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Microsoft Azure vs Scality RING comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
7.3
Scality RING provides cost-effective storage reducing operating costs, but security and redundancy may increase expenses for some users.
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.
I think RING's ability to maintain predictable costs while providing scalable storage solutions impacts our budget by allowing us to pay only for capacity.
For instance, while the cost per gig on a block storage platform may be $2, it's $1.50 for NAS, and only $0.50 for object storage, leading to a remarkable 75% reduction in costs by utilizing the Scality platform.
Scality RING has reduced our operating costs.
 

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
6.8
Scality RING's customer service is praised for expert, responsive support, with personalized help making most users highly satisfied.
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.
I've always received responses within the required timeframe, the answers were technically relevant, and there was follow-up—people called us back to check if everything was okay and if the ticket could be closed.
Individuals such as Peter Mikolastik really make a difference by saying, 'Come on, what is the problem? I will help you,' rather than just brushing things off.
Technically, when we have major issues in P1, they are very responsive and we can't say that we don't get a response.
 

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
7.1
Scality RING offers high scalability and adaptability, though experiences vary with rebalancing challenges and some seeking improvement.
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.
Upwards, I think, almost unlimited by what we can imagine.
I've never had issues with scalability.
We are relatively well informed about their new features, what will be implemented in future versions, and the scalability of the solution.
 

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
7.4
Scality RING offers dependable performance with high uptime, seamless maintenance, quick recovery, and strong resilience against failures.
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.
It is a platform that is very stable at the customer level and does not generate incidents or blockages that you might encounter with standard storage solutions, where you can lose data.
I find that Scality RING is very stable because it allows for many maintenance operations without service loss.
There are factors that can cause Scality RING to become occasionally unavailable, but due to the system's resilience, it is capable of recovering or degrading gracefully.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Azure users seek simplified pricing, improved security, better integration, enhanced documentation, responsive support, and intuitive management tools.
Scality RING requires improvements in rebalancing, feature expansion, UI, administration, S3 compatibility, and performance during scaling and upgrades.
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.
Encryption and data security need improvement. We don't have a solution for customers who need confidentiality.
They should prioritize quality over timeliness to minimize customer disruptions and not force customers into a cycle of fixes that interfere with daily work.
What we are currently missing and will be demanding in the new tender is an additional external backup of all data, ideally on a simple system, to safeguard against any severe local incidents so that we still have the data protected elsewhere.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Azure provides flexible pricing with pay-as-you-go, free tiers, and discounts, emphasizing cost-effectiveness despite complexity.
Scality RING targets enterprises with 10 PB needs, high setup costs, expandable licenses, and "Pay As You Grow" model appeal.
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.
Fortunately, in terms of the license, we are able to expand the disks without having to adjust the license.
In the end, it always depends on how much you pay for it.
Regarding setup costs and licensing, our initial experience is somewhat dated now as we made a comprehensive purchase, including hardware, software, and system setup, which Scality handled at the time.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Azure is praised for scalability, ease of use, diverse services, strong security, and seamless integration with various technologies.
Scality RING excels in scalability, S3 integration, performance, and cost-effectiveness, offering robust security, data protection, and easy administration.
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.
When a server is lost, the data is still accessible.
It is even better stored when there is only one copy on a system and there is a second copy on an immutability system, which is almost equivalent to backing it up on tape and taking it offline, making it completely inaccessible.
Scality RING has influenced our approach to scaling in different dimensions by providing a cost-effective solution for the tremendous amount of data we generate every day for each customer.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Azure
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
321
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (1st), PaaS Clouds (1st)
Scality RING
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (7th), File and Object Storage (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Microsoft Azure and Scality RING aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Microsoft Azure is designed for Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) and holds a mindshare of 15.5%, down 18.2% compared to last year.
Scality RING, on the other hand, focuses on Software Defined Storage (SDS), holds 3.9% mindshare, down 3.9% since last year.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure15.5%
Amazon AWS16.0%
Alibaba Cloud11.9%
Other56.6%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Scality RING3.9%
Red Hat Ceph Storage18.9%
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct7.3%
Other69.9%
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

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.
Sebastien Foucou - PeerSpot reviewer
Leverages seamless data access with efficient storage management
I would improve Scality RING by bundling the Operating System with RING and modernizing the graphical interfaces. As for areas for improvement—if I had to summarize—a technical aspect would be the Operating System part, which today isn't really covered by Scality RING, whereas it is with Artesca. It would be a real advantage for customers to have a bundle that includes both the Operating System and Scality RING, with an install and maintenance model handled by Scality. Secondly, perhaps a more cosmetic point—the graphical interfaces could be modernized a bit. There's been work done on Artesca; maybe it should be extended more to RING. I believe that should come with version 10, so I'm not too concerned. I find RING's cyber resilience against ransomware threats somewhat complicated to assess. The product itself offers sufficient protection, and the features provided via S3 allow you to protect against this kind of attack—provided you implement these features, such as object lock with retention and everything that goes with it. If I had to identify an area for improvement, it would be the OS part—but that doesn't necessarily concern RING, unlike Artesca, which comes bundled with an OS. There's been real work done by the Scality teams to secure the system layer in Artesca. It didn't influence us. We know the product and what needs to be implemented to protect data, and it's part of the best practices we also pass on to our clients.
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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
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

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 Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
 

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 Scality RING8?
Another feature I like is the life cycle management that helps me with data storage efficiency.
What needs improvement with Scality RING8?
There are areas that may have room for improvement, and the Scality team is aware of it. You can obtain information directly from them about areas of improvement they need to address. We do experie...
What is your primary use case for Scality RING8?
Scality RING serves multiple use cases for storage, for GenAI and analytics, unstructured and structured data, backups and recovery, and long-term retention. It can fulfill five to six use cases.
 

Also Known As

Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
Scality RING, RING8
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Comcast, TimeWarner Cable, EuroSport, Orange, Deluxe, DailtMotion, SFR, RTL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Telstra
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Akamai and others in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS). Updated: August 2025.
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