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IBM Public Cloud vs Microsoft Azure comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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

IBM Public Cloud
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
IoT Platforms (2nd)
Microsoft Azure
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
323
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.3%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 14.5%, down from 20.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure14.5%
IBM Public Cloud3.3%
Other82.2%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Premnath Jaganathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at Uop Ipl
Affordability and security improve our cloud experience while learning new systems
I'm not working with any AI features in IBM Public Cloud, but they are in the process of building it.I am very satisfied with the security that IBM Public Cloud provides. I would rate IBM Public Cloud eight out of ten, where one is worst and ten is the best.
Syed Abid  - PeerSpot reviewer
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
Versatile integrations and reliable customer satisfaction elevate cloud service experience
For Microsoft Azure improvement, they need to enhance their support system. The first level of support should be improved in terms of quality and response time. They need more technical support at the first level, as there are currently only one or two technical people among five to ten staff members at this level. They should ensure that the first level support is more technical because we normally provide services to technical users ourselves. When an issue arises, it usually escalates to the second or third level. When facing first level support, they may have limited knowledge and only collect screenshots to forward to their seniors. They should ensure that the first level support is aligned with L2 and L3 to better assist us, especially since we mention in the ticket that our issues are related to specific problems and require that sort of support.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a scalable product. You can scale it up and down."
"Regarding advice, I would recommend others choose IBM Public Cloud because it's straightforward, has a good environment, and is cost-effective."
"The initial setup was very easy. It's quite straightforward. Deployment took about fifteen minutes. Everything is well organized."
"I've found the stability to be excellent. The performance is good."
"The platform has everything that I need - or 99% of the requirements we need."
"The price of IBM Cloud is most valuable for us. The service is personable and gives us a good rapport. I can't say it's the best, but it was enough for our needs."
"I don't have much experience with this solution, but I would recommend it to others."
"What I like most in IBM Public Cloud is how easy it is to create serverless functions. They are called IBM functions, but in AWS, they are called Lambda functions. Those are pretty standard, and another thing I like the most is that you have fewer restrictions on the amount of data you can transfer across those functions. IBM Public Cloud is way more flexible than AWS. I also like that IBM Public Cloud is pretty straightforward to integrate. As long as you have all the tools IBM provides you, getting everything up and running is straightforward."
"Azure is definitely the best for me; I am more productive because I understand the tech architecture better."
"As a cloud deployment, the solution is constantly updating itself, therefore we always have access to the latest release."
"Azure has improved my organization because it is a new technology and so the customers who don't have enough knowledge about the cloud delegate the administration of their cloud infrastructure to us."
"This is a product that is fast-growing and they are gaining popularity."
"The solution is easy to use and flexible."
"Azure is a platform which allows our organization to be agile, as it very quickly provisions servers, infrastructure, and apps on the fly and complies with security requirements and data safety."
"There are many useful features. We use web apps, so instead of starting a web server, we just have machines running some web services. This was helpful for us in terms of the scalability of the application. We also use Active Directory for authentication and some services for the data backup. It is a very good and reliable solution. It was easy to implement this solution. It fits very well into our plans and covers our needs to provide infrastructure in the cloud. The portal to configure new resources is very easy, and it is very easy to allocate new resources."
"Azure cloud is a platform for many things, such as hosting, file services, application or power apps, and data lake."
 

Cons

"It will be challenging to implement if you do not have any experience."
"There is not a lot of support for IBM Cloud. The response from them and the ETA for resolving issues is too slow, and also, the SLA is too expensive."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly deployment process in the next release of this solution."
"Support could be improved."
"The initial setup and the pricing are areas that need improvement."
"An improvement that I would like to see is better configuration capability."
"They do not have a very good virtual network implemented, and the VPC is the most important feature that needs to be improved."
"An area for improvement in IBM Public Cloud is getting up-to-date information on how to set up everything. It's hard to find new documentation."
"More integration with other platforms is what I would like included in the next release for this solution."
"Being a big item, it has it's own share of bugs. I had a great deal of difficulty establishing the account at first."
"The solution should improve the shared cache."
"I would like to see more databases on the cloud, what they call today Big Data should be there."
"Technically, I would say there could definitely be improvement on the AutoML part, which is the machine learning component of Azure."
"Some of the capabilities available in an on-premise SQL Server aren't available in Azure. For instance, we found Azure Managed Instance to be lacking in certain aspects. One of our clients decided to stay on-premise rather than migrate to Azure because of this reason."
"Dashboards and reporting could be improved."
"The customer support can become pricey at times if you don't have proper plans."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten."
"IBM Public Cloud is pretty cheap. They have an ongoing free tier that basically won't expire, so as long as your solution is small enough, you can have a test set that you can use for demos, which will cost you almost nothing."
"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or Azure."
"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."
"The licensing fees are straightforward and predictable."
"IBM has a lesser price compared to other cloud service providers like Azure and AWS."
"It pretty much has a standard price. There is no hidden price with IBM Public Cloud."
"The tool is cheap."
"The monthly costs become very reasonable because of the discounts you get on longer reserved instances."
"Price-wise, it is comparable to other solutions for the features that we are using."
"The cost structure is like most cloud-based services. The solution could be cheaper, it is always better to be cheaper."
"There are added costs to the company or for scaling for most premium products."
"It's a very expensive machine and I would like for them to improve the price. There are smaller sized competitors who offer cheaper prices."
"The cost is more or less the same across all cloud service providers."
"The price of the solution could be cheaper."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Aug 14, 2013
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
University
10%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business140
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise149
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Public Cloud?
The prices are relatively lower compared to others. It is a good option for medium-sized businesses. However, businesses should also consider other vendors to ensure they meet their specific securi...
What needs improvement with IBM Public Cloud?
The connectivity and speed of IBM Public Cloud are much lower compared to the competition.
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...
How does Salesforce Platform compare with Azure?
Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform is not easy or intuitive to deploy. The difficulty will be impacted by the type of application that you are trying to use the platform to build. Organizations tha...
 

Also Known As

IBM Bluemix
Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uvionics Tech, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alpha Modus, Inventive, Web Business Consulting, FindBrok, SilverHook Powerboats, United Way of Allegheny County
BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Public Cloud vs. Microsoft Azure and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,789 professionals have used our research since 2012.