Microsoft Azure Reviews

We use Microsoft Azure in two places. The first use case involves the Chatbot framework, and we've been using that for 18 months. This is what we predominately use it for.

Our second use involves hosting some of our critical applications. It allows us to address some of our human resource use cases in the area of policy queries, as well as some backend actions.

The automated connectors to some of our critical enterprise systems are an important feature. These are very large, critical, global HCM systems.

The library of predefined use cases is very helpful and we found the HR use case that we needed within it.

There are improvements needed from a roadmap standpoint. Some of the roadmap items that they typically publish don't move at the same pace.

The predominant area in need of improvement is support.

Microsoft needs to continue working on out-of-the-box connectors to contemporary products in the market, specific to different verticals such as finance and HR. Investing in this would be helpful because it means deploying solutions faster. We've had challenges in terms of having to custom-build some of it and at the same time, the roadmap contains more connectors.

We have been using Microsoft Azure for the past 18 months.

This is definitely a stable platform. I haven't seen issues in that respect.

Azure is a scalable platform. We have more than 10,000 people in the organization that use it from an application standpoint. The end-users could be managers or other employees in a variety of roles.

Our in-house administration team has fewer than 40 people that work with it.

At the moment, we have no plans to increase our usage.

The primary support needs to be improved. I would rate them as moderate because from a technical and service guarantee perspective, they are pretty good. However, when it comes to new roadmap items or handling requests, or adding new activities, they are moderate.

This is the first such solution that we put into place.

The initial setup is pretty much straightforward.

Our initial deployment took between six and eight weeks. This period had more to do with our setup being compliant with some of the features on Azure. 

We worked with the Microsoft consulting team during the deployment.

The team was knowledgeable but there were some areas that they could have done better. For example, we had issues with our enrollment and some of our IT requirements at the organizational level. We could have perhaps used some architecting skills.

For permanent maintenance, so we have a hybrid model when it comes to maintenance. We've outsourced some of it, and that really comes from a fixed contract so we don't control the number of people that work on it.

Internally, we have two people; one who manages the services, and the other one is more of an administrator.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Microsoft Azure is to first, very clearly agree on the terms of deployment. Second, get the initial design and prototypes for your specific implementation vetted and signed off at an early stage because this will help with security clearances and data privacy clearances. These were the two major learning points for us.

In summary, this is a good platform but there are several areas for improvement.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The solution does not have a specific version. We are talking more about a resource group. Whichever is the latest version is the one we use. 

The solution is used across the industry. Currently, I am working on something involving the education industry. My previous assignment focused more on clinical trials or medical data. These are two of the most recent and largest projects I have undertaken. 

The solution has given us more agility, scalability and opportunity to optimize the cost.

The solution should have better interface capabilities. 

There should be be better support for microservices and containers.

I have been using Microsoft Azure since 2010. I have used it within the past 12 months. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution gives our organization scalability. 

We have plans to increase its usage. 

Microsoft Azure's technical support is good.

We did not use another solution prior to Microsoft Azure. 

The initial setup is straightforward.

The deployment does not take long. In fact, the deployment time is not really applicable. When it comes to Azure, we are talking more about a platform than a proper product. I'm more into migration. 

In our case, it is we who are the consultants. As such, we are mostly into deployment at the moment and not maintenance. There are other providers who handle the latter. 

I am not in a position to comment on whether we have seen a return on our investment.

The licensing is pay per usage, so it can be both monthly and yearly. It supports all.

There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees. There are various licensing programs, so the customer may choose the one which aligns with his needs. 

The solution provides platform as a service and infrastructure service, both of which are good.

Since Microsoft Azure supports close to 200 or 300 products, we are not talking about a single product or solution and this makes it difficult for me to provide advice. Being a platform, there may be thousands of users who are making use of it. However, in my organization, we are talking about nearly 200. 

I don't have specific advice to give. This product lends good support when it comes to Microsoft tech. If the organization is a part of the overall Microsoft ecosystem, employing things such as O365 or M365, then Microsoft Azure does a better job than the competition. 

I rate Microsoft Azure as a nine out of ten. 

The use case for Azure is maintenance. Azure maintains the infrastructure so we don't have to, and that's the best use case for any cloud-based application.

Azure is very flexible.

Any time you use a cloud service, there are increased security risks. If you want more security, you have to have private hosting.

I've been using Azure for about five or six years.

In general, I think Microsoft support is strong.

Azure could be cheaper. Of course, if you ask anyone, they'll always say it could be cheaper. We are paying monthly.

I rate Azure nine out of 10. I would recommend it to others.

We are primarily using the solution for One Drive on Microsoft, as well as Office 365 and Microsoft Teams.

The solution is easy to use.

It's great for ready-to-use services. 

It's set up to handle any cloud requirement.

The solution is stable. 

The scalability is great.

Microsoft needs to simplify its licensing, which is hard to understand currently.

The security of the solution could always be much better. 

We've been using the solution for three to four years. It's been a while.

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The scalability of the product is great. Due to the fact that it is a cloud deployment, it scales well. 

I've used technical support in the past. They are okay. We've been satisfied with them. 

We are also using AWS. 

We have a team that handles the implementation. 

Depending on the situation, you don't need too many people to maintain it. We always start with one resource and go from there. 

The licensing is always confusing with Microsoft. It's very hard to understand. 

Due to the fact that we're using the cloud deployment of the solution, we're always on the latest version. 

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

I would recommend the solution to other users and organizations. Azure is the first ones to come onto the market. They have a very good solution.

We are resellers. We use Microsoft to provide a service to our customers.

We offer SaaS software for the marketplace. 

We offer SaaS software for the B2B marketplace and provide solutions to our customers through public cloud infrastructure.

We have yet to explore this solution and what it has to offer because we are still in the transformation phase from Amazon to Azure.

It could be more open to external solutions.

Integration with other ecosystems would be beneficial. During this transitional period, this is our primary concern. For example, when we offer solutions to our customers, we must connect to their IT ecosystem, which we are unable to do in some cases.

A good strategy would be to include a feature for integrating with external ecosystems.

We would also like to improve the security.

We switched from Amazon to Azure six months ago.

In the short time that we have been using this solution, it appears to be stable enough for our needs.

We work with 50 companies that use this solution on a daily basis.

We have no issues with the technical support. It's fine.

We needed to find someone who could help us. It depends on the support contract you have with Microsoft. 

The standard level of support was obviously insufficient for us, and we had to resort to a more advanced level of support for partners who had complex technical questions. This meant that there would be some additional support costs, but everything would be fine once you made that decision.

We use Auth0, which is an IAM-based solution.

We are using an identification solution provided by a cloud provider. We are based on Azure. We work with a Microsoft Azure infrastructure, and we use the solution provided by Microsoft to authenticate the users.

It is easy to install.

It took us a few months to deploy. I did not take a lot of time to move to Azure but moving to another infrastructure using microservice takes longer.

We are coming from a moderate approach to installation and going for a modular one that is based on microservices.

To be able to manage the microservices, we made some modifications.

The length of time it took to complete the implementation was primarily due to changes we made to the infrastructure that was required for our customers.

We have a dedicated team of ten people who will deploy and manage the infrastructure.

We have a separate Dev team for the application itself.

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.

We provide a solution as a service to our customers. They pay us for our services, which are based on Microsoft.

We would recommend this solution to others who are considering using it.

I would rate Microsoft Azure an eight out of ten.

The typical use case is where you are trying to avoid investing in a solution that you are only going to be using on a limited basis. You need a pay-as-you-go solution where you can have access when you need it, but you don't have to make a major long-term investment. For example, say you need a software application but you want someone to build that application for you, and you don't want to invest in hardware or networking or other things for on-premise deployment. You can have your solution hosted on the cloud on the Azure platform so that it can be accessed from anywhere and you don't need someone to take care of it or maintain it. You can access your software application from your home or wherever without having to worry about the server going down or anything like that.
In these cases, a cloud-based platform like Azure or Amazon Web Services can be useful.

Azure is very user-friendly. I was able to create some database servers really fast. The user interface is intuitive. I don't work on the networking or firewall side of things. So I'm not familiar with those areas. 

Some of the capabilities available in an on-premise SQL Server aren't available in Azure. For instance, we found Azure Managed Instance to be lacking in certain aspects. One of our clients decided to stay on-premise rather than migrate to Azure because of this reason. Maybe Microsoft is working on building these capabilities in the future, and we are unaware. 

I've been using Microsoft Azure for a couple of years.

With Azure's capabilities, like sharding, we can really scale it up. They also offer features to increase performance, such as the ability to switch between performance tiers as needed.

It's fairly easy, but it really depends on a lot of factors, such as the size of your application, how many databases you have and how many web servers you have. 

We outsource some of the work of the actual deployment to external consultants. And we don't do any work on the hardware side of things ourselves.

Azure uses enterprise licenses, and I believe they are on a yearly basis. One piece of feedback from other users I have heard from is that Azure is somewhat expensive, so I would advise anyone thinking about this solution to be aware of the cost. You need to take into account the configuration you are going with or it could turn out to be a more expensive solution than you anticipated. Sometimes, I feel that it may not be very straightforward for a consumer to estimate the cost. It's important to be clear in terms of your budget and what you're actually purchasing.

I would rate it eight out of 10.

We are using Microsoft Azure for the UAT environment and data warehousing purposes.

I have been using Microsoft Azure for approximately seven years.

The solution is stable.

Microsoft Azure is scalable.

We have 12,000 users using this solution.

I use other cloud services, such as Amazon AWS and Google Cloud services.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We have a team of 30 that does the implementation of the solution.

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.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Microsoft Azure a seven out of ten.

We are customers of Microsoft and I'm the IT technical manager. 

The most valuable feature for me is the high level of availability and the 99% uptime of the system. I also appreciate the technical simplicity of the system in terms of implementation.

I'm currently based in the Philippines and the availability of services locally could be improved. Technically speaking, I'd like to see more flexibility in terms of storage or resource allocation. Resourcing is currently quite fixed so that if you want to move between level two and level three resources, or customize resources, you can't do that. The discrepancy in terms of costing is around $200. If they improved flexibility for selecting resources it would be easier for us to get the costing approved.

I've been using this solution for around two years. 

The solution is stable, one of the most reliable in the Philippines. The downside is that currently all the services are outside the country. Singapore and Hong Kong provide the closest service but we have laws that prohibit certain amounts of data residing in other countries. None of that affects stability. 

One of the key takes from using cloud services is scalability and flexibility. If a company hits some roadblocks financially, they can reduce infrastructure and also reduce what they use in the cloud lowering the cost. 

I've had several outages or major issues and I've had good experience with technical support. They resolved the problems in less than a day. The only downside is that in the Philippines you're dealing with the vendor and not Microsoft direct. I have two steps of support; if the vendor can't provide the support, then they escalate to Microsoft. 

The initial setup is quite simple. We currently have 20 users on the infrastructure side in addition to 20+ developers.

We have difficulty in getting the costing approved. We pay for a virtual machine and the resources currently implemented there, then we need a license from Microsoft Windows OS and the database itself. In our latest license purchase, the manager approved a monthly fee of around $2,000 for the resources we use. If you're going to the cloud, that's currently included in the cost and will be less if you have the software assurance from Microsoft; on-prem is more expensive.

The big takeaway on this product is the high availability of the system on cloud and reduction of on-prem costing. There are no concerns about the electrical doing some redundancy in between, cooling, purchasing, procurement of IT equipment. Instead of budgeting based on CAPEX, we're doing it from an OPEX point of view. One of the key takes for moving to the cloud is the cost. You can leverage with the cloud and let go of some things required to maintain a system on-prem, the kinds of things that alleviate some complexity in doing maintenance of the system. The solution is suitable for any size company. 

I highly recommend Microsoft Azure. Everyone knows Microsoft so the learning curve is easier. I rate the solution nine out of 10.