Microsoft Azure

Score8.6 out of 10

1,121 Reviews and Ratings

What is Microsoft Azure?

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.

Categories & Use Cases

Product Demos

Operating system support
Range of operating systems available as pre-configured images
Category average: 8.4
Dynamic scaling
Ease of scaling up or down in response to customer needs
Category average: 8.7
Elastic load balancing
Automatic balancing and distribution of resources across multiple virtual computers
Category average: 9

Pre-configured templates
Pre-defined templates for virtual machines
Category average: 8
Automation
Automation of administrative tasks
Category average: 7.7
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime
The service uptime as a percentage defined in the SLA
Category average: 8.7

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

9.8%

94,396 installations of 962,382

#2 most frequent

Manufacturing

4.2%

39,956 installations of 962,382

#3 most frequent

Information

3.9%

37,988 installations of 962,382

Pros

Robust scalability and flexibility for dynamic resource adjustment
Significant cost savings through reduced infrastructure overhead and eliminated capital expenditures
Enhanced operational speed and agility, accelerating time-to-market for new solutions

Cons

Complex and often unpredictable pricing and billing structures
Inconsistent user interface and challenging navigation across services
Suboptimal customer support quality, requiring significant improvement

Xiang Li

Director in Information Technology at nyit (1001-5000 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our organization uses Microsoft Azure cloud platform for the enterprise-level workflows. For example, we integrate it with Microsoft infrastructure, like Office365, Active Directory, API management and Teams.

Pros

API Management
Connect the existing on-premises systems to cloud solutions
Its cloud computing, analytics, and storage services.

Cons

The support is weak
Crossing platform issues
Deployment issues

Return on Investment

Reliable cloud services
The use of AI technology
Easy to manage

Usability

Alternatives Considered

AWS Auto Scaling and Google Cloud Platform

Other Software Used

Google Cloud Platform, AWS Backup, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Microsoft Copilot

Verified User

Director in Product Management (10,001+ employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As an AI product management technical architect, I leverage Microsoft Azure as our primary cloud platform to deploy and manage our machine learning models at scale, utilizing Azure Machine Learning for model training and Azure Kubernetes Service for robust deployment. Our solution addresses critical business challenges, including real-time data processing, inconsistent model performance, and the high operational costs associated with maintaining on-premises infrastructure. The scope of our Azure implementation spans our entire model lifecycle - from development and testing to production deployment and monitoring.

Pros

Enterprise-grade security and compliance.
Seamless integration with existing Microsoft products and services.
Hybrid cloud capabilities allowing workloads to run both on-premises and in the cloud.

Cons

User experience across Azure Portal interfaces lacks consistency and can be unintuitive.
Pricing structure remains unnecessarily complex and difficult to predict.
Documentation quality varies dramatically between services, with some newer offerings having significant gaps.

Return on Investment

Accelerated time-to-market for new AI solutions, reducing deployment cycles drastically.
Security features have strengthened our compliance posture.
Positive ROI with a 30% overall infrastructure management overhead reduction and improved system reliability.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Google Cloud AI

Other Software Used

Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services

Verified User

C-Level Executive in Information Technology (201-500 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Microsoft Azure in multiple ways. We run all our own application/software development and application related services in Microsoft Azure. This includes app services, function apps, databases, blob storages etc. We also use Microsoft Azure for reporting, analytics and data warehousing. OpenAI services are utilized as well for our AI needs.

Pros

Comprehensive set of services
Integrated to other Microsoft ecosystem like M365 and Power apps
Constantly evolving

Cons

Pricing and billing is not easy to understand
Used services may become obsolete/legacy all the sudden and this creates maintenance work for us to keep up
There can be redundant looking services and it is not always easy to see which service to use for example for storing data.

Return on Investment

It is quick to enable new services and go to market with those. For example we were able to integrate our applications to OpenAI services in weeks.
Using micro services we do not need to use time on maintaining the infrastructure and operating systems by ourselves and we save time.
Negative impact happens when already used services come obsolete and we need to spend work time to figure out how to migrate/upgrade to the new supported services.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Amazon Web Services

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (201-500 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Microsoft Azure in lots of different ways, its a versatile product with a lot of different uses. We use it to host VM's, use Entra ID, host storage and as a back-up solution. It offers availability and redundancy without the need of investing in hardware ourselves. You pay for what you use and it's very flexible.

Pros

Removes the need to invest in hardware
Offers availability and redundancy
Constant development

Cons

Requires a lot of knowledge to administer
Even after obtaining the knowledge, some things are still hard to find

Return on Investment

No direct costs for new hardware
Great availability
Great Scalability

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Hyper-V and VMware vSphere

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have been using Microsoft Azure in my organisation for about 10 yrs, initially just for a few virtual machines and some blob storage, now we have various web services, storage, kubernetes, postgress databases, vpn and dns services.

Pros

user management
virtual machines
blob storage

Cons

aspects of front door are confusing
cdn is expensive

Return on Investment

we can get products to market quicker than trying to build something like Kubernetes in-house
for some services it is cheaper to run on-prem, but you need to understand the cba.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Amazon Web Services

Other Software Used

VMware vSphere, Microsoft 365, Miro

Amazon Web Services

SAP HANA Cloud

Microsoft Azure

What is Microsoft Azure?

Categories & Use Cases

Product Demos

Microsoft Azure Key Features

Top Performing Features

Operating system support

Dynamic scaling

Elastic load balancing

Areas for Improvement

Pre-configured templates

Automation

Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime

Most Frequent Users

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Manufacturing

Information

Microsoft Azure Reviews

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Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Usability

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Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Return on Investment

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Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Alternatives Considered

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Return on Investment

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Alternatives Considered

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Microsoft Azure Alternatives