Amazon AWS Reviews

Amazon AWS is good in terms of deployment and user experience. Their certificate management and load balancer are also good features.

The sorting model in AWS is a little bit complicated. When you are going through any component, you can get some surprising results.

I've been using AWS for more than two years.

Scalability is something that people are looking for when they choose Amazon AWS. I like that it integrates well with IBM Resilient, which is like a serverless map. We have more than 5,000 employees in our organization. 

Amazon support is good.

Setting up AWS was straightforward. It only took around 20 minutes. We used about five to 10 team members for deployment. For maintenance, we have an architect and some RDS specialists. 

Amazon AWS could have more options and transparency in its pricing model. You need in-depth knowledge to adopt AWS. So someone without that knowledge base might not understand all of the costs associated with AWS.

I rate Amazon AWS nine out of 10. I would definitely recommend it to others.

General use cases of AWS are for those needing a managed cloud instance without the bulk costs for a legacy server. We are customers of Amazon and I'm the technology manager. 

The benefit to the company is immense financial savings and the fact that you're able to see your monthly costs before buying anything. The AWS monthly calculator enables you to select your database, servers, volumes, and see how much everything will cost on a monthly basis. You can figure out what you'll be paying, so it enables a comparison; it's usually a third to half the cost of using an on-prem system.

Amazon is easy to upgrade, easy to expand storage and change your EC2 types. Each of those things usually takes at most five minutes to do, whereas on a legacy system you have to actually buy a new system or new hardware and have downtime for installation. Even then it may not be configured the same way and you might end up with a widespread outage. The advantage of using AWS is that all the testing's been done so you have proof that it works. We still do a cursory check, but they don't put anything out there that hasn't been vetted. Plus all the Atlassian tools are on AWS as well. The cloud instances they provide have a very robust network because there are over 160,000 companies that use the tools. Backups are really easy to access as are the automated backups of the VMs and the volumes. We're able to create a new volume from a backup in about two minutes, attach it to the server and view the data side by side to compare the old to the new. It takes 10 minutes total to get all the access needed.

I've had very positive experiences with AWS and it's gotten a lot better over time with their improved interfaces. Everything's all interconnected now and within its own framework. We pull in other tools to the OS such as Docker but AWS provides tools like Yum that enable quick installation of things. It's typically part of the OS. 

While the IAM security key is very secure, they only give you one chance to capture your key. If I'm already logged in and have an email address online, it would be better if it were sent in an encrypted manner to email so that you don't lose the key. I might create the IAM and then perhaps forget to capture it off the screen and then when I do need it, I realize I don't have it and have to create another profile.

I've been using this solution for about 12 years. 

I haven't had any problem with stability. We do multiple zone backups and multiple zone data and we haven't had any problems or slowdowns. We've had dealings with countries like India, where things are generally slower but with AWS there haven't been any issues. There's no wait time.  

Scalability is good. I like the EFS expandable storage because it expands and contracts, you don't have to do anything with it and it's really inexpensive. Somebody may use it for temporary storage where they drop a terabyte of data that they need to give to a customer and then it shrinks back down when they're done with it. It expands and contracts as needed and that's also reflected in the cost.

The technical support is very fast, very efficient and very knowledgeable. Even when I've asked questions and they didn't know the answers, they were able to find someone within 15 minutes that was able to help.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. The main thing is getting the security protocols set up in the proper order, otherwise it won't work. You have to go in and set up the main group and make sure to share it to your database. They've improved their documentation and it's a lot better but still lacks a little in some areas. If you've deployed before, setup takes a couple of hours, otherwise it might take up to a day. It's a lot faster on cloud; if you're working on-prem you have to jump through a lot of hoops because each team has its own security. 

They have scripting tools on AWS which allow you to set up your framework and you can use it as a template. We use an AWS architect for implementation and to make sure all the security is set up. And then we have a DevOps team that manages the OS updates. That's a team of three handling over 100 servers, VMs basically. Once a month they do the non-production patching with the production patching the following week. 

Licensing fees are only applicable if you're using Red Hat or an Oracle database. You have to pay for both of those. If you're using Postgres or MySQL, there are no costs for the actual database application. There are no fees for individuals using Oracle Java, but businesses pay a license. We use an OpenJDK that is vetted by Atlassian so if you don't want to buy Java you can use the OpenJDK.

My advice would be to do some homework, read as much as you can about the setup before you dive in. If you take an hour to review the setup and then put together your own process so you know all the steps required and you use a checklist, it simplifies things. Have some kind of system, whether it's a spreadsheet or a Confluence page where you're documenting the steps and keeping track of where you're at. 

Whenever I'm asked to do something, I can find a tool on AWS that I can vet for our customers, and for that reason, I rate Amazon AWS 10 out of 10. 

We have migrated all of our on-premise production environments to the Amazon AWS cloud and we use many AWS services.

The solution could improve by being more secure.

I have been using Amazon AWS for approximately six months.

Amazon AWS has proven itself as the market leader in the cloud solution environment and is highly stable.

The solution is scalable.

All of our production environment is hosted on Amazon AWS and we have approximately 12,000 users that use it.

We have enterprise-level support that is very good from the AWS team.

We use other solutions, such as Microsoft Azure for UID and Google Cloud services for DCP.

The initial setup is not difficult and it did not take us more than one day.

We have a managed service provider that helped us with the implementation of the solution.

We have a 60 person team that manages our data operations and infrastructure. The team consists of many levels, such as system engineers, architects, and managers.

We have a monthly subscription for Amazon AWS.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten.

We use several features of this solution for many purposes. For example, we use CloudFormation for infrastructure as a service, Kinesis for the message queue, Lambda for integration services, and ATC for hosting. 

We also use S3 for storing the data, clustering, Multizone security, AVS to attach hard disk, and assistant.

It is easy to use.

It has many features that we use.

It integrates well.

They upgrade a lot of applications.

If you are familiar with other cloud infrastructures, you can see that it is in need of some enhancements.

It is easy to enhance it to make the clustering easier.

At times, when you use CloudFormation to create five machines with a sequence name, it is difficult but can be done with Terraform easily. 

I would like to see CloudFormation made more in the programming way of thinking. You have some variables, LOB, IF statements, and inheritance, where it's not just the functionality that we have, but gives you the output. They could make it close to the programming language, even if it's a scripting language. They need more control over it such as an If-Then-Else statement and a sub-loop if possible. It will make it easier to create the infrastructure.

I have been working with Amazon AWS for more than seven or eight years.

We are using the latest version.

It is a stable solution.

Amazon AWS is a scalable solution.

I work as a consultant and have a couple of customers. Each customer is of a different size company but they are all over 1,000.

AWS has very good technical support. They react immediately when you need help.

When you speak of installation, you refer to applications already built or software in ATC to be installed. AWS doesn't sell applications, they give you an infrastructure as a service, application as a service, and a platform as a service but they don't give you applications to be installed.

There is no installation required in AWS.

The maintenance required depends on the size of the company. Some larger companies require a larger IT department while others don't require it at all.

A license is required. Some customers will provide their own license and others will purchase it directly from AWS.

I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in it.

I would rate Amazon AWS a nine out of ten.

My primary use case is to set up an end-to-end application to deliver a business case involving data ingestion, processing, transformation, and checking, followed by outputs to other functions and processes in AWS and also to external systems.

We are using Step Functions as a core automation tool and it offers great power through its simplicity. It is quite easy to use, although there is a learning curve when using the Step Function scripts. Once mastered, after a week or so, the flows can be built quickly and effectively, allowing us to link a custom business process to multiple other AWS service automatically. 

That done, most business cases can be delivered easily and quickly, all in a serverless and cost-effective way. 

AWS has improved my organization by:

- saving us time, cost, and difficulty by allowing us to use serverless services

- enabling us to assemble complex applications with the minimum of boilerplate and plumbing

- allowing us to pay-as-we-go, so we can rapidly prototype, test, and then deploy to a production application setup

We can run advanced demos with our own data very quickly, showing potential clients the value of our services when we assemble apps for them.

We can show customers clear cost benefits and clearly effective solutions when assembling AWS services together. 

The security has great IAM, roles, and carefully partitioned permissions that allow us to fine-tune control across our applications. External intrusion attempts will never get past application boundaries, which increases trust.

The composition of apps has everything wrapped according to function and applications. We can assemble services as we go. This speeds delivery times by orders of magnitude.

The price forecasting and billing dashboard by service, with billing budgets and alerts, have helped us shut down resources that were accruing costs that we no longer needed, saving us money.

The service's power lies in its simplicity. It is great in that respect. 

The UI is constantly being improved and the billing dashboard has been improved.

Previously, we asked for more end-to-end workshops, examples, and tutorials and these have been added and improved. 

Recently, AWS has been adding improvements across services, documentation, tutorials and we have now got workshops with real-world scenarios which are tremendously useful It makes me a very happy user. 

AWS and the cloud is a space for constant learning and AWS has increased their output in that respect. 

I have been using AWS since 2014.

The solution is very stable. The only errors I encountered were my own. Some services took a few minutes to refresh and propagate across my environments, and once these had propagated, the solutions were rock solid.

The scalability is excellent. At no point have I hit scalability limits with AWS services and features. 

Customer service and tech support were excellent a few years ago when I needed them.

My general process is to explore and check options and run from a tutorial or AWS workshop. If this doesn't get me results, I then do a web search, and I generally find either further AWS docs or a specific example I can use to solve my issue. Within the last few years, my colleagues and I have been able to deliver as required. 

We did previously use a different solution when building AWS Lambda cloud functions. I could compare them directly with Azure Functions and Google Cloud and have found that the AWS Lambda solution is simpler, clearer, deploys quicker, and is generally much more simple and effective to use.

In terms of documentation, AWS is the clear leader. Their end-to-end examples and workshops are much more effective.

AWS services in many cases are deployed to AWS after being validated in Amazon.com's operations. This is evident in the ease-of-use and simplicity of many of the service features, and also in the excellent options offered for more complex services like AWS Forecast, where, for example, a checkbox and drop-down allows the user to add holidays for the country they work in when doing forecasts.

AWS has a stronger focus on business solutions than either GCP or Azure, and in many of the solutions, I have used. This is why in many cases I have switched from using other clouds, to AWS. 

The setup in AWS is a whole service in and of itself. To set up AWS applications, AWS offers a full service, CloudFormation, with some added features that allow us to automate the deployment of the full solution stack.

This makes setup complex, in that one must modify the CloudFormation template one requires and validate it. An external resource was required to check the templates. 

Once this is done, the full solution stacks are automatically deployed. 

I handled the initial setup in-house and by myself.

A recently deployed Step Function automation fulfilled all the needs of a workflow automation engine while remaining below the free operation per month, so we were able to deliver a fully automated application approval process without paying for any workflow automation engine license fees or any server hardware or infrastructure costs.

I would advise others to work from an architecture overview. 

Be aware of the very powerful schema-less data services in the cloud. They can help remove the need for data warehouses - e.g. multi-TB datasets - can be read, joined, queried and made to output daily reports within minutes, on temporary clusters, and that cost less than USD1000 per month. This is compared to the hundreds of thousands of USD for data warehouse licensing costs, plus the schema design time and ongoing DevOps they require.

Moving to serverless operations in the cloud frees up your people to deliver business services rather than spend days and days on administering data centers and the associated concerns that come with them.

I also looked at Azure and it was deemed less reliable than AWS as AWS has not had as many outages and uptime concerns as Azure has had of late. Azure Function Apps, Data Factory, Managed SQL.

Besides Azure, I looked at GCP and VMs, Cloud Functions, Speech-to-Text transcription, BigTable, and BigQuery.

Empower your in-house people to start building and running their workloads in AWS. 

Let them learn as they go. There are multiple online courses for a few dollars that can assist with specific, individual AWS services, as well as running through the AWS workshops. 

Incentivize AWS certifications. Involve your tech people with business solution prototyping. 

Tag your resources, name them well, and set budget thresholds. Assign people to tune the resources being used. Incentivize communications and publish the AWS services and features being used to deliver your business capabilities.

We use Amazon AWS to deploy our architecture.

The most valuable features are CodePipeline, CodeDeploy, CodeBuild, and CodeCommit. We use them to deliver our solution.

The services that we are using have frequent updates, at least twice a year. They provide a new version that has more capabilities or features that fit our process and procedures.

I am an integration specialist and Amazon AWS always seems to be a step ahead of the competition when it comes to the solutions integration abilities with its services.

EventBridge is a tool provided by AWS and it enables integration with the API gateway. We are using it as a solution to our projects and with our clients to integrate with external features, such as B2B or B2C. The Amazon API gateway integrates with EventBridge and other messaging layers. It is a highly integrated solution with those platforms.

I have been using this solution for approximately five years.

The solution is stable.

Amazon AWS has a very easy tool to scale in terms of scaling up and down. We have different options to do this operation and they are very useful.

The technical support has been helpful.

The setup of the solution is not so easy, it requires various skills to complete it. The whole implementation can take a month. However, different parts can take more or less time depending on the knowledge of the implementor.

The messaging layer, in general, is easy today than before when you had to create all the data centers around the world and create the steps to connect the data centers to each other. They have improved a lot over the year but they could still improve more.

Amazon AWS has pay-as-you-go options available.

It is important for people who want to use Amazon AWS to have a very good implementation strategy to make the migration. Amazon has provided some framework to help those wanting to start the migration process.

I rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten.

AWS is part of our network, we provide services to our internal customers and we have 2,000 plus applications which sit on the VMs and different blade servers. It's a mix, we're using a hybrid environment. I manage the company network and security; we are partners with Amazon AWS.

I value the automation and the stability of this product. Whether it is S3, EC2, the LSG, ASG, for us it's all good to implement.

AWS cloud has an issue with accessibility to the customer, it's very limited and if there's an internal issue, we won't know about it because they don't expose their APIs to many things. This is a generic cloud problem for all cloud products. It's not just AWS. It's Azure, Google, all of them have the same problem. They will never give you any information, and you can't even check their logs properly. That kind of transparency issue is critical because whether I'm using their infrastructure or not, I should have visibility with regard to what is happening in my network.

I'd like to see compatibility extended to include additional applications which are widely used but not compatible on the public cloud. Without them, you can't build the ecosystems for each and every thing. I realize there are so many applications around and you can't source everything but I'd like to see additional compatibility.

The solution has some limitations because you won't have the space for some of the applications. For example, Google is the only provider with a VMware product line. Some of the applications still need a physical server.

I've been using this solution for six years. 

The support is average, just like other cloud providers. It's not so great but it's average. You can't always blame someone, but cloud architecture is like that. Visibility is an issue. They don't offer the latest services and if you don't know, you can just track back to your VMs or the services which you have deployed. 

The initial setup was quite complex. You're designing something and have downloaded the infrastructure of cloud providers which is always complex. Once you start using the solution it becomes easy. 

It is most cost-effective to go for a long-term license option, that way you get a better deal for the cloud. 

I think at the cloud maturity level, I would rate AWS first, Azure second and GCP has just started. In 2015/16, AWS had a lot of issues, but now they are coming up with better solutions and better flexibility. That said, the transparency issue is still there. 

Azure is good for the Microsoft product line and if you are using that you should go with Azure - they will give you better service. But for third parties, it's the same transparency issue, just like any other cloud provider.

I rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution to host our control panel for our IoT devices.

The solution has very good documentation.

The initial setup is simple and straightforward.

The solution is scalable.

The stability has been good.

We have found the technical support to be helpful and responsive. 

I cannot recall feeling there were any features missing.

There is a bit of a learning curve. That said, it's likely no different than learning any other cloud.

The pricing could be a bit lower, even though its costs are in the middle of the road.

I've used the solution for about half a year. It hasn't been 12 months yet.

The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's quite reliable. 

I would imagine the scaling is very good. It's advertised as quite scalable and everything points to that being the case. However, I have not personally attempted to scale. We're still building the application, and therefore we aren't at the point of scaling.

We have three people using the solution currently.

Technical support is very helpful and responsive. They have been good so far. We have no complaints and are quite satisfied with the support we receive.

We did not use a different solution. We chose Amazon due to its good documentation and middle-of-the-road costs.

While I wasn't a part of the initial implementation, it's my understanding that the process is very simple and straightforward. It's not an overly complex process. 

The cost is moderate. It's not overly expensive.

We are just customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with Amazon.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. 

I'd recommend the solution. It's a good choice and one we stand behind.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We are very satisfied with the product so far. Likely, if the price was lower, we would rate it higher.