Alfresco vs. Microsoft Azure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Alfresco
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
The Alfresco platform, from Hyland, delivers comprehensive cloud-native content services. It is used to intelligently activate processes and content to accelerate the flow of business.N/A
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.
$29
per month
Pricing
AlfrescoMicrosoft Azure
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AlfrescoMicrosoft Azure
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AlfrescoMicrosoft Azure
Features
AlfrescoMicrosoft Azure
Enterprise Content Management
Comparison of Enterprise Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Alfresco
8.2
7 Ratings
1% above category average
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Content capture & imaging9.05 Ratings00 Ratings
File sync, storage & archiving9.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Document management9.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Records management8.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Content search & retrieval10.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Enterprise content collaboration7.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Content publishing & creation7.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Security, risk management & information governance9.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Contract lifecycle management8.95 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated workflows8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Artificial intelligence6.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile support7.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Alfresco
-
Ratings
Microsoft Azure
8.4
28 Ratings
2% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.227 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.626 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.725 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings8.226 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.327 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.425 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings8.927 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings8.627 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings8.225 Ratings
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AlfrescoMicrosoft Azure
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User Ratings
AlfrescoMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(18 ratings)
8.7
(97 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(9 ratings)
10.0
(17 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(3 ratings)
8.4
(37 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(2 ratings)
8.0
(28 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
AlfrescoMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
Hyland
Easy integration with the external APIs Workflows can be invoked via REST call Wonderful swagger documentation for process REST APIs REST, MULE, CAMEL, Google Drive, and Box features are available with Alfresco Process Services The micro-service version deployment should be well documented and needs improvement
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Microsoft
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.
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Pros
Hyland
  • Basic workflows are easy enough for casual users to set up and utilize.
  • Cloud sync capability provides a great way to share documents with third parties and to use as a backup system for critical documents.
  • Alfresco mobile app makes it easy for those on the road to access, approve and share documents.
  • Folder rules are easy to set up and make assignment of metadata easier to automate.
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Microsoft
  • 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.
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Cons
Hyland
  • Alfresco Process Services and Alfresco Application Development Framework integration makes for best functionality/application of ECM.
  • Use case alignment - Marketing content and documentation of specific business requirements and user stories being available as reference material/documentation.
  • Integration with multiple silos for content.
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Microsoft
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Hyland
As per the current market and the line of products that are available for content and document management system, Alfresco is a very good option compared to other systems in terms of features and cost. Plus the community support is great. Also since the product is open source, it can be extended or understood in a better way.
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Microsoft
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.
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Usability
Hyland
The UI is very intuitive, most of our users figure out how to use the platform by themselves, so there's not much training needed.
You can upload files by using the web drag and drop, WebDAV, FTP, and more.
Most of the platform already works as-is so you can just deploy it using Docker and it's mostly ready to go.
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Microsoft
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Hyland
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
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Support Rating
Hyland
I am not big fan of Alfresco Content Services' support; it works on its own speed and sometimes it becomes challenging to achieve business needs. However, I appreciate regular delivery of security patches and updates
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Microsoft
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!
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Implementation Rating
Hyland
Process was relatively smooth and overall, downtime minimal. MSI was very responsive to our needs and made the transition easier than it otherwise might have been.
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Microsoft
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.
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Alternatives Considered
Hyland
All software has some pros and some cons. Alfresco has some good pluses, and suits our environment very well. It fit perfectly in the place that we are working on. That is why we decided to go with this software. Overall, the kind of content management that needs to be done in an organization is what would determine which software to use.
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Microsoft
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.
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Return on Investment
Hyland
  • Instant document lookup - No paper files to mail which saves in all areas of postage, truck delivery, physical storage warehouse space, printing, etc
  • No longer losing important documents - Previously with paper files things would go missing and those could be costly reports/assessments.
  • Ability to secure documents and provide access to only those who should be allowed to see that content
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Microsoft
  • 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.
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ScreenShots

Alfresco Screenshots

Screenshot of Alfresco Control CenterScreenshot of Alfresco