Microsoft Azure vs. Watson IoT Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Watson IoT Platform
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
The IBM Watson IoT Platform is an Internet-of-things is a managed cloud-hosted solution supporting device connectivity, control, visualization, and overall device visibility and management. It provides a UI where users can add and manage devices, control access to IoT service, and monitor usage. With its device management service, users can perform device actions like rebooting or updating firmware, receive device diagnostics and metadata, or perform bulk device addition and removal.N/A
Pricing
Microsoft AzureWatson IoT Platform
Editions & Modules
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft AzureWatson IoT Platform
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
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
Microsoft AzureWatson IoT Platform
Features
Microsoft AzureWatson IoT Platform
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
8.5
27 Ratings
3% above category average
Watson IoT Platform
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime8.226 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling8.725 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing8.824 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.225 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.326 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.424 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support9.026 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls8.726 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation8.224 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Microsoft AzureWatson IoT Platform
Small Businesses
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Score 8.8 out of 10
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Microsoft AzureWatson IoT Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(96 ratings)
8.4
(2 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(17 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(36 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
6.8
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(28 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft AzureWatson IoT Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
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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IBM
For large companies with large-scale manufacturing, electronics management, and infrastructures that require lots of maintenance, IBM Watson IoT is a must-have. It greatly increases performance, decreases downtime, and is an all-around great management dashboard. This is best for infrastructures that have a larger infrastructures of IoT devices in an enterprise/manufacturing setting, otherwise IBM Watson may not bring many benefits to your team.
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Pros
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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IBM
  • The asset information is available in both static and dynamic format (from thermal images, to OEM data, to time series data). The ability to ingest all the information using a single platform has great value.
  • Another benefit is a seamless integration with Maximo. This has been a challenge with other 3rd party systems available.
  • The experience of IBM Maximo systems updates is positive.
Read full review
Cons
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.
Read full review
IBM
  • Some of the tutorials could use a little more improvement - While there is a considerable amount of documentation, most of the good documentation for Watson IoT we found to be from third-parties.
  • Administration and billing tools could use a bit more improvement - The UI is a bit clunky and poorly-designed here.
  • Be prepared to work with IBM support to get this going - Their turn-around support for inquiries can be lengthy, and setup time may also be quite lengthy because of this.
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Likelihood to Renew
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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IBM
No answers on this topic
Usability
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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IBM
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
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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IBM
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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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IBM
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
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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IBM
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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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IBM
Predix has recently launched their Asset Performance management Unified system. I am keen to see how it stacks up against Watson.
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Return on Investment
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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IBM
  • Positive - This tool greatly increases most company's manufacturing and production efficiency, and the use-cases are extensive. It was a great way of decreasing down-time for us.
  • Negative - Took lots of work and energy to get up and running, we had to rely on IBM support and tutorials many times during this process.
  • Positive - Quite cheap, most of the tiers of pricing cost very little, and it's possible to use Watson IoT for a few months for free to see if it is beneficial for your company.
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ScreenShots