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.

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.

The monitoring features are very good.

Some of the dashboard features can be improved.

Some of the backup solutions for SAP are not compatible. For example, we have a Sybase database running, and Azure does not have an agent tool for connecting with it. This means that we have to use a third-party tool to properly backup our SAP Sybase system.

We have been using Microsoft Azure for between two and three years.

Azure is a stable product.

This is a scalable solution and we have been 200 and 300 people who use it.

The technical support is really good.

We have not used another public cloud.

We have an in-house team, and between 10 and 20 people maintain it.

The pricing model can be improved because we find that Azure pricing is a bit high.

We are planning to migrate our SAP system to the cloud, so we have been looking at and comparing different cloud solutions. We are analyzing and comparing Google Cloud Platform, Amazon, and the IBM Cloud. After we compare them all we will make a decision.

The suitability of this product depends on the customer's requirements and needs. AWS is stable and nice, the Google Cloud Platform is really improving a lot, and IBM Cloud is also available. The decision for which to use will be based on what kind of solutions you are deploying and how you want to integrate them. Ultimately, it is best to choose the provider that is most suitable for your existing workload. 

Overall, this is a good solution but there are certainly features that need to be improved, as well as the pricing.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

This solution is used to migrate data to the cloud. They have a few different ways that this can happen. You can use the public cloud or private cloud, for example. Or you can use a hybrid as well. 

If you want to add some services, they have that capability to do that. Even if you want to improve your network, and you want to add your storage, or you want to maybe improve the speed of your infrastructure, they have that capability. 

They own a SaaS model. They have applications such as Microsoft Office 365, which is a cloud service. When I was using Oracle Linux desktop, I was still able to use Microsoft Office 365 to do my daily work.

If I want to send a Word document, I don't have to install anything. I don't have to hassle with the installation of Microsoft Office in Linux. It's quite a process to do that. However, if we have the internet, we can do everything we need to without having to install anything. You can do all of the Office activities including PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook. It's very easy.

Microsoft offers free courses and an exam on their products. Many of my colleagues who use Microsoft Azure take advantage of those free courses to help them learn about the solution in depth.

It would be nice if there was an on-premises version of the solution, and it wasn't just cloud-based. Oracle, for example, has both capabilities. Some people don't understand the cloud, or are hesitant, and this might prevent them from adopting the product. Also, migrating to the cloud can bring a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of trouble to some companies. Some prefer that their data is not moved from the premises, or have requirements to that effect. If Microsoft could address these concerns, that would be ideal.

The solution has a lot of terms of services. These should be simplified.

I haven't been using the solution for very long. In fact, it has only been a few weeks at this point.

The solution is quite stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's quite reliable for our organization.

I have noticed that they have the capability to scale. Even you are not using some of the services, you can still scale. Let's say, you have bought large storage, and you notice that you no longer want to use it anymore. You have the chance to reduce that and not have to pay for more than you need. You pay as you go, therefore they have the capability to accommodate shifts in sizing. Most of the cloud providers do have that capability whereby you don't have to use something that you do not need.

We do plan to use the solution into the future as it does offer us good flexibility.

I'm not really on the technical side of things, and therefore I don't generally deal with technical support. Therefore, I can't speak to their level of knowledge or their responsiveness.

Previously, I've also used Oracle and IBM.

I personally didn't have to do an installation.

All you need to do is read the documentation, and everything you need to know is right there. It's quite straightforward in that sense.

The solution offers a freemium model. There are some things that they can give for free, however, if you exceed certain levels in terms of what you were initially given, then they have to charge you for that. That's why, usually when you create the account, they want you to use your credit card so that when you exceed your limit, they will be able to charge you for that.

When you want to do the license, there is a certain amount that you need to pay. The pricing varies according to usage and differs in terms of the services and the models that you need. For those who need a platform as a service for developers, or infrastructure as a service, or software as a service, they provide for those scenarios. However, the pricing will depend on the service that you want.

I'm a consultant. I work as a partner with Microsoft.

We're using the latest version of the solution at this time.

I would recommend the solution to others.

I'd rate it nine out of ten overall.

We have deployed the NMS network monitoring system in Azure. We can monitor the network through it. There is no need to deploy an NOC (Network Operations Center) in my country. If we use Audiovi and Airspace there and install the NMS network element and Microsoft, everything is configured in Azure. Configuration is done remotely from anywhere. By entering Azure, we monitor the NMS network.

The stability could be improved.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

The solution’s scalability is good. 

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward and user-friendly. 

Azure offers a trial version, which you can use for free before proceeding to payment.

We are using the free version.

I recommend the solution to use it. This solution is cost-effective, with high uptime and zero downtime.

We use the solution to set up access to process queuing, configure virtual instances, obtain a domain name, acquire the necessary certificates, and deploy the web server to the internet.

Microsoft Azure has proven to be beneficial for our organization due to its quick deployment capabilities. Setting up virtual machines or any required infrastructure is fast. 

The tool needs to improve its navigation. 

I have been using the product for two to three years. 

Microsoft Azure's stability depends on the resources allocated. If you provision sufficient resources, it tends to be stable. However, choosing lower resources, like two gigs of RAM and CPUs, might lead to less stability.

The product is scalable. My company has five users. 

I haven't contacted the technical team yet. 

Microsoft Azure's deployment is straightforward for me, given my experience and understanding of the Azure system. It is not difficult for me to handle.

The tool's deployment was done in-house. 

I rate the product an eight out of ten.