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Microsoft Azure vs Virtustream xStream comparison

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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:
 

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
325
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (1st)
Virtustream xStream
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
27th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 8.6%, down from 13.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Virtustream xStream is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure8.6%
Virtustream xStream0.8%
Other90.6%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Rafath Noor - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Cloud platform has supported reliable growth and collaboration but customer support still needs improvement
In my opinion, the best features Microsoft Azure offers are the scalable solutions and serverless solution, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service. There are categorized services I can get. Based on my need, I can use and get most of those things. Regarding Microsoft Azure's AI capabilities, I think the governance and security are fine and the AI is consistent and I was able to get reliable outputs. Governance and security-wise, I was also satisfied with the performance, encryption-wise and the data transmission, transparency-wise. Regarding Microsoft Azure's AI capabilities, output-wise, the outputs are very much reliable, so I can depend on those things. There's nothing more to add and I am satisfied with the accuracy because it's more than 90% accuracy that I can find. That's fine for me.
RH
Business Systems Manager at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
Improves efficiencies, has encryption, and great mission-critical customer support
Previously we had an amateur solution where we were managing on our own data center but we had the management in-house. It was a strategic move to give people who were more competent and with business focus other core initiatives. It was a strategic outsource model. The equipment we were using was out date and at the end of its life cycle, we had to make some transitions, do a hardware replacement, or move on. We moved on to this solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"You can build an environment in minutes; it's very good in terms of being an infrastructure as a service, and I found that really fascinating."
"For me and many other people, the general view is that Azure is very stable."
"The ability to scale down is a big thing."
"It is really scalable and easy to use."
"Azure has helped in the setup of operations with minimal environments for developing a proof of concept, and the POC is the most useful and charming feature to get a minimal valuable product for all deployments, while customer satisfaction increased the performance of sales and customer requirements were optimized."
"If you're interested in going with Microsoft, my advice would be to do it. Everybody's using Microsoft."
"There is the potential to scale."
"I have not had a problem with the stability. It is reliable."
"The solution has encryption which we did not have before."
"Once we made the move to this solution, we received efficiencies, 100%, 200%, even up to 1000%, depending on some processes."
 

Cons

"You don't get support from Microsoft very easily as compared to other solutions. The Microsoft Azure team does not [respond quickly]."
"Establishing the account in the beginning was very difficult."
"With Microsoft, our only concern is exchange rates because we're paying in dollars. It's very expensive for us because of the exchange rates. It would help if they partnered with someone locally so we can pay in our local currency."
"Microsoft Azure can be pretty advanced and difficult to understand. I would like it to be simplified, and the licensing especially needs to be simplified."
"It is constantly updating. There are weekly releases, sometimes daily releases, and there should be fewer that are consolidated into one."
"Monitoring options should be more sophisticated, as there are dashboards on which a end user is able to pin a lot of charts and a number of web parts, but for example, I would love to have some option like in Operational Management Suite."
"One of the most important areas for improvement is the administrative part of management. It‘s difficult to manage all aspects of Azure invoicing, and further pricing vs usage comparison and capacity to move under usage resources to a better positioned."
"The price of the solution could be reduced."
"Our account representative was inexperienced, they could improve on how they are managing accounts."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's licensing costs are yearly."
"It is affordable, but its subscription price could be cheaper."
"There are added costs to the company or for scaling for most premium products."
"There are no licensing fees."
"The pricing is cheap."
"Azure costing can be multi-layered."
"Microsoft Azure overall is an expensive solution."
"The monthly costs become very reasonable because of the discounts you get on longer reserved instances."
"The solution is a bit expensive, we are still negotiating the price."
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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
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business142
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise153
No data available
 

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...
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Also Known As

Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Continental, Domino Foods, Florida Crystals, Intel, Lanx, UOL Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Akamai and others in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS). Updated: October 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.