IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC vs. Microsoft Azure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers are customizable, public or private, cloud-based servers available from IBM. User can launch applications and software across blended, hybrid environments as the servers integrate with all cloud models.
$0.01
per hour
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.6 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
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPCMicrosoft Azure
Editions & Modules
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers (dedicated host)
starting at $0.22
per hour
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers (dedicated host)
starting at $149.00
per month
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers (multi-tenant)
starting at $0.038
per hour
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers (multi-tenant)
starting at $25.21
per month
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers (reserved)
starting at $0.02
per hour
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers (reserved)
starting at $13.27
per month
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers (transient)
starting at $0.01
per hour
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPCMicrosoft Azure
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsIBM Cloud virtual servers include 250 GB of outbound public bandwidth, unmetered inbound public bandwidth, and unmetered private and management network bandwidth.The 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
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPCMicrosoft Azure
Considered Both Products
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC
Chose IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC
Microsoft Azure has an extremely poor UX experience, from trying to tell how much a service will cost, to actually physically finding how to set one up through the web UI. The UX of IBM Cloud Virtual Servers is much better, they're easier to setup and they show you what their …
Chose IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC
The IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC is powerful and it provides effective security on all projects data and the data storage capacity on Cloud is excellent. The isolation capability and even server monitoring features offered by IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC is perfect …
Chose IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC
We mostly use IBM Cloud Virtual Servers. IBM provides a better choice of locations, easy to use interface and APIs for management, and better pricing compared to similar providers.
Chose IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC
Overall, IBM is more expensive, but provides a lot of support for these cloud virtual servers as well as makes it very easy to configure these servers to the desired needs. The usability of IBM is sometimes not as good as others, but the availability of these servers is fairly …
Chose IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers had a slightly lower cost (possibly due to reseller discount) compared to both Azure Virtual Machines and AWS Cloud9, although not significantly lower. IBM has better support for Linux compared to Azure but that gap is narrowing recently as Microsoft …
Microsoft Azure

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPCMicrosoft Azure
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC
8.3
88 Ratings
2% above category average
Microsoft Azure
8.6
17 Ratings
6% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime8.381 Ratings8.816 Ratings
Dynamic scaling8.276 Ratings9.316 Ratings
Elastic load balancing8.364 Ratings8.816 Ratings
Pre-configured templates7.973 Ratings7.116 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.384 Ratings8.116 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.378 Ratings8.415 Ratings
Operating system support8.284 Ratings9.416 Ratings
Security controls8.978 Ratings9.016 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings8.815 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPCMicrosoft Azure
Small Businesses
Linode
Linode
Score 9.0 out of 10
Linode
Linode
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPCMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(89 ratings)
8.5
(88 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.8
(3 ratings)
10.0
(15 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(27 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
6.8
(2 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.5
(5 ratings)
8.8
(27 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPCMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
One scenario that immediately came to my mind was large-scale data processing, IBM Cloud Virtual Servers is well-suited for organizations that require high-performance computing capabilities, particularly when processing large amounts of data. It can also be useful for companies or organizations that wish to migrate their workplace to the cloud and it may suite companies that have strict compliance requirements since the servers have robust security features.
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Microsoft
In terms of cloud computing, Microsoft Azure is the only comprehensive result the company offers. Regardless of how big or small an organization is, it can make use of this system. As a cyber-security professional, this is your best option for data management. A business that wants to minimize capital expenditures can use Microsoft Azure. Many Microsoft services accept it. People with little or no knowledge of cloud computing may find it impossible. It isn’t the solution for companies that don’t want to risk having only one platform and infrastructure vendor.
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Pros
IBM
  • Scalability: IBM Cloud Virtual Servers enable businesses to simply and quickly scale up or down the resources they require in response to changing business demands. This enables firms to respond to traffic spikes, requests for new services, or changes in business size without the need for additional hardware purchases or maintenance.
  • Cost savings: By employing virtual servers in the cloud, enterprises can decrease capital expenditures for hardware and infrastructure while also lowering ongoing operational expenses by removing server maintenance and management costs. This can result in significant cost savings for enterprises, particularly those that need to raise or decrease their computer capacity fast and easily.
  • High availability: IBM Cloud Virtual Servers is built with high availability in mind, giving enterprises the certainty that their applications and data will be available and accessible even if hardware fails or other disruptions occur. This assists enterprises in maintaining business continuity and lowering the chance of downtime, which is crucial for firms that rely on 24/7 access to their systems. Furthermore, IBM's comprehensive network and security features aid in the prevention of data breaches and other security risks, assuring the availability and reliability of their applications and data.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Azure simply provides end to end life cycle. Starting from the development to automated deployment, you will find [a] bunch of options. Custom hook-points allow [integration] on-premise resources as well.
  • Excellent documentation around all the services make it really easy for any novice. Overall support by [the] community and Azure Technical team is exceptional.
  • BOT Services, Computer Vision services, ML frameworks provide excellent results as compare to similar services provided by other giants in the same space.
  • Azure data services provide excellent support to ingest data from different sources, ETL, and consumption of data for BI purpose.
Read full review
Cons
IBM
  • It would also be nice if there were more templates to choose from when creating a server. Right now there are only a few options, and we'd like to see more variety.
  • We'd like to see the ability to create server groups. This would make it easier to manage a large number of servers since we could do all of the updates and management tasks for them at once.
  • There doesn't seem to be a way to automatically install updates on all of the virtual servers. We have to go in and manually update each one, which can be time-consuming. It would be really nice if automatic updates can be done.
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Microsoft
  • In our experience, Azure Kubernetes Survice was difficult to set up, which is why we used Kubernetes on top of VMs.
  • Azure REST API is a bit difficult to use, which made it difficult for us to automate our interactions with Azure.
  • Azure's Web UI does a good job of showing metrics on individual VMs, but it would be great if there was a way to show certain metrics from multiple VMs on one dashboard. For example, hard drive usage on our database VMs.
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Likelihood to Renew
IBM
It has a flexible and affordable pricing, easy to configure and manage. It is easy to spawn one or multiple instances and have them up and running in no time
Read full review
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
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Microsoft Azure's overall usability has been better than expected. Often times vendors promise the world, only to leave you with a run-down town. Not the case with our experience. From an implementation perspective, all went perfect, and from the user-facing experience we have had no technical issues, just some learning curve issues that are more about "why" than "how"
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Reliability and Availability
IBM
Always available when you need an instance.
Read full review
Microsoft
It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
Read full review
Performance
IBM
Most of the instances work on hypervisors with good processors, but not all of them.
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
IBM
It is adequate, but you need to be ready to argue your point - which is fair enough, I suppose, but being given the opposite of the benefit of the doubt every time does not necessarily result in an enjoyable user experience.
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Microsoft
Support is easy with all the knowledge base articles available for free on the web. Plus, if you have a preferred status you can leverage their concierge support to get rapid response. Sometimes they’ll bounce you around a lot to get you to the right person, but they are quite responsive (especially when you are paying for the service). Many of the older Microsoft skills are also transferable from old-school on-prem to Azure-based virtual interfaces.
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Implementation Rating
IBM
We did not use IBM professional services to implement IBM Cloud Virtual Servers.
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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
IBM
IBM Cloud Virtual Servers offer more customization options than Amazon EC2, with the ability to select from a range of operating systems, storage types, and network configurations. IBM also provides a wide range of tools and services to help manage and optimize your virtual servers, including a web-based console, CLI, and API.

AWS EC2 is a more managed platform, with a focus on providing a simple and easy-to-use interface. Amazon provides a range of predefined instance types, each with different specs and pricing, to make it easy to find the right option for your needs. AWS also offers a number of management and monitoring tools, but these are often more basic than what is available from IBM.
Read full review
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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Scalability
IBM
It worked well for us in the beginning, it works well for us when we have more instances.
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
IBM
  • Supports businesses who want compute power on demand (instances are ready within minutes).
  • It can give you access to a 32-core CPU at $0.29 for short running or interruptible processes - enabling cost-efficient number crunching.
  • Given me a taste of the powers of remote compute power for compilation and development.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Brings down Capex to customers.
  • Some of the built-in security features of DDoS Basic protection that comes with VNET on Azure or even WAF on AGW brings huge advantages to customers.
  • Hybrid benefits for those who have software assurance can save even more costs by moving to Azure.
Read full review
ScreenShots