Microsoft Azure alternatives and competitors

I have my own social media system called bolixo.org, and I am hosting it using Linode.

For smaller companies, it is very important that they have a small but well-focused set of cloud computing services. They are very inexpensive and very reliable. I am a light user and do not use all of the services, but I'm a serious user. In the cloud business, there is another kind of entry-level service, where they provide you, for example, a web server and you only have to provide content. Linode is another side of the cloud business, where they're providing you a full solution. This is your server so you're managing whatever you want to host on it.

Using Linode helps me for a simple reason, which is that I do nothing with respect to the servers. I don't have servers and I do not want to have servers. I managed servers for four years and I know how it's done, but, I don't want to care, for example, about power. Where I am, we have a lot of power failures. This week alone, I have had 16 hours of power failures. Clearly, I don't have the technology in-house to support that long without power. I know that it exists, where I can put in a generator or come up with another solution, but I don't want to do that. Instead, I want to concentrate on what I'm doing. Linode delivers an inexpensive service and it's completely reliable.

I am a long-time believer in the Linux operating system and have been using it for approximately 28 years, and the fact that Linode provides me with Linux Nodes is something that I like. Linode got its name from "Linux Node".

They have a very nice web interface to allow you to manage and reorganize your server.

Having data centers in different regions is good for latency. They have a presence in Japan, Europe, the US, and Toronto, Canada. If I install a server in Europe and people from that area are using it then it will be faster for them. There is a visible difference between my servers, where one of them is in New York and another is in California. It's basically a continent away, but I see a difference. There is great value in the fact that I can have European users served by a European server.

They have a lot of features that I am not yet using, but I will have to use them at some point. For example, it's possible to create a server and keep that as a standard image. Later, when you create a server, instead of selecting one of their pre-configured images, you select your own.  This means that you can deploy more servers quickly. If at some point my project grows, and I expect to deploy many servers per week, I will need to use this feature.

Also, my understanding is that they have a full set of APIs, so I can interact with them by using programs. I've not used that, but I intend to check it at some point. With only three servers, this is a non-issue, but if I grow to 100 or 200 servers, at some point, I'll need some way to automate my interaction with Linode.

The network connectivity is very good. With the entry-level service that I am using, I am getting one terabyte of data transfer per month. This means that with three servers, I have three terabytes of aggregate, which leaves me a lot of room to grow.

It is important to me that Linode offers worldwide coverage via multiple data centers, although it is also an issue for me. In running my social media site, I am not spying on users or reselling their data. For many users, it is really important to know that their data will be handled according to the law in their country.

I am located on the East coast of Canada but have my node at a data center in California. You can decide where you want to create your note. For example, I know that they have a data center in Europe, so at some point, I will create a node there. Because it's a distributed system, when the user creates their account, they can choose to have it there if they want the data to be stored according to European regulations. The data will remain there forever.

The issue comes about because Linode is a US company, so my users have to wonder how shielded they are from US law. I know of a situation involving Microsoft, which is a very large company, and they were fighting the US government because they have a data center in Ireland. The US wanted to retrieve data from it and Microsoft declined because it was out of their jurisdiction. Some people are concerned with having their data shielded from US law and I spoke with Linode about this, and they don't have an answer. In fact, if the US government asked Linode for help spying on a customer in Europe, Linode would not even be allowed to tell anyone about it. It is clear that Linode has the technology to spy on usage, although that is not to say that they are doing it.

I have been using Linode since 2017.

Linode is a very reliable product. There have been issues over the years but they have always been solved by the support team. They have done maintenance on their side over the years. so there were some service outages. However, they were planned and very short. There have not been very many of them, with perhaps a frequency of once a year. It's very light. I would expect this from any type of company that hosts a web server or something similar.

I'm not their biggest customer, by far. They have an entry-level product called the Nanode, which is a minimal server that costs $5 per month. Linode was the first cloud service to offer such a low-priced, entry-level solution.

This is the only solution I'm using. I have three Nanodes and I started with one in 2017. By the end of 2018, I had moved to three. I hope I will grow because I'm working on a social media system that is not really well-known, called bolixo.org.

I can't comment greatly about scalability because I'm not using it to a great extent. However, I can say that in more than three years that I have been using it, I've never noticed that I wasn't alone. I certainly know that on a physical server, there may be perhaps 60 customers running on it at the same time. This is a guess, as it could just as easily be 30 or 100 users, but the point is that I've never noticed that there was a slow down I could not explain. Essentially, it means that it's well managed.

I know at some point, when I had this problem where I was using it for 12 hours, my server was running 100% of the time. Their first proposition was to move me to a different server, which was less busy. But the problem was me, and we fixed that. At the same time, I think they do a nice job at making sure that they don't put all of the users on the same machine. They balance the load, which is the best I can say about them in terms of scalability. From my perspective, it always looks fast and reliable.

The support has been great, even though I am not their biggest user. I have asked for service two or three times, and it was immediate.

At one point, when I had just rolled out a new version, they called me to say that for the past 12 hours, my system was using 100% of the CPU. According to the terms of service, you are not supposed to do that. I did not expect it because my server should be using very little in terms of CPU resources. As a result of this call, I checked my server.

I knew that the timeline fit because it was 12 hours earlier when I had upgraded, but I checked my server, and it was not busy. During this interaction with support, it was great because they provided me with many key points. Finally, we found that on my side, the tool I was using meant that my server was not busy. However, on their side, it was busy all the time. In the end, we both learned something new about virtualization and cloud computing. So this was my biggest interaction with them and it was nice because we both learned something and I fixed my problem.

In my previous job, I worked with similar solutions from Microsoft and Google. We had a problem where one of our servers at Microsoft stopped working. We couldn't connect and called support to find out what was going on, only to find out that they had deleted it because they thought it was no longer in use.

I find the problem with Microsoft and Google is that they are too big. They are so big that it's like the smaller customers like me don't exist. You're a paying customer but you can't talk to anyone. In our case, we were dealing with Microsoft resellers and I don't know whose mistake it was, where they believed that we were no longer using it, but this would not happen with Linode.

One thing that I learned recently about Linode is that if my account goes unpaid, for whatever reason, then they will not immediately delete my server. Instead, my server will continue to run up to three months, with the balance in the negative. If after that time they hear nothing from me then it will be deleted. They are professional and this is something that makes sense, yet it seems lost on the bigger companies.

The initial setup is very simple, although I am a techie, so it is expected.

This is a very inexpensive product. I pay $5 per month for each of three servers, for a total of $15 per month, and I normally prepay a few months in advance.

I recommend Linode for any company that wants to host a web server or other similar things.

Linode provides a lot of services that I don't use. For example, they provide backup functionality, load-balancing, monitoring, and other features that I do myself. In this regard, I am not a heavy user of their service. That said, I consider myself a very serious Linode user, but I'm using their product very lightly.

I'm glad that they do offer more services because as I grow, I may want to use them. For example, when it comes to something as simple as a backup, it can be a nightmare. I was an IT manager and I found that performing backups was very simple, but it was a nightmare at times. Ultimately, as I get larger, I may rely on them for this instead.

The backup feature is something that they will do professionally. I had an issue when I was working many years ago, where the person in charge of backup was supposed to do it every morning. However, there was an error in the backup system and he was not reporting it to anyone. This went on for months and when they needed the backup, it was not available. This is why it has to be done reliably.

The suitability of this product depends on your use case. If a very small company wants nothing other than to have a web presence, they might want to use GoDaddy, for example, where they're providing that kind of solution. They give you a web page, they run it for you and they do everything. But if you go to some custom solution, you need to provide your own web application and so on, then you have to go to the other side of the cloud, like Microsoft, Amazon with AWS, or Linode.

I don't know how all of their services work, but my understanding is that they're not offering the entry-level machine for someone who just wants to own their own web page. This is a situation where somebody might be using GoDaddy. But if you know how to manage a server, then they have a reliable solution for you that can scale internal offerings. If for example, you want a load-balancing then they have it, although I haven't tried it.

My recommendation is that if you are comfortable managing a server, you want a reliable solution with battery backup and features like that, as well as good network connectivity, then you should try Linode. This is a good product for techies and it allows you to offload many of the core aspects of managing a physical server.

Overall, I can say that what I am using works great. At this point, I am very happy with Linode.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We create applications for other companies to power HR experiences. Mostly somewhat complicated web applications, so that's where we use the SAP Cloud Platform. The web applications may have standard backend launches and use front-end technologies such as React or even the conventional SAP WiFi, so we use the SAP Cloud Platform for those cases.

Though I'm not a massive fan of the SAP Cloud Platform, it has good features, such as its integration with other SAP solutions. When integrating with SAP or even the SAP sister company SuccessFactors and other companies SAP has acquired, you also enjoy data features in the SAP Cloud Platform, such as role-based permissions and other characteristics you can import from SAP.

From what I understand, the SAP Cloud Platform is for implementation on AWS or Azure, and it's not meant to be a full-fledged cloud solution, so while using the platform, an area for improvement is that it has fewer offerings and is less flexible when compared to AWS. AWS has a lot more flexibility than the SAP Cloud Platform.

I've also used Azure in college and AWS in between, and I prefer AWS over the SAP Cloud Platform. The only reason I would ever stick with the SAP Cloud Platform is to create applications integrated with SAP or with other companies within SAP, such as SuccessFactors.

When you go into the SAP Cloud Platform web page, it's a bit bland and has relatively limited offerings. For example, there doesn't seem to be in-house MongoDB support, but I realize there's in-house support for the PostgreSQL database, so there are fewer offerings in the SAP Cloud Platform. Yes, you can always go for a database on the actual MongoDB server rather than depending on the offerings of the SAP Cloud Platform. However, it's still better to support MongoDB from the platform, so payment is consolidated, rather than going to a different location to make a payment.

Another room for improvement in the SAP Cloud Platform is the need to create an SAP subaccount if you need to use the platform unless you have an SSO login by Google or if you're using a different identity provider such as Microsoft or Google. Instead of requiring dependency on SAP, it would be good if users could use the SAP Cloud Platform even without a subaccount on SAP. For example, when hosting an application on AWS or Azure, you don't have to create an account in Amazon or Microsoft. You can still do it using Google. You can use almost anything, so I'd like SAP to improve by removing the dependency, particularly the requirement to create an SAP account to use the SAP Cloud Platform.

In the next release of the SAP Cloud Platform, it would be exciting to see more in-house support for many new features, similar to what AWS or Azure offers. It could be different types of systems instances, though that could already be there, so I'm unsure about that. Including MongoDB support on the platform similar to what's offered on AWS would be great because I use MongoDB a lot, and I've even used it for personal tasks, so I'm a bit biased. For example, in AWS, you can have a MongoDB system with 750GB and limits and calls per month. It would be nice if MongoDB support is available in the SAP Cloud Platform.

I've been employed in the company for fifteen months. I was a freshman out of college and employed here, so I've used the SAP Cloud Platform since joining the company.

The SAP Cloud Platform is stable, and I haven't had many issues with it. My use case for the platform has been mostly limited, though. Hence, I'm unsure if that stability I'm experiencing applies to every single scenario, but whatever I've used the SAP Cloud Platform for so far seems pretty stable.

I've never contacted the technical support for the SAP Cloud Platform, as I only have limited experience with it.

As many of our applications require SAP data and integration, we went for the SAP Cloud Platform, though we also have a separate AWS solution.

I don't have information on how straightforward or complex the SAP Cloud Platform setup is because the technical staff did it for the company. I'm a developer who builds and deploys applications, and I also manage the SAP Cloud Platform a bit, but I'm not involved in setting it up.

Cost-wise, I'm unsure of how expensive the SAP Cloud Platform is.

I'm a site developer, so I'm not technical enough to know which version of the SAP Cloud Platform I'm using.

SAP Cloud Platform is deployed on a public cloud, not on-premises. It's on AWS, with BTP.

In the company, the number of people who have access to and use the SAP Cloud Platform is close to ten. Not everyone has access to it. Only a small group of people has access to the SAP Cloud Platform.

The only advice I would give anyone planning to use the SAP Cloud Platform is more of a personal opinion on how I've used the software. I'd advise you only to use it if you have dependencies associated with SAP. Otherwise, please go for a more generic cloud provider such as AWS or Azure. I prefer Azure over AWS because of the more straightforward and more organized UI and console compared to AWS. Azure is more user-friendly than AWS.

My rating for the SAP Cloud Platform is seven out of ten because it's mostly stable, though I have no information on its licensing costs. After all, that's handled by someone else, so I'm unsure if the platform has any hidden charges. Its integration with SAP solutions is impressive, so if you have applications that utilize SAP data, the SAP Cloud Platform is pretty good. I'm taking away three points from the perfect score of ten because the platform still lacks many features and is very basic compared to the offerings from competitors such as AWS and Azure.

My company has a partnership with SAP.

Our company is a service, build, and innovation partner for SAP in India. We built one of the SAP modules in India. We have a big presence in Singapore and are looking toward clients in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. 

We use the solution for business verticals like dairy where we focus on logistics, arrays, and modules for manufacturing. We do a lot of automations so we focus on the IT infrastructure itself. 

We have moved our focus from the traditional SAP modules to SAP BTP because we are helping customers to do digital transformations. It is the happening module at this point in time. 

A majority of our use cases are enterprise customers. Mid-sized businesses are about 20% to 30% of our customer base. We have started working with small or regional companies in India, Singapore, and Malaysia that are specifically in the dairy sector. 

Internally, we use the solution's sandbox to build POCs. Junior developers can play around with the solution's tools in our in-house creator. 

We have a hybrid environment where the training module and POCs are on a physical infrastructure within our office and a few modules like MMSD are on the cloud. 

The BTP module is important for digital transformations. 

Customers need to be better educated about using the solution's cloud for digital transformation. SAP as a legacy system is missing that flavor. The solution is not a traditional ERP software so should be used as a digital transformation tool. That is the story to project to customers, partners, and sales teams. This will help the solution grow faster than GCP, AWS, or Azure. In fact, Google Cloud Platform is now collaborating with SAP for digital transformation. 

The solution should offer affordable modules that are customized to startups with 50 to 500 employees. Most people think of SAP as being only for big enterprises but it could be very useful for smaller companies. There are 40,000 to 50,000 startups in APAC each year and that is a large volume. Many of the solution's modules could be used by those startups. Google is targeting this market with chat boards and automation tools at a reasonable price or with six months of free usage. SAP should come up with this kind of module and include sandbox so providers can play with a few of the POCs. 

I have been using the solution for nine years. As an organization, my company has been using the solution for five years. 

The stability depends on the process, people, and approach. If you have these three components, then stability is achieved and rated a nine out of ten. 

The solution is scalable. You can get to the highest level if you combine the solution with other products. 

On its own, the solution is rated an eight out of ten for scalability. 

We do not use technical support.

We are moving toward being a PCOE certified organization within two to three months in India, Singapore, and Malaysia. PCOE is the key to success for any customer. 

The setup is easy with the right talent and the right competencies built. 

We are building competency across certifications, resources, hands-on experience, building POCs, and taking POCs to customers. 

We implement the solution for customers as a hybrid model in most instances.

We have a unique lifecycle approach in four stacks. First, we do an infrastructure stack. Then, we do the application stack followed by the data stack. Finally, we build the enhancements such as analytics, AI, or automations. 

The staff required depends on the case. Normally, we deploy one executive, two technicians, two functional resources onsite with the customer, and another 15 to 20 senior, mid, and junior resources offshore. On average, we have 14 to 15 resources per each stack. 

On average, the entire journey for complex organizations and multiple geographies takes between eight months and one year. It requires organizational change and building the mindset of management, technical teams, and business users. It is indeed a journey. 

The pricing is reasonable when compared to other vendors like Oracle who offer technology enterprise resource software. 

Our sales team knows the rates, how to apply discounts, and how to onboard customers. 

Most SAP providers operate very traditionally for developmental, service, and support activities. Slowly, providers are transitioning toward helping customers with a small pool of stacks, building POCs, and implementing in a bigger way to scale up a level. All of this gains confidence with the customer and is the kind of approach providers should follow. 

At the same time, SAP should insist that partners or providers follow certain standards when dealing with customers. 

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

Our specialty is insurance software. We were primarily vendors for software licensing, but we've transitioned our product to the cloud in the last two years.

The deployment depends on what a client wants. We use public clouds for clients that are willing to take our products as a SaaS model. For the ones that are on-prem, we split the load between the core platform, which is on-prem, and non-essential services, which are on the cloud.

I head the sales and marketing team. So, specifically on the feature set side, multi-tenancy is the one that I'm most familiar with. It's also the one that we found to be the most beneficial to us because it allows us to take clients that have multiple sites. For instance, one of our larger clients, which is a bank based out of South Africa, has offices in multiple countries. It allows us to multi-tenant each and create a tenant for each country within multi-tenanted architecture.

The biggest challenge I'm having with the cloud offering is the sizing. So, pricing becomes difficult. The sizing challenge is in terms of being very clear on how your data growth or your requirements would be. It becomes a bit difficult to be able to ensure that there's enough future proofing in what you've signed. At the same time, the whole idea behind the cloud is to be able to pay for what you use. You don't want to pay for something that you're not using.

It has been two years. 

All our clients are enterprise clients. We don't have any small clients.

The main challenge that we have with scalability is the opacity and the pricing. Pricing becomes a challenge because you're not very clear on at what point in time you'll be breaking or you'll be exceeding the size you already acquired. That is the challenge, but Oracle powers some of the biggest cloud platforms in the world, and so do AWS and Azure. All of them have the ability and skill to run very large platforms. 

They have an office locally. Amazon has only just started an office locally. Microsoft has been here for a long time. We've been Oracle Partners for 22 years, So, we're familiar with them anyway.

I know it's very straightforward. Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, and Amazon AWS have some sort of out-of-the-box packages that you can purchase. Oracle also has a sandbox environment that they can provision for you to be able to set up your operation just to try it out. So, the setup is straightforward.

Its pricing is complex, but as partners, we can get away with quite a bit of discounting because we deal with them directly. 

I would rate their pricing probably a one or two out of five because they're quite expensive. Microsoft Azure will probably be the cheapest because depending on the Microsoft product that you have, they have some sort of bundling. There are things that they give you to get you onto Azure. AWS is probably somewhere in the middle.

We work in a very narrow space. Our specialty is insurance software. We have an insurance ERP. We are an ISV. So, we make our own software. In the sub-Saharan African market, we're, in a way, the largest vendor. So, our recommendation for the clientele that we serve would ideally be Oracle. 

There are a lot of data laws that are being enacted. Kenya is one of the big ones enacting data access and data sovereignty laws, which is probably denting a lot of cloud offerings. However, there are a lot of co-located operations where people are providing data centers within the country. The in-country cloud providers, such as MTN and Liquid Intelligent Technologies, give you a lot more flexibility. In that scenario, you get a lot of flexibility in hybridizing the cloud setup that you have, and all three of them would work pretty much the same way. From a Kenyan or African perspective, Oracle and Microsoft have a very good footprint across all the countries we operate in. We're in eight countries now. Amazon AWS is only just starting in Kenya. I don't know if they're anywhere else. They might be in Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa. So, they would have a hub-and-spoke type model in terms of how you'd be able to support it. If I were to recommend anything, it would be Oracle Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

I would rate Oracle Cloud a nine out of ten.

While I cannot say for certain, I believe that we are using the latest version. 

We primarily use the solution to rent servers for storing certain commercial applications.

I especially like the flexibility and scalability of the solution. It is totally scalable. 

While feasible, custom configuration will be more time consuming than standard, although we have not encountered many instances which required us to seek support or advice.

I believe we have been using Amazon AWS for more than 10 years.

The solution is absolutely stable. This is one of its best features. 

The solution is absolutely scalable. 

Amazon allows us to scale up and then down, something important to one of our customers who was in need of temporary increases in the throughput provided to the servers. This allowed us to meet the client's needs for the days or weeks that they required more dynamically located servers, after which we were able to scale down. This we were able to do through Amazon. This was difficult to accomplish beforehand, as the client had private servers for which he was forced to buy machines which he would subsequently keep. 

I cannot comment on Amazon's technical support, as we have not made use of it. 

We did use other solutions prior to Amazon AWS. We made use of local service and dealt with projects involving Google and Microsoft. We also used Microsoft Azure. 

Not long ago  we used Microsoft Azure, though this is necessary with some of our projects. We have different projects which vary with the customer's specifications. Some utilize Azure, although most require the use of Amazon. 

When comparing Microsoft Azure with Amazon AWS, I do not see much disparity. It really comes down to a business choice. If the customer is familiar with Microsoft, then the testing team maintaining the product will need to be acquainted with it as well and its ongoing use is required. Similarly, Amazon will continue to be employed if this is already the case. As such, the difference betwen the solutions does not come down to considerations of a technical nature as they are largely similar. The primary consideration is one of business, the use of one solution and provider over another. 

When it comes to standard configuration, the installation is quick, usually taking one or two days to complete. Custom configuration, while feasible, takes somewhat longer. So far, we have not had many instances in which we required support or advice concerning custom configurations. 

The technical team would be in a better position than I to address any technical issues involved in the setup. From my perspective as a project manager, I feel what we have to be sufficiently good. There is much advertising, information on the advantages of the product and guides available. 

Installation was carried out by our own internal integration team, not externally outsourced. I did not handle it myself. It was done by a team specialist. 

The technical team responsible for the deployment consists primarily of engineers. 

I cannot comment on whether we have seen an ROI, return on investment, as I do not possess this information.

The licensing cost varies with the project involved. Certain projects run around $6,000 per month, some less and others more. We handled many projects, each with its own complexities and specifications. The price ranges of the licenses varies with the complexity of the project. 

Broadly speaking, there is a need to rely on specialists for properly setting up one's accounts and addressing his needs. This is not specific to Amazon, however, but is something prevalent with all providers.

I have assumed the role of both customer and integrator. In the past, I worked as a project manager with different projects employing Amazon products, services and software. 

For the most part, the solutions I used have been public, not private, such as AWS cloud. 

The number of users of the solution varies with the individual project. This can range from 20 to 200 to 500 users. 

Our teams have undertaken every role, be them architecture, development, design or testing. They are all internally integrated. 

I am a fan of Amazon products and generally recommend them to others. Of course, we employ Azure and Google products when the customer specifically requests these. 

Since all products have room for improvement, even when this is not apparent to me, I rate Amazon AWS as a nine out of ten.