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ARIS Cloud vs Microsoft Azure comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

ARIS Cloud
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (15th), Business Process Management (BPM) (22nd)
Microsoft Azure
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
316
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (1st), PaaS Clouds (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

ARIS Cloud and Microsoft Azure aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. ARIS Cloud is designed for Business Process Design and holds a mindshare of 2.2%, up 1.9% compared to last year.
Microsoft Azure, on the other hand, focuses on Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS), holds 17.3% mindshare, down 18.2% since last year.
Business Process Design
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

BPMexp67 - PeerSpot reviewer
The dynamic and flexible approach, akin to outsourcing, is beneficial for both small and large enterprises
Security is a consideration when migrating to the cloud. It's crucial to address potential risks and include security measures in the contract with the cloud provider. While there haven't been issues so far, acknowledging the risks is essential, especially when dealing with applications like ARIS. With the increasing capabilities and advancements in technology, many current challenges are likely to be resolved in the future. Despite security concerns, utilizing opportunities in the cloud and the internet offers significant advantages. Regarding areas for improvement, security remains a key consideration, especially when deploying ARIS in the cloud. However, this is not solely a product-specific concern but also pertains to the cloud environment. Beyond security, the strength of ARIS lies in its ability to serve as a unified repository for enterprise architecture. Having all information in one place facilitates alignment with the company's vision, strategy, and business objectives. Reducing redundancies across departments is crucial for maintaining service quality and minimizing costs. It ensures that everyone is on the same page, fostering collaboration and preventing discrepancies in information and services. While I currently use Guardis for this purpose, the concept of enterprise architecture is applicable, and ARIS stands as a valuable tool to support business processes and technology alignment within the company.
SubodhThakar - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrates various functionalities and have good documentation but have high pricing
Cosmos DB offered better scalability. In Azure SQL, we had to carefully manage the storage tier, switching back and forth based on needs. But when we first implemented Cosmos DB, we had a good understanding of the required data volume over the past three months. This helped us select the appropriate tier because we had those figures. If we had done it the other way around, it would have been much harder to estimate the data accurately. While you can get a rough idea, whether it works out in practice is more of a hit-and-miss approach, which we have already experienced with Cosmos DB. We applied the knowledge gained from that exercise to build a similar solution over Azure SQL. On the DevOps side, our team consisted of five members, ranging from senior to junior roles. We would raise requests for specific services needed in the development environment. The process typically takes three to five business days, including all necessary approvals, from submitting the request to receiving the resources and verifying access.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"ARIS Cloud is scalable."
"The most valuable feature is GUI; it is very intuitive and easy to use."
"From a total cost of ownership perspective, running this on the cloud is more efficient than having someone in the company take care of the infrastructure."
"In terms of UX design, somebody who has not had experience with ARIS will be able to use it very easily."
"In terms of using the cloud version, if you're somebody who, like myself, has got a lot of experience and understands measures and notations and things, basically it's unrestricted. You can do so many things. You can do your Archimaze, you can do BPMN. There's lots of stuff you can do in there and if you're a good field person and you cause yourself re-using things or whatever, then it's very nice, it's very easy to use."
"Signavio is more intuitive, allowing users with no prior knowledge to navigate and understand its functionality more readily."
"This solution has improved the way our organization does training."
"ARIS Cloud offers easy query writing for retrieving information and includes a user-friendly Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) part that aids risk managers effectively."
"It's a cloud service, so it's always up to date."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure is the Area feature. Additionally, the SQL Server DB as a serverless pool is useful, storage-wide external tables are helpful, and PolyBase is very good at reading external data. The capacity of Synapse to analyze in analytics is very good and it supports a range of data."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the ease of use."
"It's been pretty useful in terms of migration and disaster recovery strategy."
"Being able to set up, change and configure VMs is easy - a lot easier than in AWS."
"The solution is very stable for Windows setups."
"The product has been very stable for us so far."
"Microsoft Azure is scalable."
 

Cons

"The trial version of this solution does not give you enough time to learn how to use it, so it should be extended to one year."
"It would be very helpful if this solution were more open and could integrate with other solutions like ServiceNow."
"Initial setup is rather complex. You have to find a way to isolate the complexity, and find common ground."
"On an enterprise level, the ability to onboard somebody quickly is cumbersome because it just has too many things in it. It's got something like a hundred or more techniques and things in it."
"There is room for improvement in the support."
"If you have multiple tiers of approvals into that update of the policy, or the process design itself, it takes ages to prepare those internal flows within the system."
"The stability was poor, with frequent outages."
"The stability was poor due to frequent outages."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"Difficult to understand how it works and it's an expensive solution."
"Predictability and quality. Make sure things work predictable, as expected, and documented."
"Security could be better. Once there was an attack, and we couldn't get to the cloud to see the reports for about five hours."
"If you compare it with AWS, it is not very friendly to use. I find the UI better to work with on AWS."
"Use of the solution could be easier."
"The installation process is complex."
"Integrate as a service. A lot of Microsoft software licensing options aren’t yet in Azure. Also, the ability to integrate with other technologies, such as other options on the market based on RISC Technologies."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cloud deployment is not more expensive. In the cloud, you pay for what you use, and there's no need for maintaining infrastructure or additional personnel, making it cost-effective. On-premises deployment, on the other hand, involves infrastructure costs and maintenance expenses."
"There is a student version of this solution that can be used for free."
"The licensing model of ARIS Cloud is leaner and more beneficial to the customer. The new license model is great. With the on-premise, you needed to subscribe to many more types of licenses. Now there are licensed bundles available on the cloud."
"If you are not aware of costs, pricing, etc., you can end up with a hefty bill. However, I found that the Azure price calculator is a valuable tool to use before starting to deploy VMs in Azure. This tool will give you an overview of the costs you should expect on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis."
"We are on a monthly subscription for Microsoft Azure and the cost is more expensive than some of the competitors, such as Amazon AWS. They should be more competitive with other solutions."
"The licensing price is fine."
"Microsoft Azure is more expensive than other solutions, such as GCP. We have found that GCP offers more utilities at a very reasonable price."
"One piece of feedback from other users I have heard from is that Azure is somewhat expensive, so I would advise anyone thinking about this solution to be aware of the cost. You need to take into account the configuration you are going with or it could turn out to be a more expensive solution than you anticipated."
"Microsoft Azure is not expensive. You pay for what you use. If you are using it everything could be expensive."
"The price of the solution could be cheaper in general. We are on a monthly subscription to the solution."
"The cost-benefit equation for Azure is very good, particularly for small applications. However, Microsoft should do much, much more to improve how costs are communicated and how to forecast them. The Azure Pricing Calculator is not useful."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Insurance Company
6%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Educational Organization
23%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ARIS Cloud?
The solution's most valuable feature stems from its being very easy to use, making it a very user-friendly tool.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ARIS Cloud?
The price of ARIS Cloud is relatively high and not every firm can afford it, especially if the company is not mature enough to require such extensive process modeling and optimization.
What needs improvement with ARIS Cloud?
It would be beneficial for ARIS Cloud to add more customization options, such as having a landing page. Improving the importation script from Microsoft Visio ( /products/visio-reviews ) would also ...
Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...
Which is better - SAP Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure?
One of the best features of SAP Cloud Platform is that it is web-based and you can log in from anywhere in the world. SAP Cloud Platform is suitable for companies of any size; it works well with bo...
How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?
I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure...
 

Also Known As

Process Live, ARIS Simulation, ARIS Aware, ARIS Connect
Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tesco, Weifu, Airbus, Siemens, Proximus, Alicorp, Sekerbank, Bancor, Philips,Sky, Emirates NBD, Dubai Municipality, Suva, U.S. Army, Australia Post, Westfalen Weser Energie - ARIS serves customers across all industries and of every size worldwide. Companies trust ARIS as the market leader for process excellence with more than 30 years of experience in the market and 10 million users worldwide, from 1 user companies to the Fortune 500.
BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Camunda, SAP and others in Business Process Design. Updated: June 2025.
860,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.