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Chef manager at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Helpful technical support, easy setup, and highly stable
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup is not difficult and it did not take us more than one day."
  • "The solution could improve by being more secure."

What is our primary use case?

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

What needs improvement?

The solution could improve by being more secure.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon AWS for approximately six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

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Amazon AWS
November 2024
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable.

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

How are customer service and support?

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

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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

How was the initial setup?

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

What about the implementation team?

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.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We have a monthly subscription for Amazon AWS.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Rodrigo Bassani - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Technology at Elogroup
Real User
Top 10
Frequent feature updates, easy to scale, and helpful technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "The setup of the solution is not so easy, it requires various skills to complete it. The whole implementation can take a month."

What is our primary use case?

We use Amazon AWS to deploy our architecture.

What is most valuable?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for approximately five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support has been helpful.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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

What other advice do I have?

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.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
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Buyer's Guide
Amazon AWS
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Amazon AWS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Software Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Detailed dashboard, easy to follow documentation, and reliable
Pros and Cons
  • "This solution offers a very detailed dashboard that has some metrics, such as performance and budget."
  • "In a future release, I would like to see more support for AI because it is the future."

What is our primary use case?

I am using the solution to create my own virtual servers in the cloud. We use one of the servers to deploy the database for NoSQL database on MongoDB. MongoDB allows all types of databases. 

Here is a more detailed explanation. I needed to deploy a backup API that was not in the project I needed it for. To back up the API is essentially treating data from the MongoDB database. Initially, we implemented it locally and tested all the endpoints, and then we deployed it to the AWS services. We needed this to be online and to communicate with the front end, which is an angular app that says you receive the data from another database which is another NoSQL.

What is most valuable?

This solution offers a very detailed dashboard that has some metrics, such as performance and budget. You can find all the documentation on how to do almost anything. It supports multiple services where you can use Linux. Depending on your use case, you can also manage the allocations, for example, your hard drive and memory.

Additionally, the solution is user-friendly, has intuitive dashboards, and plenty of graphs and charts available.

What needs improvement?

We had some problems with bandwidth because of high usage. There were so many queries going to the API and since we were on a budget, we did not provide the needed requirements for our software. At those times the performance was really slow, I needed to log in using a remote session to check whether there is a problem and if there was I had to restart the server. If you have the required budget and you know how to customize it, I think it would be working fine.

In a future release, I would like to see more support for AI because it is the future. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for the past year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is really reliable even when we were using it as a demo to showcase to clients.

The cloud-based environment was secure for everything I used it for. It does not allow you to just log in for the remote sessions. You need to configure it to have a computer log into your accounts properly for user management.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable, whenever you want to scale up the solution and improve it, they really offer you that opportunity. For example, increase the hardware and resources.

How are customer service and technical support?

The customer support is exceptional. I was having some problems with deploying the server and had to contact support. I began chatting with the chatbot and when it did not help me I was transferred to one of their support attendants. Once the ticket is submitted, they send you another email, in three days to check whether the problem was resolved or not. They are really helpful.

Additionally, at one of the AI summits, Amazon had a room that was filled with many technical professionals. They all had different technical backgrounds willing to give support to those who asked questions. It was really helpful.

How was the initial setup?

The installation for me was straightforward since I have some technical background. However, I did still need to read some documentation. The installation documentation is good and informative. Those who are new to the solution can search the internet for information to guide them and there are courses online to follow too.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

When I first started using the solution I used a free trial, and then we upgraded to a pay-as-you-go subscription. We have an allocated budget of $50. I am happy with the pricing because the free trial project helped me progress. In our country, there are limitations for what payment methods we can use, we do not support PayPal, and credit card transactions are delayed. Hopefully, this gets better in the future. However, in other countries, this is not a widespread problem.

What other advice do I have?

The type of deployment of the solution depends on the need of the organization. There are some solutions that we deploy for the clients that we need in a more stable environment. In this case, we use the cloud. For testing purposes for internal projects, we use our own servers within the company. I think by the IP numbers, we can request to create a certain server and they created this for us. There are some clients that require a cloud-based solution, we have this capability but it is still in testing and it is not what we use our servers for.

I would recommend this solution for companies like small companies just starting out. It would be really helpful for them.

I rate Amazon AWS a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior consultant at NTT Security
Real User
A well-built and logical ecosystem that is robust, secure, and scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "Almost everything is good. It is a whole ecosystem. It is not only the storage, computing, or networking. It is interesting in the way all things are combined to form this ecosystem. It is a very well-built and logical ecosystem that has some small building blocks. These building blocks can be used in the right way to build a much bigger ecosystem that is robust, secure, scalable."
  • "Its interface could be better because there are so many services right now in the product that it is quite difficult to navigate around in this. Its interface could be a subject of improvement."

What is most valuable?

Almost everything is good. It is a whole ecosystem. It is not only the storage, computing, or networking. It is interesting in the way all things are combined to form this ecosystem. It is a very well-built and logical ecosystem that has some small building blocks. These building blocks can be used in the right way to build a much bigger ecosystem that is robust, secure, scalable.

What needs improvement?

Its interface could be better because there are so many services right now in the product that it is quite difficult to navigate around in this. Its interface could be a subject of improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It has good stability. In six years of working with Amazon AWS, I had only two major incidents, which are very few.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very scalable. Our clients are enterprise businesses. There are some customers who put only a part of their business on Amazon AWS, and there are some customers who put everything on Amazon AWS. In some cases, a few applications are going to the cloud, whereas in other cases, everything is going to the cloud, and the migration is huge.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their technical support is good.

How was the initial setup?

Its initial setup is straightforward. You just need to create an account.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution. It is a cloud leader, and it is a safe bet. 

I would rate Amazon AWS a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
PeerSpot user
it_user1379073 - PeerSpot reviewer
Staff Engineer at Commonwealth Bank
Real User
Aligns well with Agile and DevOps practices to help deliver applications faster to market
Pros and Cons
  • "There are a lot of features that I really like including ease of deployment, ease of build and release, and also that it is heavily focused on a PaaS or SaaS model."
  • "One of the problems that I have seen is that some of the products are not as mature as others."

What is our primary use case?

We provide services to clients using Amazon AWS and I've also used it for our own applications.

How has it helped my organization?

AWS aligns very well with agile and DevOps practices, as well as and cloud-native principles like infrastructure as code. In short, it helps me deliver my product faster to market.

What is most valuable?

There are a lot of features that I really like including ease of deployment, ease of build and release, and also that it is heavily focused on a PaaS or SaaS model. All I have to worry about is my application and not about the infrastructure.

What needs improvement?

One of the problems that I have seen is that some of the products are not as mature as others. For example, their API Gateway is not as mature as Kong, and their version control system is not at mature as GitHub. It's the same thing with their databases like DynamoDB, which is not as mature as MongoDB. Once we have equality in products between on-premises and cloud, this system will be a very good proposition.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Amazon AWS for about five years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

As the majority of products on AWS are PaaS or SaaS offerings, scalability is not a big concern. For some of the services, you have to give them notice if you want to scale them beyond certain limits.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have been in contact with technical support and they are quite good at responding.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is not complex. In fact, I would say that it is relatively easy.

The time required for deployment depends on which products are selected. Some take minutes, whereas others can take hours.

What other advice do I have?

My advice for anybody who is considering AWS is to try exploring and use it. I think that it will save you a lot of time.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user716571 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architecte solutions Amazon Web Services at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
MSP
Terms Of Licencing And Reserved Instances Are Very Efficient

What is most valuable?

Amount of services, fully-managed services, and the power of Infrastructure as code (deployment and automation). AWS has many atomic services (Lambda, SNS, SQS. and so on…).

How has it helped my organization?

Migration of On Premise Data Center to AWS to allow cost optimization, and full operational automation to focus on experimentation and innovation.

Cross account possibilities for a big IT organization (user management, resources management, etc.).

What needs improvement?

It would be nice to be able to test Direct Connect without having to pay a line. Also, the possibility to use VPC Peering with one point VPN Gateway (for the moment, impossible).

For how long have I used the solution?

More than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Not yet.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Not when we know scalability optimization and processes.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have not call AWS support yet, but it seems to be very fast according to the various returns I had.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Switched to be more global (AWS Region) and more to the way of a serverless paradigm.

How was the initial setup?

Very simple, an e-mail address, a credit card, and the account is open.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The Free Tiers program is great for testing solutions.

Their terms of licencing and reserved instances are very efficient (like Spot Instances for identified workloads).

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Not really, I fell in love with AWS right away: their services, quality and quantity of documentation. With the various testimonies that I received, I had no doubt.

What other advice do I have?

The Cloud Adoption Framework and the Well-Architected on AWS documents are a must read.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: AWS Partner
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
IT Solution Architect at HCS
Provides storage solutions and infrastructure for deploying Java and PHP based applications.
Pros and Cons
  • "It has helped reduce the cost by rationing the computing power and paying only on a per usage basis, instead of provisioning unneeded, idle, or unutilized computing power that is used only at 20% of its capacity or time."
  • "Many of our clients prefer in-house cloud rather than the application data sitting in the infrastructure owned and managed by Amazon."

How has it helped my organization?

For one of the clients I worked with, it has provided excellent storage solutions and infrastructure for deploying Java and PHP based applications.

It has helped reduce the cost by rationing the computing power and paying only on a per usage basis, instead of provisioning unneeded, idle, or unutilized computing power that is used only at 20% of its capacity or time.

Additional funds saved can be used to develop applications that add value to the business. Also, its features, such as auto-scaling help to manage capacity automatically.

Another feature that we are fond of is the Cloud Formation tool. It helps to test and develop a working technical environment and replicate and modify it as necessary across various regions, clients, and business units.

What is most valuable?

Features such as EC2, S3, EBS, Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing, VPC (Virtual Private Cloud), RDS (Relational Data Service), Cloud Front, Cloud Formation, Elastic Bean Stack, etc., have been useful for the following reasons:

  • EC2: Supports various operating systems, CPU configurations, helps to produce flexible computing power at affordable, customizable rates. You pay for only what you use. No need to pay for unused extra capacity. Build only what you need and pay for only what you use. It can help save tons of dollars in infrastructure cost.
  • S3: Low cost, affordable, yet modern storage solution from Amazon.
  • EBS: Low cost, yet fast storage solution. It helps to store the needed data in the quickly accessible storage. Also, it helps defending against DDOS attacks.
  • Auto Scaling: Helps to quickly scale up, or scale down the capacity as needed. This would help in adding and/or removing computing capacity as per the need and helps reduce cost, yet provide a quick response as needed.
  • Elastic Load Balancing: Helps to build redundant, waiting systems for which the demand can be routed as needed.
  • VPC: Helps to define our own private cloud with marked input and output ports. Also helps in reducing the electronic footprint and defend against DDOS attacks. Helps to define the private cloud which will provide the needed security and privacy.
  • RDS: Helps to dynamically manage the database services. Helps to independently select and/or switch among various database providers such as Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, etc. RDS helps to free up administrators' time by automating tasks such as backup, maintenance, applying patches, scaling, and replication.
  • CloudFront: Helps to define cache of data across various locations and helps to improve the latency of applications.
  • Cloud Formation: This is the much needed tool for technical architects. Here one can define the technical architecture they need and play around with it until they get a working architecture. Then the working architecture can be copied, reutilized among different regions, business units, clients, etc. This saves cost and time, reduces errors, and improves efficiency. A much needed tool for administrators and architects.
  • Elastic BeanStalk: Helps to rapidly deploy applications across various platforms such as Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, Python, Docker, etc. It also handles load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.

What needs improvement?

Many of our clients prefer in-house cloud rather than the application data sitting in the infrastructure owned and managed by Amazon. They prefer in-house/hybrid cloud environments.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We did not encounter any issues with stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We did not encounter any issues with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have not used the technical support much. For the initial solution designing and PoC preparation, we contacted the sales and marketing team from Amazon. They were available and provided the necessary support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have used Azure and some other applications. We will continue to use them. We like keeping 2-3 vendors to have a healthy competition and see improvements in the products.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was complex, as we needed to build the infrastructure from scratch. It would also require expertise in networking and security.

It is very important to safely manage the keys, as otherwise this would lead to costly security breaches. Some amount of playing around with the setup and replicating it via cloud formation will be needed until your architect becomes perfect with the tool.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is decently priced. The competition is also bringing its own cloud offerings, such as from Oracle.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Azure, Apprenda, and Pivotal Cloud Foundry.

Some of our established clients are going with Azure, especially the ones who had established .NET VB environments. Those who need private in-house cloud are going with Apprenda or Pivotal Cloud Foundry. For small to medium customers, AWS offers a good choice and savings.

What other advice do I have?

It depends upon the requirements and the regulatory compliance issues of the customer. For small to medium customers, AWS is a good choice. For Java, PHP based applications, AWS is a good choice. If you need to have your own private, in-house cloud, there are other options.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Info Sec Consultant at Size 41 Digital
Real User
Top 5
It is more stable than any infrastructure you will have in your own server room. The only problems I had with deployment were with Amazon authorizing our account initially.
Pros and Cons
  • "Cloud Trail API log storage."
  • "It can be daunting because of the number of AWS products there are."

How has it helped my organization?

Everything is moving into the cloud and AWS is the leader. Not understanding puts a person behind.

I've worked with charities so the ability to host a static website in an S3 bucket at very low cost is great. Also, the ability to scale up and down, depending on project and funding status is ideal for the charity sector.

Glacier storage means files that need to be kept for legal purposes (7 years) - but accessed infrequently - can be stored cheaply in Glacier.

What is most valuable?

  • S3 storage buckets
  • Glacier storage
  • EC2 instances
  • Cloud Trail API log storage

What needs improvement?

Amazon are as innovative as they are able to deliver. Areas that need improvement are dealt with pretty quickly so I have no complaints. Perhaps the fact that they are innovating so quickly can be seen as a problem for organisations that don't invest in their staff?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

None. Amazon's cloud is more stable than any infrastructure you will have in your own server room.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's very easy to spin up virtual machines and deploy load balancers.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

For free support, their forums cover almost every problem encountered by users on AWS. For one-to-one problems, I found their customer service people to be good.

Technical Support:

Technical support is excellent.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I used to use Rackspace but AWS's innovation and range of products meant I swapped over.

How was the initial setup?

It can be daunting because of the number of AWS products there are. It doesn't take long to skill yourself on the basics of what each one does (in the beginning you will probably be using S3, EC2, and IAM and there are lots of short courses or guides to read).

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

AWS is scalable depending on your needs so pricing is dependant on what you use. Just be careful not to leave VMs running as you can find your next monthly bill a little higher than normal - AWS did cover that with billing alarms so it's not all bad news.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user326337 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user326337Customer Success Manager at PeerSpot
Consultant

Wow, Aimee, it's great to know you have a 'no complaint' sentiment about AWS!

Given that you had originally spent what sounds like a large amount of time dealing with customer service, how did they succeed in delivering you to a place where you have 'no complaints' about the platform?

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Buyer's Guide
Download our free Amazon AWS Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: November 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Amazon AWS Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.