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IBM SoftLayer vs Microsoft Azure Block Storage comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM SoftLayer
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
19th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Block Storage
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of IBM SoftLayer is 2.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is 3.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure Block Storage3.0%
IBM SoftLayer2.0%
Other95.0%
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1032702 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Principal Cloud Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Stable with excellent speed and agility
The most valuable aspect of the solution is simply to have the ability to host in a cloud form and out of the data center - the IBM big iron solution. It's the speed and the agility that really sell SoftLayer. The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer. The ability to extract act from your current location, load into your future location, with limited change, and then be able to take the transfer actions slowly and methodically after you're in your new location is the part that really makes this awesome. The stability and scalability are quite good.
Ajai Jayakumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Has supported secure file sharing and data automation with minimal setup effort
The encryption feature in Microsoft Azure Block Storage is very good, and the security is excellent. It is easy to map the storage to the virtual servers and user desktops, which is also very beneficial. I can perform automations on the data, such as moving hot data and cold data, and I can select storage based on performance. The security provided by Microsoft around Microsoft Azure Block Storage is a very good function. The replication feature in Microsoft Azure Block Storage is a very good function. The analytic capabilities of Microsoft Azure Block Storage can help optimize resources. I usually work with a third-party tool; our data analytics team uses some custom-made tools for analytics data and dashboards, so we do not use the Microsoft dashboard; we are using a third-party dashboard. It is very easy to manage Microsoft Azure Block Storage. If you have good knowledge of it, it is very easy to manage. Microsoft Azure Block Storage service is a very good, 100% reliable service. It is highly scalable, and performance-wise and reliability-wise, it does not go down. It provides 99.9% uptime without downtime, so it is a very good feature. The backup and restoration efficiency of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is good.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is highly stable."
"The ability to extract from your current location, load into your future location with limited change, and then be able to take the transfer actions slowly and methodically after you're in your new location is the part that really makes this awesome."
"The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer."
"The stability is the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."
"The solution is quite good and is easy to integrate with other systems, you can also integrate it as a backup for your recordings."
"We use Azure Block Storage as the secure backup destination for data from on-premise sources and also from cloud services."
"In terms of latency, bandwidth, and productivity, Azure Block Storage is better than other solutions."
"The tool is most valuable for scenarios involving logs and monitoring. For example, logs are generated when using services like Front Door."
"We can use Azure Block Storage for some of our bigger files."
"There are various types of storage to choose from - blob, table, and queue."
"Microsoft Azure Block Storage is widely accepted and people are choosing the enterprise solution."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is the backing up of files."
 

Cons

"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
"For us, the versioning was an issue."
"When it's there in Azure Blob, Azure Portal, then uploading, downloading, or viewing the file is a little bit difficult."
"The solution could have better archival policies and localization of data."
"The pricing or the trial period could be improved. They could try offering free storage for a longer period."
"Licensing costs are pretty high."
"Azure Block Storage is higher priced than its competitors. It is costly."
"Customer support could be improved, it can be difficult getting appropriate support."
"They could create more readability of files."
"The folder search capabilities are not really up to par."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Microsoft Azure Block Storage is expensive. Its licensing costs are monthly."
"The price of scaling the solution is not expensive."
"For the first 50DB, they cost around $50. It's an open solution for everybody. Anybody can go to the Microsoft website and they can get the pricing for it. But the first 50GB of data is a default rate and then it increases for the next 500GB or something like that. It is a pay as you go solution. The more you use, the more you pay. That's normally how you pay for any cloud solutions."
"The storage part costs us $223. That's on a monthly basis for 20TB of data storage."
"The price of Microsoft Azure Block Storage has a fair price. However, the price could be lower."
"The cost is very low. The cost is something like $0.01 to $0.50 per gig. It's pay per use. We have a yearly license."
"In terms of pricing, Azure is quite cheaper than AWS. However, I have recently read that Oracle Cloud Generation 2 storage is quite cheaper than Azure. I haven't used it yet. We need to look at a customer's requirements, and, based on that, we can suggest the storage. You can save at least 20% with Azure as compared to AWS, which is quite costly."
"We pay around $300 to $400 a month for some scenarios where consumption is limited. However, going forward, we're seeing the likelihood of the cost coming to around $2,000 as consumption rises."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
13%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Block Storage?
Our experience with pricing has been positive. The budget for Microsoft Azure services has been within expectations for the last couple of months. The cost for Azure Data Factory ( /products/azure-...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Block Storage?
For improvement in Microsoft Azure Block Storage, they can provide tiered level storages, maybe low-cost storages for storing archive data, but it is already there. I do not think there is much to ...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Azure Block Storage?
I am using Microsoft Azure Block Storage for file sharing, automation accounts, data storage, and archiving, and those are the main use cases.
 

Also Known As

CloudLayer
MS Azure Block Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Whogohost Ltd., Skypicker, Infinity Computers and Communications Company, Grace Co. Ltd., Keyword, Uvionics Tech, Tennis Australia, immixGroup, Salesbox, Cxense ASA, Avnet Inc., Komsomolskaya Pravda, Seekr
Mazda, BlinkBox, Rakuten Showtime, Xbox One, Serko, ChronoDrive
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SoftLayer vs. Microsoft Azure Block Storage and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.