Microsoft Azure vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Microsoft and Broadcom are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5, while Broadcom is ranked #16. Microsoft holds a 12.0% mindshare in PSP, compared to Broadcom’s 5.0% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure

Read 324 Microsoft Azure reviews

47,107 Views
24,967 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Read 15 Pivotal Cloud Foundry reviews

6,193 Views
6,069 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Microsoft Azure and Pivotal Cloud Foundry are competitors in the cloud services industry. Azure stands out for its vast integration with Microsoft products and global infrastructure, whereas Pivotal Cloud Foundry shines through its ease of deployment, particularly for Spring Boot applications, and open-source environment.

Features: Microsoft Azure offers robust integration with Microsoft products, a global data center presence, and extensive support for both Microsoft and non-Microsoft services. Pivotal Cloud Foundry focuses on an efficient, open-source platform with smooth application run-time, and provides straightforward CI/CD integration for rapid deployment pipelines.

Room for Improvement: Azure needs improvements in pricing transparency, user interface navigation, and security features. Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve its documentation, enhance support for public cloud migration, and address concerns over future viability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure provides diverse deployment options suitable for public and hybrid clouds but faces criticisms over inconsistent customer support. Pivotal Cloud Foundry offers efficient private cloud deployments with a strong focus on rapid app development, though its customer support could be more seamless.

Pricing and ROI: Azure's pricing is competitive with options like pay-as-you-go and reserved instances, though users find the cost model complex. It delivers significant ROI through reduced hardware costs and scalability. Pivotal Cloud Foundry, despite high costs, offers a favorable ROI due to streamlined deployment and resource efficiency in its open-source environment.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Azure vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry

September 2026

Download the complete report

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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

6.9

Number of Reviews

324

Ranking in other categories

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (1st)

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

16th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 12.0%, down from 18.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 5.0%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure	12.0%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry	5.0%
Other	83.0%

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Syed Abid

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.

Read full review

reviewer2263239

Head of Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

PCF allows for fine-grained configuration, especially regarding scaling but routing limitations

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. A few things, such as what OpenShift does better are cluster management. Like, you can manage the entire thing together. Currently, it's possible to manage all the clusters, especially when it comes to cluster management using straightforward configuration. As of now, we have to handle each application instance individually, which means servicing them one by one. It would be better if we could perform these actions as a group or in a more streamlined manner. One more downside is actually the cost of this environment. So, major downside of Pivotal, it's the cost. So, the runtime running costs are very high. Extremely high.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has proven to be quite stable so far."

"This product has facilitated development, testing, rapid deployment, spot resource needs, with a remote off-site that compliments on-premises for the hybrid cloud."

"The product is very flexible, the performance overall is great, it's a great advantage for a company to be on the cloud, it gives a company nice advantages, and the solution has proven to be quite stable and scalable so far."

"The solution is very flexible, it is not limited to Microsoft solutions. It integrates well with other solutions, such as Oracle. There are a lot of templates we are able to use allowing us to reduce the time for configuration."

"There are a lot of valuable features in Microsoft Azure, such as Kubernetes, pipelines, and development environments."

"It is a very easy-to-use platform, and it is very powerful in terms of data backup and Blob storage. It has very good features, especially if you are using Microsoft products, such as Windows, Microsoft SQL Server."

"Microsoft Azure is built for scalability; it's perfect."

"In terms of computer resource management and reduced cost, it is very, very effective, and in large environments, it gives you a lot of flexibility to provide different services, like disaster recovery and business continuity with simple and great options because you don't have to spend a lot of time for maintenance, upgrades, and security."

More Microsoft Azure pros

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."

"It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."

"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."

"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."

"Stability is not a concern with this product."

"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is the UI, it is easy to use."

"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry pros

Cons

"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."

"There are times when using a service in Microsoft Azure can be confusing because you have four or five options that do similar operations. It would be helpful if there was a clear decision tree around those features. Microsoft does provide a lot of decision trees around a lot of their services, but it's not for everything."

"Most of the challenges we encounter when integrating Microsoft Azure with existing IT infrastructure are related to the lack of documentation when they release new products on the Microsoft side."

"The quality of some components of Microsoft Azure is not that great. For example, Microsoft has not fixed issues in Microsoft Teams for many years. There are well-known issues that are submitted by customers two years ago and they still are not fixed."

"Microsoft's technical support could be improved."

"Ease of use could be improved."

"From a technical point, it has very good features for Microsoft products, but for non-Microsoft products, it may have some limitations."

"Could be more user friendly; security features should be improved."

More Microsoft Azure cons

"Scalability is terrible. So far we have not been able to scale it up."

"It is not straightforward to setup."

"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."

"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."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology, it is a bit complex."

"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."

"I'd like to see a larger service offering."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is not scalable, infinitely, because when you install it on a set of virtual machines it is very hard to scale. It's easy to scale on an application level, but not it is not similar to if you were using Amazon. Amazon you can scale thousands of applications."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I pay a yearly subscription fee for the solution."

"Reducing the price would be of benefit to our customers."

"The pricing of the solution could be reduced. We are not able to create a free account in my country."

"Customers pay for our software and use our solution as a service through monthly payments. They don't pay the licensing fee directly to Microsoft."

"The monthly costs become very reasonable because of the discounts you get on longer reserved instances."

"It is competitive with other public cloud providers, and its price is very close to different cloud providers. There is not a noticeable difference between different cloud providers. Otherwise, it would be a risk for them to have services that were much more expensive than their competition. They're pretty much neck to neck on pricing."

"It is not cheap. Its price could be a little bit less."

"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."

More Microsoft Azure pricing and cost advice

"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."

"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."

"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 could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."

"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."

"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."

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it_user8586

Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Aug 14, 2013

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

30%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	141
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	153

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

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Comparisons

Google Firebase vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 5% of the time

Alibaba Cloud vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 4% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Competitors

Amazon AWS vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 19% of the time

Google Cloud vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 8% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 5% of the time

Cloud Foundry vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 5% of the time

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure

August 2026

Download Microsoft Azure product report

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

August 2026

Download Pivotal Cloud Foundry product report

Also Known As

Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure

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

Overview

Microsoft Azure is a versatile cloud platform known for its scalability, flexibility, and ease of use, offering comprehensive solutions like virtual machines, identity management, and data storage with robust security measures and global data centers.

Azure provides a straightforward setup with dynamic scaling and seamless integration with existing tools. Its robust security, compliance with privacy laws, and global data center presence make it a trusted choice for enterprises. With features supporting DevOps, IoT, AI/ML, and hybrid cloud environments, Azure facilitates efficient cloud migration and modernization, enhancing operational efficiency.

What are some of the key features of Microsoft Azure?

Scalability: Adjust resources automatically to meet demand.
Flexibility: Support for hybrid cloud setup and smooth integration with existing tools.
Virtual Machines: Extensive support for VMs to run various workloads.
Active Directory: Robust identity and access management services.
Data Storage: Diverse storage options for different data management needs.
Security Measures: Comprehensive security protocols and compliance support.

What benefits and ROI should users consider when evaluating Microsoft Azure?

Cost Efficiency: Managed services that reduce operational costs.
Reliability: High availability with global data center coverage.
Ease of Migration: Facilitates transition from on-premises solutions to the cloud.
Operational Efficiency: User-friendly interface and extensive training resources.

Organizations primarily use Azure for infrastructure services, application hosting, and data management across industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail. Resellers deploy cloud services for clients in private, public, and hybrid clouds, supporting enterprise applications and digital transformation projects.

Microsoft

Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a scalable cloud platform known for its deployment ease, monitoring, and auto-healing capabilities. It supports Java and Spring Cloud frameworks, offering a stable environment for microservices and seamless CI/CD integration.

Pivotal Cloud Foundry facilitates cloud-based application development, focusing on private cloud security and developer-friendly tools. Open-source advantages lead to enhanced performance and innovation, providing robust deployment crucial for enterprise environments. While integration and documentation need improvement, its strength lies in microservice management, application hosting, and compliance with data residency regulations. The platform addresses migration and security challenges within enterprises, particularly in financial services, by supporting cloud transitions.

What key features does Pivotal Cloud Foundry offer?

Scalability: Dynamically adjust resources to meet demand.
Auto-healing: Automatically recover from system failures, ensuring stability.
CI/CD Integration: Streamlined processes for continuous delivery.
Microservice Management: Efficiently handle application components.
Security Features: Protect data in private cloud environments.
Developer Tools: Simplify application development with open-source resources.

What benefits should users expect from Pivotal Cloud Foundry?

Increased Stability: Reliable and consistent platform performance.
Reduced Deployment Time: Quick setup and initiation of services.
Enhanced Security: Robust measures for data protection.
Cost Efficiency: Optimizes operational expenses for cloud transitions.

Pivotal Cloud Foundry is implemented widely in industries for deploying web and financial services applications, enabling microservices architecture within banking and enterprise environments. Its cloud diagnostic tools facilitate transitioning from on-premise to cloud-based systems, ensuring compliance with regulations and streamlined application hosting.

Broadcom

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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry

September 2026

Free Report: Microsoft Azure vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry

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