Hitachi Enterprise Cloud vs. Microsoft Azure

1) If you are gathering lots of data from many different points and transforming that data into something customized, and you need it secure yet accessible, this is a great option. 2) If you are looking for a platform and not just a service provider, this would be a great option. As a platform, there is a one-stop-shop feeling that gets you some better customer service and performance. But it also locks you into one provider, so don’t jump in if you feel like you’ll want a lot of flexibility. 3) Building or running VMware is really what this platform is all about. If you’re creating an app drawing from some complex data/sources, it’s an easier go with this tool than most others.

Incentivized

Azure is particularly well suited for enterprise environments with existing Microsoft investments, those that require robust compliance features, and organizations that need hybrid cloud capabilities that bridge on-premises and cloud infrastructure. In my opinion, Azure is less appropriate for cost-sensitive startups or small businesses without dedicated cloud expertise and scenarios requiring edge computing use cases with limited connectivity. Azure offers comprehensive solutions for most business needs but can feel like there is a higher learning curve than other cloud-based providers, depending on the product and use case.

• It fills a niche that was needed before we as a company fully embraced the cloud with Azure. It was a great introduction to the cloud and there are some features I wish were more readily available with some of our Azure tools. Staying on top of your expenses is much harder without the transparency Hitachi provides.
• It allows the small team managing it to simplify cloud operations using prebuilt computing and storage templates. Very easy to monitor, manage and optimize cloud operations.
• Pre-Engineered, turnkey solutions with prebuilt services make it quick and easy to select the service needed for each app. With many different suppliers, we cater to many different connectors.

Incentivized

• Microsoft Azure is highly scalable and flexible. You can quickly scale up or down additional resources and computing power.
• You have no longer upfront investments for hardware. You only pay for the use of your computing power, storage space, or services.
• The uptime that can be achieved and guaranteed is very important for our company. This includes the rapid maintenance for security updates that are mostly carried out by Microsoft.
• The wide range of capabilities of services that are possible in Microsoft Azure. You can practically put or create anything in Microsoft Azure.

Incentivized

• Their ability to offer a public cloud solution that feels like a private cloud solution is a great feature, but not one that is easily understood outside of someone using the tool. I think they need more training and marketing around what they can do for cloud-native development.
• I think they are lacking a solution to play in other playgrounds easily. Many of their offerings are better than what Azure provides, so I think there is room for them to leverage Azure size with customized, personalized features.
• They really need something big to set them apart from the larger players in this space. I think of Snowflake with their amazing pricing model and the “oops!” button that undoes serious accidental deletes. Something like that would grow the user base and make it a major player.

Incentivized

• The cost of resources is difficult to determine, technical documentation is frequently out of date, and documentation and mapping capabilities are lacking.
• The documentation needs to be improved, and some advanced configuration options require research and experimentation.
• Microsoft's licensing scheme is too complex for the average user, and Azure SQL syntax is too different from traditional SQL.

Moving to Azure was and still is an organizational strategy and not simply changing vendors. Our product roadmap revolved around Azure as we are in the business of humanitarian relief and Azure and Microsoft play an important part in quickly and efficiently serving all of the world. Migration and investment in Azure should be considered as an overall strategy of an organization and communicated companywide.

As Microsoft Azure is [doing a] really good with PaaS. The need of a market is to have [a] combo of PaaS and IaaS. While AWS is making [an] exceptionally well blend of both of them, Azure needs to work more on DevOps and Automation stuff. Apart from that, I would recommend Azure as a great platform for cloud services as scale.

Incentivized

It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators

Incentivized

We were running Windows Server and Active Directory, so [Microsoft] Azure was a seamless transition. We ran into a few, if any support issues, however, the availability of Microsoft Azure's support team was more than willing and able to guide us through the process. They even proposed solutions to issues we had not even thought of!

Incentivized

As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.

Hitachi Enterprise Cloud is a pleasant surprise, offering better management and control of your cloud containers and VMware. It is a platform and contains all you need to get going, so there is great appeal in smaller companies and isolated divisions/departments in larger companies. If I were managing a small group with a specific endpoint I would no doubt choose a solution like this, but being a large corporation we tend to drive towards larger solutions with internal competencies to support those larger roll-outs.

Incentivized

As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" platform for cloud. However, Azure PowerShell is helping close this gap. Google Cloud is the leading containerization platform, largely thanks to it building kubernetes from the ground up. Azure containerization is getting better at having the same storage/deployment options.

Incentivized

• The positive pricing aspect has been with the rate card and compute pricing transparency, being better able to manage the budget.
• It is a small solution for us, so we are probably not realizing the potential savings we could get by rolling all our corporate cloud work into a single solution, but it is also good to keep multiple irons in the fire, so to speak.
• The implementation has done very well in a small, controlled atmosphere. So while the ROI may not have been as high as we’d like to see, the success of the project has made it valuable none the less.

Incentivized

• For about 2 years we didn't have to do anything with our production VMs, the system ran without a hitch, which meant our engineers could focus on features rather than infrastructure.
• DNS management was very easy in Azure, which made it easy to upgrade our cluster with zero downtime.
• Azure Web UI was easy to work with and navigate, which meant our senior engineers and DevOps team could work with Azure without formal training.

Incentivized