vendor handled one part of the deployment; a Microsoft team did another. They both taught us how to manage Azure Stack. We have a large team of technical engineers who received Azure Stack certification. They know Azure Stack very well. Overall, it was not hard for us to deploy.