Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Microsoft Azure vs Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.4
Microsoft Azure reduces costs with scalable services, pay-as-you-go model, and improved infrastructure, enhancing long-term returns and performance.
Sentiment score
7.5
Nutanix Cloud Clusters users experience 15%-50% cost savings through reduced administration, hardware needs, and increased efficiency.
The value for money is good, and Microsoft Azure has positively impacted our operational costs.
When we use Microsoft Azure, it provides enhanced security from our perspective, though I am not certain about the financial return on investment or benefits for our users as I do not have that information.
In time, it has proven beneficial because we no longer have to have hands-on management of a server environment; really, one engineer does it.
In comparison, five years ago, we purchased 30 nodes on-prem, and now we are only using six nodes in Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2).
I would say our total cost of ownership has been reduced by approximately 30% to 50%.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
Microsoft Azure's support is often effective, yet some face delays; higher-tier support and self-help resources improve experiences.
Sentiment score
7.5
Nutanix support is praised for expertise and proactivity, though some suggest improvement in response speed for complex issues.
Microsoft needs to engage L3 and L2 in support when specified in service tickets.
The support from Microsoft Azure is good.
Regarding technical support from Microsoft, I find they are responsive and helpful, depending on which support package you're on.
The people I get are intelligent and know how to fix the issue the first time I call them, so it's been great.
The customer service and technical support have been very helpful; they jump on calls with us and stay engaged until any issues are resolved.
They're good and help us whenever we need them.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Azure offers scalable solutions, but users face challenges with costs and resource limits, leading some to prefer competitors.
Sentiment score
7.8
Nutanix Cloud Clusters offers robust scalability, allowing efficient resource expansion for diverse company sizes and cloud deployments.
Microsoft Azure is not just one product; it is a platform with multiple products within Microsoft Azure, and I would say it is scalable and would rate it a nine.
The scalability of Microsoft Azure is excellent for growth and adaptation, depending on company requirements.
It has different kinds of designs that allow for management and deployment in multi-zones, offering both scalable and non-scalable options.
During builds, it was very scalable, and adding or removing nodes was far quicker than if we were to do that on-prem in our own data center.
Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) scales very effectively with the growing needs of my company, and it does so very fast and quickly.
Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) scales amazingly with the growing needs of our company.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Azure is stable with good uptime, though stability varies by configuration; users generally rate it highly.
Sentiment score
8.0
Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) offers reliable performance with 99.99% uptime, swiftly addressing issues and ensuring user confidence.
We noticed a few critical servers went down due to a Microsoft Azure-end hardware issue.
We are now migrating clients without the zoning into mandatory multi-zone deployments, so if one zone goes down, their application and database remain live.
Microsoft Azure is quite stable, but recent outages and security issues have slightly decreased my confidence.
Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) is very reliable with 99.99% uptime.
The stability and reliability of Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) are commendable.
I have found Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) to be stable and reliable.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Azure users seek simplified pricing, improved security, better integration, enhanced documentation, responsive support, and intuitive management tools.
Nutanix Cloud Clusters need better pricing, intuitive interface, scalability, seamless integration, and enhanced security and support services.
Recent outages and security issues are also a concern, causing a decrease in confidence, especially when partnering with third-party companies.
The administrative side is suitable for technical people, but our finance and HR super users find it less user-friendly, as they prefer drag-and-drop features to build their own solutions without contacting IT.
There is still room for improvement in terms of pricing.
The one thing that stands out is the costing, especially if you check the NCM module, where you see the cost of the VM, which is defined by the customer rather than how the calculations work if that VM is a reserved instance.
My suggestion would be getting up to speed on ransomware and evolving, as attackers are always one step ahead of what's out there.
Some features that people say Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) lacks could be simplified to make it easier, such as a single pane of glass, and getting more into Google Cloud would be very helpful for our team as we're working on GCP interfaces.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Azure provides flexible pricing with pay-as-you-go, free tiers, and discounts, emphasizing cost-effectiveness despite complexity.
Enterprise buyers highlight Nutanix's high pricing, but appreciate license portability and support, mitigating cost concerns through strategic alliances.
Microsoft solutions might be cheaper than some services like AWS, but some solutions may be more expensive depending on the services compared.
Copilot is expensive based on recent pricing for our POC.
They have discounts and also provide promotions for a three-year reservation which comes with significant discounts on the infrastructure part.
Our partners at Nutanix did work with us recently and reduced a huge licensing cost for us.
For us, the pricing and costs have been fair.
When working with my sales representatives, everything is included, they've been very helpful, and it's been within our price range for the most part.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Azure is praised for scalability, ease of use, diverse services, strong security, and seamless integration with various technologies.
Nutanix Cloud Clusters enhance scalability, cost-efficiency, and productivity with seamless management, automation, and robust hybrid environment capabilities.
Power BI, another feature of Azure, is extremely elegant and has robust features that support forecasting using R and Python.
If Microsoft gives a report, such as a server performance report in a detailed way, which shows what is consuming more CPU, memory, and disk IO, and network utilization during a particular time, it would be helpful to visualize that information.
What is very interesting in terms of scalability is the automatic possibilities to provision some new machines to be able to absorb the number of users we have in the system.
We're not limited based on the hardware that we have. We allow ourselves room for growth, and we can literally grow from today to tomorrow to ensure that we're handling our growth.
We used to have a light-for-light kind of build-out in another data center in a different location. Now, we can pare that down to just a couple of nodes and know that we can burst it out when we need to.
Nutanix's license portability is a very valuable tool for us because we were building our own data center, so we've bought on-prem licenses and then utilize that for Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2).
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Azure
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
321
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (1st)
Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (10th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 15.5%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) is 1.9%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure15.5%
Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)1.9%
Other82.6%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Syed Abid  - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Panomporn_Meesangeam - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrated with the personal files and knowledge management processes but is expensive
The customer is a company in Thailand. They use Nutanix Cloud Clusters for file sharing and integrate with personal file share and knowledge management. Our customer attaches a file service with a login and connects with WiFi for cloud content, such as second documents or email access files…
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) solutions are best for your needs.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
6%
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business139
Midsize Enterprise53
Large Enterprise148
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise10
 

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 ...
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...
What do you like most about Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)?
The overall infrastructure is the most valuable part of Nutanix Cloud Clusters.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)?
I'm not familiar with the contracts, but I thought the process was pretty seamless. Licensing for the Nutanix part was the same as licensing something on-prem, and since it runs on bare metal EC2, ...
What needs improvement with Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)?
We've been told some of these things are on the road map. I believe that networking is one of the biggest improvements. They have a great stock already, but some use cases, particularly around incr...
 

Also Known As

Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
Nutanix Clusters
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
The Home Depot, JetBlue, Hyundai, ShiftLeft
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure vs. Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.