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Microsoft Azure vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

Microsoft Azure
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
313
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (1st)
Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 20.0%, up from 19.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 10.3%, up from 7.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Nicolas Chabrier - PeerSpot reviewer
Promotes clear, logical structures preventing impractical configurations and offers seamless integration
The only thing is regarding the management of multi-cloud environments. That's not really possible. So basically, it's wonderful if you manage Microsoft clearly and if you manage Microsoft Azure, but if you need to consume external services and have a global overview of all your consumption, it's not the case. Google, for instance, has tools that help you manage multiple environments, which makes sense because Google is really the cloud provider. So that's why they need to be compliant with the others. But for sure, Microsoft's approach is different, and it's wonderful when you're one hundred percent on Azure. But if you'd like to have something more of a multi-cloud strategy, that's a bit of a gap where they could improve.
Vasundhara  Joshi - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamlessly scalable since applications written in Java and .NET do not create issues for its users
Regarding the setup phase, every step is a hurdle. With Pivotal Cloud Foundry, I won't get any proper resources for that. Even if I Google it, there is no proper solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry. However, if we go for Azure or some other cloud, we can get a lot of information. I believe there is not much information for Pivotal Cloud Foundry since it may be some license issue. If you go for Azure, the migration process is straightforward. Since we have been given 10 GB of space in the public cloud, we are utilizing it in our company. So, we are trying to deploy our application on the cloud, and for us, it is like a trial process for now. From our total application rate, I can say that only two to three percent is on Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Currently, half of the code is in the shell script, which is causing issues. Also, most people in my organization have worked on Java-related code. For most of the applications, they are using the same, that is, shell script and AUTOsist, and so we haven't migrated yet. So that is the reason that we are planning to opt for a hybrid model so that we don't have to migrate completely to Pivotal Cloud Foundry.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is easy to use and flexible."
"Microsoft Azure is an optimized solution when we compare it to any other particular cloud solution."
"The solution is secure and easy to use."
"Being able to set up, change and configure VMs is easy - a lot easier than in AWS."
"Reduces work for our IT teams and saves us a lot of time."
"There are plenty of functions available that we have used extensively. It is a complete platform of services."
"The solution is stable."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the deployment is easier."
"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."
"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
"Stability is not a concern with this product."
"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."
"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to offer more data analysis services."
"Microsoft Azure needs to improve its customization capabilities. Each organization has unique tasks and fields that it wants to use. Additionally, the search functionality could be more flexible."
"The main issue is the lack of notifications for updates. Processes for certain operations, like connecting to Git repositories, have changed without sufficient communication. A system to announce or update users about these changes would be very helpful."
"The microservices and analytics of Azure are good areas that could be improved."
"I would want Microsoft Azure to provide some credits that can be used to test and validate Microsoft’s different solutions since it is an area where the product lacks."
"Technical support is lacking right now. It needs to be better."
"The security must be improved."
"They need to make storage easy and offer more interconnectivity between solutions."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"It should offer more security features."
"I'd like to see a larger service offering."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve the documentation. They are good, but they could improve more. Additionally, it would be beneficial if there were more use case examples."
"It is not straightforward to setup."
"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"Something that can be done better is canary deployment. So, right now, we're using blue-green deployment. The support for canary deployment would be nice."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Azure is cheaper than solutions from other cloud vendors like AWS or Google."
"The licensing fees are more than $1,000,000 USD annually."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"There is a license for the solution."
"It is not cheap. Its price could be a little bit less."
"The product is expensive."
"Reducing the price would be of benefit to our customers."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
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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
Educational Organization
44%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
38%
Manufacturing Company
19%
Insurance Company
6%
Healthcare Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database...
What do you like most about Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I would say it is around a nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. Just short of Oracle. It's sort of Oracle cloud.
 

Also Known As

Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,600 professionals have used our research since 2012.