ITProTV vs. Microsoft Azure

I've encouraged co-workers and non-coworkers to watch the live streams of ITProTV. Unfortunately, my company currently uses CBT Nuggets (none of the people I've asked like it/utilize it), but those who do take the suggestion often ask the same question: Why do we not use ITProTV instead of CBT? I met a young man who was in his final year of college pursuing an accounting degree. He asked me about the IT industry. I suggested he look at ITProTV in order to see if there is a subject he's interested in. He immediately signed up, and while working two jobs and going to school, he managed to get his CCNA and pass the Microsoft 70-410 within 6 months. We hired him. If you just want to hone your skills, ITProTV delivers. If you are seeking certifications, ITProTV delivers. The only demographic that I can imagine where it would be unsuited, is simply for those who are ignorant that nearly every industry involves some form of technological understanding. ITProTV is good for end users "non-IT personnel", as well as those supporting end users.

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.

• Amount and quality of content is great, plus the instructors are entertaining
• The user interface is easy to navigate and the videos can be streamed to just about any platform
• The Transcender practice tests in the subscription plan we have are practically worth the price of admission

• 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

• The episode download feature could use a little work (speaking about the Android experience). When you download the episode, you need to go to downloaded in ITProTV instead of just playing on the normal episode content screen. It works well for what it is, but it would be nice to have the downloaded content play straight from the episode screen.
• I've had a few little issues with the Roku. It works great, but there have been a couple times when I needed to contact support because the Roku kept saying I wasn't a subscriber. The problem mostly resolved itself, but I still occasionally get the message. It isn't a huge deal since I can still access the content on Android or through a web browser.
• I would like to see an al la carte for school education. Currently, we must contact a sales rep for one-off trainings, like A+, Network+, etc. (the sales reps are phenomenal... so that isn't much of an issue!)

• 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.

Using ITProTV has been a cakewalk. Not once have I wished that we went with a different vendor. The content stays updated. My technicians are improving their skills. We can train when we need it and access the content required. We are improving all the way around.... why wouldn't I want to renew?

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.

Because they have a mobile app!

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

Let me start with... their chat really works. You aren't chatting with a bot. When we first looked into purchasing ITProTV, I opened a chat on their site. One of their sales people, Brandon, contacted me quickly and by phone. I totally thought I was chatting with a computer, then the phone rang and Brandon introduced himself. I was blown away. Then, on the two occasions when I contact support, I did it through the chat. Not only did my problem get resolved quickly, a tech named Jessica followed up via email a couple days later to make sure the issues hadn't continued. Fantastic!

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.

Previously my team used the Microsoft on demand training which has everything you could ever dream of from Microsoft in the same format as ITProTV. It did have the latest and greatest Microsoft training because it is Microsoft, but it only had Microsoft and nothing more. The cost was the other issue. The On demand workshops subscription cost a lot more than my budget would allow. I would have been forced to pick who was getting training and who was not which would most likely cause some friction between the team members.

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

• I am aiming to have passed the first exam by January and I believe ITPro.TV is helping me achieve this goal.
• Having these two new qualifications with the help of ITPro.TV will enabled my business to be "Cyber Ready"
• This will enable us to offer advice to our clients for moving their business' forward.

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