Cloud Foundry vs Microsoft Azure comparison

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509 views|393 comparisons
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37,026 views|29,748 comparisons
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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cloud Foundry and Microsoft Azure based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Oracle and others in PaaS Clouds.
To learn more, read our detailed PaaS Clouds Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"IBM is the only vendor to offer integration with blockchain for smart contract development.""Cloud Foundry builds the runtime environment directly without requiring dependency management from the user.""My favorite component of IBM's solution is Node-RED, which greatly shortens the amount of time required to develop, test, and deploy new applications."

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"Microsoft Azure is easy to use.""Being able to set up, change and configure VMs is easy - a lot easier than in AWS.""I like that it is user-friendly and flexible.""There are many different components such as SaaS, PaaS, and API so every month they are releasing a few hundred new features.""The automated connectors to some of our critical enterprise systems are an important feature. These are very large, critical, global HCM systems.""It is a flexible solution that is straightforward to use.""Microsoft Azure is built for scalability.""Azure virtual machines are stand-out."

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Cons
"After the initial excitement period with Node-RED is over, you crave the need of additional integrations to third-party services.""In IBM Cloud, the product has been deprecated in favor of Kubernetes, which is a more complicated infrastructure to manage."

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"We need more customization and support for doing so.""The price could be improved as well as the interface speed, and technical support.""The interface is not easy to use. I'd like to see them develop a better interface, more graphical information about the resource and the consumer.""The solution needs to offer more data analysis services.""The solution is less mature than AWS.""The initial setup can be improved.""It would be helpful if Azure provided more information on the various add-ons to give people an understanding of what they are used for, and how they're applied by other companies or businesses.""Maybe Azure could add an address code to create your analysis without SQL or Python because some business users don't want it to code. So it's good to have a service application that connects to the data lake to conduct analysis and simplify the business process."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "IBM has a free tier and payment option depending on the products selected."
  • "You are allocated a minimum amount of resources in the free tier. This seems fair and highly scalable, as you pay per usage as per cloud pricing schemes."
  • "The pricing models should be reworked to the needs of a wider range of companies. Some customers will not be able to afford it until quite a few years into production, even after good PoC results and a successful launch."
  • More Cloud Foundry Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Related to pricing and licensing, you have to be careful how you operate with the concept."
  • "Be careful with Azure Cool storage accounts; if you are dealing with high object counts, then it can be more economical to use Hot storage because of the high storage access costs associated with Cool."
  • "Make use of Azure pricing calculator and you will find out that Azure Is still more reasonable that the competition and do your research, when unclear speak with your MS support."
  • "It’s necessary to use third party products or to use good self-management economic tools"
  • "Keep to PaaS to gain the optimal benefits from an OPEX finance and resource perspective."
  • "Several thousand dollars and counting, we haven't needed to upgrade on premises hardware (In fact we eliminated all of the old on-premises hardware and run 100% on Azure) or pay for it's maintenance, power etc."
  • "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."
  • "Pricing is very difficult to guesstimate. With so many a la carte options and individual pricing it can be a hassle to understand."
  • More Microsoft Azure Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    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 alluring IT customers. This article give brief history of these cloud hosting service providers and compares the cloud services provided by them. -- Amazon Web Services -- It's hard to find someone who doesn't agree that Amazon Web Services is the market leader in IaaS cloud computing. The company has one of the widest breadths of cloud services - including compute, storage, networking, databases, load balancers, applications and application development platforms all delivered as a cloud service. Amazon has dropped its prices 21 times since it debuted its cloud six years ago and fairly consistently fills whatever gaps it has in the size of virtual machine instances on its platform - the company recently rolled out new high-memory instances, for example. There are some cautions for Amazon though. Namely, its cloud has experienced three major outages in two years. One analyst, Jillian Mirandi of Technology Business Researcher, has suggested that continued outages could eventually start hindering businesses' willingness to invest in Amazon infrastructure. That sentiment gets to a larger point about AWS though - the service seems to be popular in the startup community, providing the IT… Read more →
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Cloud Foundry builds the runtime environment directly without requiring dependency management from the user.
    Top Answer:Use autoscaling to define the right number of instances. Usually, the cloud providers define a default size for memory or the number of instances. Try to see if you can decrease these numbers so that… more »
    Top Answer:In IBM Cloud, the product has been deprecated in favor of Kubernetes, which is a more complicated infrastructure to manage. CF should be merged with the Kubernetes project. This could benefit both… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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 both… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Ranking
    21st
    out of 33 in PaaS Clouds
    Views
    509
    Comparisons
    393
    Reviews
    1
    Average Words per Review
    742
    Rating
    4.0
    1st
    out of 33 in PaaS Clouds
    Views
    37,026
    Comparisons
    29,748
    Reviews
    27
    Average Words per Review
    547
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
    Learn More
    Overview

    Cloud Foundry, home of the open source application development technologies CF Application Runtime and CF Container Runtime, is more than a platform. It’s a flexible way of embracing digital transformation that helps businesses evolve in the face of constant change. To put it another way, with Cloud Foundry, companies can rest assured they will have the right tool for the right job.

    Windows Azure is Microsoft's cloud platform, where developers can create, deploy, and maintain their apps. This cloud application platform allows developers to concentrate on the actual applications, while it takes care of all the elements behind the apps.

    Windows Azure works across multiple frameworks and languages. It is fully scalable, localized in that it is hosted globally in many datacenters, and has widespread capabilities with elements of application development, deployment, and management.

    Azure is comprised of several different service modules, including Infrastructure; Web; Mobile; Dev & Test; Big Data; Media;Storage, Backup & Recovery; and Identity & Access Management.

    Microsoft Azure works as a:

    1. Platform as a service (PaaS)
    2. Software as a service (SaaS)
    3. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

    Microsoft Azure is available:

    • On-premises
    • Hybrid
    • Multi-cloud
    • At the edge

    Compared to its competitors, Microsoft Azure:

    • Has more affordable features
    • Has easier migration for organizations already using other Microsoft tools
    • Has several educational resources available
    • Provides robust support
    • Is ideal for small and large businesses

    Microsoft Azure Features:

    • Scalability
    • Stability
    • Flexibility
    • Azure Site Recovery
    • Active Directory
    • Monitoring features
    • Cloud-based
    • Automated tasks
    • Change capability cadence
    • Showback capabilities
    • Information protection
    • Azure Data Lake
    • Excellent portal
    • Intuitive user interface
    • Remote desktop
    • Fast provisioning
    • Data security
    • Data resiliency
    • Speed of service
    • Integrated delivery pipeline
    • Disaster recovery
    • Robust templates
    • Flexible coding languages
    • Virtual systems testing

    Benefits of Microsoft Azure:

    • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Because Microsoft Azure is an IaaS, organizations can deploy as well as manage applications easily and quickly. Azure also provides you with the ability to customize the cloud software to meet your specific business needs.
    • Seamless integration: Microsoft Azure is built to seamlessly integrate with existing IT departments via hybrid databases, secure private connections, and storage solutions.
    • Cost-effective: Because Azure can harmoniously exist in your business environment with your data center, it is a very cost-effective solution.
    • Analytics support: Azure is designed with built-in support that is used to analyze data and provide key insights. Azure offers Cortana Analytics, Stream Analytics, Machine Learning, and SQL services.
    • Unique storage system: Compared to other cloud services, Microsoft Azure has more data centers and delivery points, which helps create an optimal user experience and also helps deliver content faster. In addition, Microsoft Azure makes it possible for organizations to exchange content across several virtual machines.
    • Enhanced flexibility: Azure provides extreme flexibility by allowing you to choose any level of functionality you require. It also supports many of the same technologies IT teams and developers usually depend on, making it easier for them to manage.
    • Easy implementation: Microsoft Azure is easy and quick to deploy. If necessary, you can change web apps to Azure with almost zero downtime.

    Reviews from Real Users:

    "It is a flexible solution that is straightforward to use," says the principal consultant at a computer software company.

    OmarJ., future datacenter consultant: Microsoft Azure Cloud at a tech company, adds that "The user interface is very nice and makes everything easy to use."

    You can build an environment in minutes. It's very good in terms of being an infrastructure as a service, and I found that really fascinating,” says an information technology consultant at a computer software company.

    "I think Azure's level of automation to achieve efficiency or agility is valuable. I also like the change capability cadence, the showback capabilities, and understanding what our costs are," says an enterprise architect at an energy/utilities company.

    Marco C., Ing. at Wolters Kluwer, says "The valuable features of Microsoft Azure are that it is cloud-based and has good storage. The storage is completely managed by Azure. We do not need to do any patching of security because it is handled by Azure which is a benefit. The solution is fully compatible with the Microsoft technology stack and is very scalable."

    "The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure is it has everything together in one place. It is one large tool with lots of small tools that are updated often," says the owner of a media company.



    Sample Customers
    Grape Up, c-Com, KONE, TITAN, CSAA, Bosch, Allstate, Verizon, West Corp., Telstra
    BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company22%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Manufacturing Company12%
    Marketing Services Firm9%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company22%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization35%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Company Size
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise61%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business41%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise44%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise40%
    Large Enterprise46%
    Buyer's Guide
    PaaS Clouds
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Oracle and others in PaaS Clouds. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cloud Foundry is ranked 21st in PaaS Clouds with 2 reviews while Microsoft Azure is ranked 1st in PaaS Clouds with 298 reviews. Cloud Foundry is rated 5.0, while Microsoft Azure is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cloud Foundry writes "Quick to deploy but being deprecated by IBM and should be merged with Kubernetes ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure writes "Promotes clear, logical structures preventing impractical configurations and offers seamless integration ". Cloud Foundry is most compared with Pivotal Cloud Foundry, VMware Tanzu Application Service, Amazon AWS and OpenShift, whereas Microsoft Azure is most compared with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, Pivotal Cloud Foundry and SAP Cloud Platform.

    See our list of best PaaS Clouds vendors.

    We monitor all PaaS Clouds reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.