Azure Stack Reviews

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.

So we have offered Azure Stack to one of the biggest telco companies here in the Philippines. We have two sites there, and so far, their business has been growing good. They want to deploy more sites here in the Philippines using Azure Stack.

The most valuable features are related to managing Kubernetes cluster nodes.

When it comes to room for improvement, there should be more focus on the user interface, specifically for the management console.

In the future release, I would like to see better UI. 

I have actually been with HPE for five years now, and we have been a partner of Microsoft Azure's teams even before I joined. So I would say five years.

We always use the latest version. The latest is HCI version 21H2.

It is very stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. Our clients are enterprise businesses. And I think they've been using it for about four years now.

Sometimes there have been software issues, but customers still need assistance from us, the hardware vendor. So I think the ticketing and issue logging need to be more available.

Positive

I would rate the initial setup a seven, where one is difficult, and ten is easy. The deployment took around two to three months. 

If we compare it in the market to other vendors, I think it would be around four out of ten, where one is low, and ten is high. There is additional fees required for support. 

I have conducted cost analysis and simulations using AWS, Azure Stack, and Google Cloud. So I've performed several cost analyses based on customer requirements. But I haven't had extensive hands-on experience with those public clouds.

Overall, I would rate the product a nine out of ten because Azure Stack is very reliable. It's highly available and provides the requirements needed by the customers' applications. It's also very secure.

Azure Data Factory is a great solution for orchestration. 

From a security perspective, there are certain things which could be improved. We have that option of enabling the datacenter which sits on the Azure site. The solution is difficult to manage if this particular feature is disabled. 

I've been working with Azure Stack for nine to 10 years for me.

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. 

The initial setup is straightforward if you are familiar with some of the architecture. The complexity may increase if you have a large amount of data that needs to be migrated. 

Azure is reasonably priced compared to Google Cloud, AWS, or some other cloud giants.

You need to focus on what your end goal to achieve and build the system in a way that makes it easy to maintain from a software, perspective, and platform perspective.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

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 providing solutions based on Azure Stack to customers. It has the same interface as Microsoft Azure in a local context.

The admin dashboard is the main feature of the solution. Different services are running on it.

Azure Stack doesn't have all the services available in Microsoft Azure. It would be useful if Azure Stack could be developed to be like Microsoft Azure with all the services. Although Microsoft manages it, not all of Microsoft Azure’s services are available on Azure Stack. 

When we try to build a solution on Azure Stack, there are some limitations with the services available, most of which are available on Microsoft Azure. Adding more services to Azure Stack will be beneficial for customers. The product doesn’t have a DR solution available locally. The product does not support a local DR either.

I have been using the solution for three years.

I rate the product’s stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

We are getting support through a local partner.

Neutral

I rate the ease of initial setup a four out of ten.

The deployment process took a few weeks. We needed two to three people to deploy the solution. It's an engineered system that comes with everything loaded. Microsoft’s team handles configurations. We only had to handle the equipment and manage it locally.

Pricing depends on the solutions which we build on. IaaS’s pricing is high. Other services might be competitive.

I am using the latest version of the product. Azure Stack is an on-premise solution that gives cloud services to customers. We give it as a cloud service to customers. Although it is a fully managed solution from Microsoft, it has limitations. Overall, I rate the product a six 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.

I am using Azure Stack to build a lot of different solutions.

I have been using Azure Stack for approximately nine years.

Azure Stack is very stable.

The scalability of Azure Stack is good.

I have approximately 200 users using this solution in my company.

I rate the support from Azure Stack a five out of five.

Positive

I did not use other similar solutions in this category.

The initial setup of Azure Stack is very simple. It takes approximately 48 hours to build a complete platform.

The implementation of Azure Stack was done in-house. We have five people for the maintenance of the solution.

The licensing model of Azure Stack is complicated. The solution is expensive.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I 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.