Microsoft Azure Reviews

It has multiple features that can be used from the start.

It is easy to use.

I would like to see support for the applications that are currently in place. Ideally, Microsoft Azure should be compatible with the applications that we are using in my environment.

I am not using Microsoft Azure, but I have been doing an assessment for the last five years.

I am using the latest version.

It's a stable product.

Microsoft Azure is a scalable solution.

I have not contacted technical support.

The installation is handled by another team. I was not involved in the installation of this solution.

As of now, there are no monthly or yearly subscription fees.

Definitely, I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate Microsoft Azure a nine out of ten.

I am a manager of a team and we will have approximately 18 applications that will be cloud-based using this solution.

One of the most valuable features of Microsoft Azure is the compatibility with all of our Windows applications and other Microsoft technologies.

I have been using Microsoft Azure for approximately one year.

The solution could improve the stability. However, this could be a configuration issue that we are not been trained.

There is good community support available.

I have previously used AWS and GCP.

Microsoft Azure is more expensive than other solutions, such as GCP. We have found that GCP offers more utilities at a very reasonable price. I think the reason we are having a discount is because of the bank contract we have.

I would recommend this solution.

I rate Microsoft Azure a seven out of ten.

We buy licenses in order to provide an ecosystem on Microsoft, using Azure for documents and also for accessing Office 365 and for corporate messaging and so on.

We use Azure for everything. For example, we use Microsoft Teams on Azure for our conference calls and we also use scrum tools and project management tools as well. we use it on endpoints to work in remote places. Our CRM and procurement platforms sit on Azure. There's also antivirus features on it.

The solution is good for enterprise control and managing various systems.

The solution is quite stable.

The scalability has been good.

We haven't seen any security gaps as of yet. It feels very safe.

The initial setup is very easy.

Technical support has been extremely helpful.

We need more security to be available on our smartphones and mobile devices. They need to improve the protections available in that area in particular. We're actually currently looking for solutions that will protect devices of this nature so that they can safely access the corporate network. 

We began to use this solution last year, in 2020, when we begin to have to do remote work.

The stability of the solution is excellent. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. the performance has been good. 

The scalability of Azure is very good. If a company wants to expand it, it can do so with relative ease.

We have about 300 endpoints in our organization that use Microsoft Azure. 

The technical support on offer is very good. If we ever need help or extra assistance, they are happy to jump in. We're quite satisfied with the level of service on offer.

The installation was mostly straightforward, although we did run into a few small issues. We had the local Microsoft team assist us, however. For the most part, everything ran smoothly.

It typically takes two to four hours to install everything.

We have a technical team of 15 people that can handle deployment and maintenance as necessary. They are IT and help desk personnel as well as two managers. We also have a team that focuses on cybersecurity and information protection.

Our local Microsoft team helped with the installation.

We're on a three-year standard license. We do have to pay for licensing.

We haven't looked at other solutions. We prefer sticking with Azure.

We're customers and end-users.

We use both the cloud and on-premises. 

We're using the latest version of the solution.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. It's very good, however, it has room to grow.

I'd highly recommend the solution to other individuals and organizations.

We use this solution for single sign-on authentication.

We like that you sign in only once and that grants access to all of the Microsft applications, as well as others such as ServiceNow and SAP Concur.

Ease of use could be improved. You wouldn't just be able to use this solution without being trained on it.

We have Microsoft Azure for approximately five years.

We are always updating Microsoft.

It's been pretty stable. There have only been one or two instances where Microsoft went down. One time, it was the building's main operations center that was struck by lightning and caught on fire.

We have 20,000 users in our organization who are using this solution.

As we acquire other companies, we will increase the usage.

Technical support needs improvement. If you are able to get a rep then it's great. If not, you are left hanging.

Previously, we used Okta.

We switched over because we got the Enterprise package with Microsoft Suite.

The initial setup was completed by our internal Microsoft team.

Microsoft Azure definitely provides us with a return on investment.

Licensing costs for Enterprise are on an annual basis. In addition, we pay to have Gartner help us negotiate.

It is best to have a dedicated team because it is not easy to use and get set up or to get acclimatized in the amount of training that you need to become familiar with the solution.

I would rate Microsoft Azure a nine out of ten.

We have a complete Microsoft ecosystem. Azure comes with a variety of parts such as infrastructure as a service and platform as a service or SaaS. We are using it for infrastructure as a service and software as a service as well, so both SaaS and IaaS are being used.

All of our solutions are being deployed on the Azure server. We use the Azure authentication functionality across our organization, which is a single sign-on functionality, so it is Azure-based. We also are incorporating the DevOps framework, which, again, is being integrated to Azure. Our complete backbone is being moved to Azure, and most of our systems are moving to the cloud version.

I think the single sign-on functionality and the ease with which you can deposit things on the cloud have been valuable.

Azure has very robust security functionalities and authentication features, which come with mobility, along with backup and credential checks.

Scalability is also very robust because you can deploy the solutions on the go, and along with that, it provides you an ecosystem to integrate with the existing Microsoft products. For example, we have Power BI, and it's very nicely integrated with the Azure cloud version.

The interface is quite user friendly and intuitive. The reporting is perfect as well.

Integration with other services could be much better.

We have been using Microsoft Azure for over two years now.

The stability is very good. As it is a Microsoft product, the reliability is very good.

Because it's a cloud-based solution, scalability is not an issue at all. We currently have over 200 development team members using Microsoft Azure.

Technical support staff have been responsive, and the support was good.

The initial setup was a bit complex. It was getting ruled out sometimes, but it was at a Pan-India level. So, it was expected to take some time; it took about 8 to 12 months. Overall, it was good.

I believe that we have a three-year license, and I'm happy with the pricing.

I think Azure works best when you have the complete Microsoft ecosystem. Then, you get the real value out of it. In my firm, we have the complete enterprise licensing model. So, we have an integrated ecosystem, which provides a very collaborative way of working, along with the ease of creating.

If I were to rate Microsoft Azure on a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at nine.

I primarily used the solution for hypothetical cases. I used the solution to look at the 2019 active directory environment, some remote SQL storage, and storage access from on-premises to the cloud.

There's a feature for automated tasks. As an administrator, handling administrative-type tasks, it's quite useful. For example, I was spending lots of money when I would spin things up. I'd spin up a SQL server. I'd spin up different types of things. They cost a lot of money. I would get distracted, walk away, and go to bed. I'd get up in the morning, and I'd see I'd have a bill. Therefore, I spun up an automated task and wrote a PowerShell script, put it in an automated task, and it would run at seven o'clock every night, and delete all my resources. It saved me money.

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.

All the devices they have up there that replace existing devices in the real world like load balancers or F5 are helpful. I'm not sure how they relate or how they form compared to F5, or the firewalls compare to the ones that are in data centers, however, they looked all right to me.

The solution is mostly stable.

The product scales extremely well.

It's a bit of a mystery how the storage is going to perform. For example, when you've got a storage device like Hitachi or NetApp, you can run reports on that storage and you can do all this good stuff. I'm not sure if that's the case with Azure. A lot of the stuff is kind of proprietary, at the moment.

The cost is quite high.

You can't control the data as much as you would like to. When it's theirs, it's theirs. With Hitachi, Hitachi has its own policies. You can move data around based on how much it's used into lower-cost discs and whatnot. You might be able to do that with Azure. However, I can't verify that.

The initial setup is complex.

They need to make storage easy and offer more interconnectivity between solutions.

I've used the solution for about a year or so. Maybe a year and a half at most. It hasn't been that long.

In terms of stability, I've seen it go down twice now. They've had two problems with the active directory. That said, I would describe it as stable. They have different sites, regions, and whatnot, where you can move your data around in case you lose a data center or you lose a region. However, if you lose the active directory, that can take everything down.

It's not any more stable than an enterprise environment, to be honest. Maybe a little bit, however, if you lose a network connection to it, that's not stable.

I worked in a bank, a huge 50,000 employee enterprise. I saw their infrastructure go up and down about the same, once or twice a year. That's about the same as Azure, therefore, it's not anything different than an enterprise. You can make an enterprise resilient if you have lots of domain controllers and you do lots of redundant paths. 

The solution is very scalable. It's one of its great selling points. If a company needs to scale, it can do so with ease.

I've never been in touch with technical support. I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are.

For a layperson or someone who is not trained, it wasn't an easy initial setup. It had some complexities.

I've personally gotten used to the process. The deployment, for example, wouldn't take that long now. While in the beginning, a deployment might take a month, now that I am more comfortable with the solution and more familiar, I can likely do it in a few days. 

That said, it depends on a company's plans and its own unique environment and complexities. It can vary. Most people seem to struggle with all of the connections they had before.

The number of people you need to deploy or maintain the solution really depends on the size of the environment. After implementation, you could probably scale back your employees from 10% to 50% with Azure.

I can handle an implementation myself. I'm getting better and faster at it.

I've found the cost to be a bit high. You also get dinged for extra things along the way.

The charges are also unpredictable. Even if you think something is a relatively static item, they'll charge you for it and it will change your expectation of the cost.

I've looked at other solutions, such as Hitachi and Netapp.

The biggest struggle a person would have these days, as an architect, is to determine what the cost-benefit of going to Azure would be rather than going to a storage device such as a Hitachi or a NetApp. Which has better value? What's going to be better in the next couple of years? You can really get screwed if you're going to be pulling data down from the cloud. If you pull a lot of data from the cloud, it's going to cost you. You don't get charged for putting it up. You get charged for pulling it down.

I basically used the solution to study.

I used a few different deployment models. I made an on-prem environment, Hyper-V environment, on my laptop and I connected it to the cloud.

I'd advise those considering the solution to not put all of their eggs in one basket. By that, I mean, it's a good idea to go hybrid and not full cloud. Going hybrid covers that network loss that you could suffer if you lose the network. If you lost a data center or a region, you could still have your on-prem server running an image of the cloud onsite.

I'd give the solution an eight out of ten. I haven't had a chance to study AWS or Google, however, I like this solution very much.

We have a private cloud, but we are interested in having a hybrid cloud that includes Microsoft Azure. This use of it as an Infrastructure as a Service will help us to expand our scale using our hardware.

Primarily, we use Azure to test services and solutions that we want to use on the public cloud. Nothing in production is being used on Azure yet because of latency.

Azure is helpful when you want to set up a server, such as a Linux test server. For example, we can transfer our code to the test server and do a comparison.

This solution is easy to use. It has quite a good interface for things like provisioning a server.

Provisioning a server is fast, taking only one or two minutes before it is ready. In our private cloud, this process still takes longer.

At this point, the latency is too high to use Azure in our production environment.

I would like to see support for data streaming in the future because I understand that currently, data streaming is not there. It would work like Kafka does, in Microsoft Azure. If they can provide the Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service, it will be better.

For example, if want to use Kafka, I should be able to purchase Microsoft Azure and then use my Kafka license. This would also give me support. Right now, using it requires first getting a server through Infrastructure as a Service, then getting a Kafka license, then installing the server in the cloud.

We started using Microsoft Azure last year.

Azure is a scalable product. We are not using it extensively yet because we just started exploring it for use as a testing server. However, if we are satisfied with the security and issues with latency then we are going to set up performance tests.

We have not had any issues with support. The interface is quite user-friendly, so we have not needed to contact them. I think that they do have assistance available for onboarding, or creating a server.

We did evaluate other solutions but that is the job of another team in the company. I was only told that we also tried Google Cloud.

The initial setup is straightforward. Microsoft Azure provides an easy interface to log in and create a server.

The pricing is flexible. Our company engaged in negotiations to get a better price, which resulted in a two-year contract.

It seems that the cost of using the service in the short term is definitely good. However, in the long-term it is different. The long-term cost is higher than if you set up the servers on-premises, which is something that could be improved through more competitive pricing.

Our usage is rather limited right now but for what we use it for, the product is quite good and we are satisfied with the services. This is a product that I can recommend for anybody who does not want to invest a lot of money in their own hardware.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The existing infrastructure of our customers is on-prem. We will be migrating or moving from on-prem to Microsoft Azure cloud.

We don't have to spend money to purchase the hardware, set up a data center, get people to work on it, and maintain security. We don't have to spend any money on these things. It is ready to use, and resources are available for us. We just create an account on Azure and start using the services. 

The time to market is very fast. We just supply the resources, virtual machines, and databases, and our applications are up and running. This helps our customers and us to be more future-ready and cloud-ready.

Its scalability is valuable. Depending on our requirements, we can add as many virtual machines as we want. We are able to get high availability for services. Services are always available, and they have the maximum uptime. If there is any issue with one of the services, another service is always available. 

It is pay-as-you-go. You don't have to spend any money upfront. You use the service and pay after one month or a couple of hours of use.

For deploying multiple resources in a big number, such as in hundreds, we need a streamlined process and more user-friendly scrips. The scripts have to be more user-friendly, and they should also supply some standard templates to deploy multiple resources at a time. Currently, it is very easy to deploy a couple of resources, but if you want to deploy multiple resources, it becomes complex.

The material that they provide for integration with an existing on-prem data center is complex. They have to make them user-friendly. The scripts related to resource management need to be simplified.

I have been using this solution for one year. In our company, we have been using it for four to five years.

It has a very high uptime for services. They are able to provide as per Service Level Agreement (SLA). We are not seeing any downtime for our applications. Our users have not reported any issues. 

They have their internal redundancy for hardware and software. If there is an issue with any hardware, another hardware is ready to take the load.

It is very scalable. We can add as many virtual machines as we want. We have 400 to 500 people who are using this solution.

I have not worked with support. We work in a design team where we have a dedicated Microsoft account partner to provide support. That support is fine. If there is an issue with running virtual machines or there are any infrastructure issues, another team takes care of that. I've not got any complaints from them that their support is not working.

Previously, we had the regular on-prem solution with our own data center. We had to deploy physical servers, networks, databases, and everything else. We needed flexibility and scalability for our customers and applications, and that's why we moved to the cloud.

The initial setup was easy. 

It is operational expenditure (OPEX). There is no cost upfront. When you start using it, you have to pay the charges. Initially, the cost is less, but after you start using it more and more, the cost will go higher. It is a little bit costly, but that is okay because you get better resources. You also get better support in terms of how you create the resources. Documentation is available, and the SLAs are met. 

Companies are now starting to switch over to Azure, and before doing any kind of migration, they need to plan each and everything from scratch. They should have a Microsoft consultant or somebody from Microsoft so that they can plan well before using Azure. Otherwise, they will not be aware of where they are spending and how they can reduce the spending. They would also not know whether their security compliances are being met and whether their network is being fully utilized or having some issues. Proper planning has to be done before using Azure. 

I would rate Microsoft Azure an eight out of ten.

Within my company, there are roughly 150 employees using this solution. We need about 30-35 people for maintenance.

It's been pretty useful in terms of migration and disaster recovery strategy.

I have been working with Microsoft Azure for roughly four years.

This solution is quite stable. We haven't had any issues stability-wise.

Scalability is good. I would rate it high, scalability-wise.

Microsoft's technical support could be improved.

There are certain areas on the Level 1 to Level 2 support-side that are not exactly great. We have issues with our Linux operating system. I don't think we've had delays as such but I would say that's one area there might be some scope for improvement.

I personally used to work with AWS, but that was at another company.

The initial setup was fairly easy. Pretty much all the services are easy to deploy — not very complicated as such. 

The cost could definitely be lower.

You have to look out for the external storage costs — it can be a bit of a surprise. You have to do your budgeting. We didn't really anticipate that the storage expenses would be so much higher than anything else. That's something people have to budget and account for before they migrate to the cloud.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this soluting a rating of eight.

I work for a Naval Shipyard. We build fighter ships for fighter aircraft. The Navy is our sponsor. Everything that we do is Navy or Navy-related. A lot of what we do is classified; however, I can say that we do some robotic AI work. 

Microsoft is our corporate authentication piece, so everything has to authenticate to Microsoft Azure. Everything in the whole entire company has to authenticate there. Even if you're building something, you have to be leading up to the point where it's going to authenticate to Microsoft. They are the vendor of choice, as far as authentication, but they're not the vendor of choice as far as all things at the shipyard. 

Our entire organization uses this solution. Size-wise, we're similar to a small city.

No features really stand out in particular. The reason that we use Microsoft Azure is that Microsoft has left us no choice — that's what I would say. If you use Microsoft, you've been curtailed in your on-prem data center. There are certain things we can do with Azure on-prem that we can't do on the cloud. We're now fully in the cloud. But even most of the Office products, which are in Office 365, are still on-prem. I came to this company to do cloud, but the company isn't ready to go to the cloud. It sounds like upper management is going to be changing some of the business structures. The better information I can give upper management, as far as our features and capabilities, will help them to make better business decisions. That's kind of where I am currently.

The support, the cost, the way they have the tiers, this could all be improved. For example, our company has been purchasing Microsoft Office 365 cloud licensing for approximately five years, and we do not have any production. We have five divisions and these divisions have different classification and levels of data. This company has changed hands over the years. We now lead the was as far as IT, but the corporate office didn't do a top-down infrastructure. It's a long story, but the way that we do things is not the way that everybody else does things. Just because others are moving to XYZ doesn't mean we're going to go there today. We might look and see how everybody else is doing everything, and once we decide we're ready to go, then we'll go. It might be 10 years later. It might be next week, but we don't follow the crowd. We follow the Navy.

I have been working with Microsoft since the very beginning.

Although I am not the administrator, there are some things that are kind of quirky. The biggest problem is that we're a really, really, really big SharePoint user. Everything that's 100% SharePoint online, is not a one-for-one into the SharePoint that we have on-prem. 

Security is a problem, that's why we only allow web products for Office 365. SharePoint doesn't give us everything that we need. These are a few of the drawbacks for us.

Scalability is complex, but only because our company is complex.

Support depends. For the professional services, they're usually pretty good.

For other divisions, the support hasn't been that good. Anytime we have problems and we try to ask for support, what we paid for is one thing and what we're getting is another thing. Because of this, we often have to renegotiations with Microsoft. 

The initial setup is very complex because we're a complex corporation.

The review board has actually approved all of the Microsoft Office 2016 products and applications. We have the licenses, however, we're not using them.

Teams is the one collaborative product that everybody wants to use. We've approved Microsoft Teams on the web only. Because of our security constraint, we don't want our users to use every feature that's actually on Teams. We don't want to allow third-party vendors to use that application in order to get into our environment. 

For example, you can share your screen, but I can't share my screen. I can share an application if it's been approved, but I can't share my screen. The only way I can actually talk to you is if we talk about topical issues that you would read about in the newspaper or something like that. I can't tell you anything that's company proprietary.

Right now we're looking at Microsoft TFS, Azure on DevOps. However, all of the features have to be configured by someone. It's not that ADO can't do it, it's just that it would take a lot of time — we'd have to have someone physically come in and do it. That would require Microsoft Professional Services which costs a lot of money. Often, people can just buy stuff off the shelf when they want to use another product. For example, all the ALM tools actually integrate with TFS. So, if we have a product that already has that capability, why are we purchasing those new products? Why are we doing a POC for that? So that's what kind of hat I wear here.

If you're interested in going with Microsoft, my advice would be to do it. Everybody's using Microsoft.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of seven.

The problem is that I'm an old Microsoft engineer. I like to build it the way I want to build it.  I don't want it to be SaaS. I liked the fact that you could build your servers in the AWS environment and build out the servers the way you want. They're actually taking away a lot of the applications. More and more companies are switching to SaaS or IAS, etc.

Now, the structure is going towards SaaS. I think I have a three-year lifecycle on my licenses and then I will have to drop or either migrate my data to SaaS. It's probably cheaper for people to go that way, but it gives you less flexibility. There's probably more security, but you're depending on the vendor's security or however they have that set up. You lose a lot of your flexibility when you go into SaaS.