Msft is very pushy around Azure - they really try to behave like they are on par with aws (they are not. well, maybe on paper). O would not be surprised if this deal is a result of regular Msft blackmail-style negotiations.
Last time I was using Azure was in 2015. At the time, their UI was completely broken. My company was getting charged for using our support hours to get support for a broken Azure UI, and they were telling us to use their APIs instead of the UI to do basic stuff like launching mobile services and VMs.
Our Microsoft rep recommended we consider deprecating our SAP instance with Dynamics CRM as we could get more discounts and support hours as part of a better valued package and our CIO in that meeting laughed in her face.
Azure might be just as good as their competitors in 2019 or even better but your question reminded me of way back when it was a piece of shit and our clueless CIO was mostly bought in because Gardner could have told him to fellate a horse, and he would have obliged.
> it was a piece of shit and our clueless CIO was mostly bought in because Gardner could have told him to fellate a horse, and he would have obliged.
2018/19 that's still the only kind of CIO that would choose Azure if the choice is otherwise unconstrained. Most Azure offerings are somewhere between Alpha/Beta stage of maturity with glaring issues, only cursory (often outdated/outright wrong) documentation, zero community around them.
The only way Azure gets picked is if the decision maker is an idiot guided by the likes of Gartner, or there are other factors at play. Other factors usually being the Azure sales teams leveraging existing MS mindshare and pandering to entirely non-technical decision makers with co-investment or support, the sum value of which is still far less than the cost of choosing Azure.
if you are a .net shop Microsoft makes your life a lot easier if you use their products and for the vast majority of .net shops, MS products are good enough.
Not saying that people don't complain about them or that there aren't better things out there, just that they are good enough
Unlikely here given industry momentum. They have to get this one right as they lost mobile and their desktop dominance continues to recede in the distance.
