IBM Cloud Object Storage vs. Microsoft Azure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Cloud Object Storage
Score 7.1 out of 10
N/A
IBM Cloud Object Storage is an IBM Cloud product in the endpoint backup and IaaS categories. It is commonly used for data archiving and backup, for web and mobile applications, and as scalable, persistent storage for analytics.
$5,000,000,000
per month
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.5 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 Object StorageMicrosoft Azure
Editions & Modules
One-Rate Plan
As low as USD $12/TB a month
per month
Standard Plan
Free up to 5GB—no minimum fee, pay only for what you use
per month
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Cloud Object StorageMicrosoft Azure
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe One-Rate and Standard service plans for Cloud Object Storage include resiliency options, flexible data classes and built-in security. Pricing is based on the choice of location, storage class and resiliency choice.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 Object StorageMicrosoft Azure
Features
IBM Cloud Object StorageMicrosoft Azure
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cloud Object Storage
7.9
Ratings
2% below category average
Microsoft Azure
8.5
Ratings
6% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime8.10 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling7.50 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing8.30 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Monitoring tools7.30 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Security controls8.20 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Cloud Object StorageMicrosoft Azure
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 8.7 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
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User Ratings
IBM Cloud Object StorageMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(0 ratings)
9.4
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.8
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Cloud Object StorageMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Cloud Object Storage is well suited for businesses that require scalable and cost-effective data storage solutions. It excels in scenarios involving massive unstructured data, like multimedia content, backups, and archives. However, it may be less appropriate for organizations with minimal storage needs or those requiring high-performance, low-latency access to data, as it's optimized for durability and data integrity rather than real-time data retrieval.
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Actually, migrating to Microsoft Azure is a good solution for almost any situation, especially when all components of your network are ready to become cloud-based. The only drawback I personally encounter frequently is that older software packages cannot always be easily picked up and moved to Microsoft Azure in an optimal manner.
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Pros
  • Cloud storage allows you to save data and files in an off-site location that you access either through the public internet or a dedicated private network connection.
  • Cloud storage delivers a cost-effective, scalable alternative to storing files on on-premise hard drives or storage networks.
  • Cloud storage services provide elasticity, which means you can scale capacity as your data volumes increase or dial down capacity if necessary.
  • Business continuity of Storing data offsite supports business continuity in the event that a natural disaster or terrorist attack cuts access to your premises.
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  • 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.
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Cons
  • Unexpected errors are known to occur when downloading/uploading files.
  • Not easy to get started. In order to take full advantage of the platform and its features, additional training and reading documentation is needed.
  • The UI of the platform can get a bit confusing and it's easy to get lost.
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  • 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
because it is a robust, safe and flexible product
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We have been very satisfied with Windows Azure and now a lot of our business depends on it as more teams are now deploying their applications into Azure. Our next step is to have our Infrastructure team move their resources to Azure. It will take awhile for that to happen but we are positive that it will.
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Usability
For my use cases, it has been a very smooth experience. Even my new colleagues have been able to get on top of things very quickly. This shows how easy it is to work with
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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
We rarely face downtime or access issues with IBM Cloud Object Storage. It’s mostly available when we need it, even during peak hours or heavy data loads.
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It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
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Performance
I would give it a 9 because it works smooth with our AI and analytics tools, no major slowdown. Pages and dashboards load fine most of the time, and reports finish in decent time even when data is heavy.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
I have been working in IT sector for more than 15 years. I have worked with various vendors. IBM's sales team, support team have been really helpful. After we start to use their product, their UX design team also contacted us to get feedback from us. They are really interested about our experience.
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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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Online Training
I just researching and applying the tools on their platforms to ensure a good learning path, based on my needs. Reading the documentation related with resources, tools. Is too big, but I am trying to know more about it every day. It is a good way to know more about their resources. A new way to attract new customers. At the end of the day, we are all involved in improvement and automation of our tasks and resources for customers and end-users.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
IBM's professional service for migrating data and implementing new cloud environment was perfect. They started to help us before we begin to bring together all data such as how can it could be best to transfer all data without problems. During the migration they watched all the process closely to prevent any failure. Lastly, after the migration, they gave us trainings on implementation.
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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
As Google Cloud Storage is our main product for this kind of thing, it remains the standard but in terms of overall performance, flexibility, stability, durability, and scalability, IBM Cloud Object Storage has put it through its paces. I think having a product put Google through its paces is always a good thing, both for businesses and for the industry overall.
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I feel that Microsoft Azure typically outperforms Google Cloud Platform in hybrid cloud capabilities, integration aspects, and, primarily, security compliance features. Azure offered superior integration with Microsoft's enterprise software ecosystem, and it's second to none in my opinion. This made it the natural choice for most, especially if heavily invested in Windows, Office 365, or Active Directory deployments. We chose Azure over GCP because we simply needed Windows workload support as a strong driver, more access to global regions, and let's not forget that most tech teams in an organization are Microsoft Certified, which makes skillset transfer from on-prem to cloud a minimal learning curve over shifting to a different provider.
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Scalability
Scaling up the number of users can lead to significant increases in licensing costs, which, while not a technical limitation, can be a practical constraint for some organizations
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • In our company, we moved from on-premise to IBM cloud, our ElasticSearch Solution storage in block storage to an ICD elastic search solution with Object storage, and we reduced our cost by more than 45%.
  • Object Storage is a managed service, so you can have savings in your storage-managed team.
  • We have improved our data availability because the Regional solution of COS is distributed in three different Availability Zones.
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  • Times and growth went into it. By balancing on-premises maintenance with continuous cloud improvements, we’ve budgeted and planned endlessly increased capacity.
  • In today’s world of cyber-crime, clients can put even more faith in what they’ve heard. We built an innovative single-sign-on hub for all users. Also, other business platforms use Azure application gateways, reducing worker switching time and increasing productivity.
  • Its step can automate to improve the investment. In addition, we can integrate our organization’s credentials into an authorization for other systems.
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ScreenShots

IBM Cloud Object Storage Screenshots

Screenshot of Cloud Object Storage set upScreenshot of storage bucket creationScreenshot of the Access Management interfaceScreenshot of the interface to create, add and management of Storage BucketsScreenshot of data uploadingScreenshot of usage details