I use it, am currently going through my certifications and also make a living doing it so I feel qualified to comment...
Those people moaning about price... If you have to ask the price you can't afford it. My F500 employer spends upwards of $30,000,000 a year with MS and somehow (Don't ask me, I just work here) everything goes cloud first now.
To state the obvious, the big boys pay nowhere near calculator pricing prices. The pricing is a different galaxy away. Living in a world where one small tweak can save $1,000 a day, its all about efficient planning of what your doing, ie design it right but Azure designers who are good don't come cheap.
What wasn't made obvious (and this is where a lightbulb may go on) is that MS is engaged in a hearts and minds war for Sysadmins like me. So much so that MS have a special program available to big spenders where:
1) Pretty much the entire Azure training catalog is available for free, ie AZ-401, AZ-5XX, AZ-2XX? When I say free I mean real attend in person courses with the full course content as you would normally pay $3,000 for. You can do it as many times as you like, as often as you like.
2) All personal labs are paid for with free credits (its a bit grey area this one)
2) All the exams are 100% free. All those Pearson Vue exams? 100% discounted. Did I also mention unlimited retakes?
As for the complaining about APIs and products being retired, well, the trick is to stay with the mainstream items offered.
In short I have had about $20,000 of training from MS this year alone and its not cost me one single cent. I really dislike MS but if they want to make me a very rich and in-demand person with companies who think cloud will save them from being dinosaurs, I won't bitch too loudly.
If the system is so complex it requires multiple in person training courses and exams, that honestly sounds like more of a disadvantage than an advantage. I guess from a selfish individual perspective maybe the system that lets you build a stack of certificates is better than the one that anyone can use, but that's not a recipe for long term success.
Those people moaning about price... If you have to ask the price you can't afford it. My F500 employer spends upwards of $30,000,000 a year with MS and somehow (Don't ask me, I just work here) everything goes cloud first now.
To state the obvious, the big boys pay nowhere near calculator pricing prices. The pricing is a different galaxy away. Living in a world where one small tweak can save $1,000 a day, its all about efficient planning of what your doing, ie design it right but Azure designers who are good don't come cheap.
What wasn't made obvious (and this is where a lightbulb may go on) is that MS is engaged in a hearts and minds war for Sysadmins like me. So much so that MS have a special program available to big spenders where:
1) Pretty much the entire Azure training catalog is available for free, ie AZ-401, AZ-5XX, AZ-2XX? When I say free I mean real attend in person courses with the full course content as you would normally pay $3,000 for. You can do it as many times as you like, as often as you like. 2) All personal labs are paid for with free credits (its a bit grey area this one) 2) All the exams are 100% free. All those Pearson Vue exams? 100% discounted. Did I also mention unlimited retakes?
As for the complaining about APIs and products being retired, well, the trick is to stay with the mainstream items offered.
In short I have had about $20,000 of training from MS this year alone and its not cost me one single cent. I really dislike MS but if they want to make me a very rich and in-demand person with companies who think cloud will save them from being dinosaurs, I won't bitch too loudly.