The most valuable feature of AWS is that you can scale it up and down as you need. The environment is a rich playground, and if you tried to do the same things on-premises that you do on AWS, it would be a lot more challenging to execute. You can open up a virtual machine on AWS, run some experiments, and be done with it. It's much easier than buying new servers, provisioning them, etc.
Most of the companies that I've worked for deal with AWS.
I don't know how many servers they say they have, but AWS is a highly reliable platform. I'm sure they've had outages because it's all over the news when they do, but it's stable overall.
Cloud solutions like AWS are supposed to have near-infinite scalable. That's the point. You can just keep going and make them as big or small as you need.
AWS is like all the other cloud providers. They're all like vacuum salesmen, where they come in, and they say, "Do you want to buy this hose or this vacuum?" And you're like, "Yeah, it's not that expensive. It's a hose." And then they say, "How about these extra bags?" And you're like, "Okay. I'll buy the bags. It's not that much." Then, at the end of the day, you've bought an entire vacuum store's worth of stuff. You don't know upfront what it will cost, but they have cost calculators and other things like that.
You'll probably experience some sticker shock with AWS. You attempt to understand the cost, but you don't realize what you're paying until you get your first bill. I don't know if Amazon does that on purpose, but costs can get out of control quickly if you don't have someone who specializes in AWS cost management.
I don't even know how many microservices they have now. It seems like hundreds, so what do you do. What would you tell them to do with Aurora compared to their other stuff? There's just so much there that it's tough to get a comprehensive understanding of what you're getting into with AWS. And that's just the nature of AWS. It's a giant ecosystem. Azure is the same. I'm not familiar with GCP, but I'm sure it's the same. They do their best to make it as clean as possible from a sales perspective, but the AWS sticker shock is real.
I'm not sure about the exact costs. When I used to do stuff with Commvault and stuff, I knew the ingress and egress fees and the data cost for storage on AWS, but that was a long time ago.
I guess I would rate Amazon AWS eight out of 10. AWS works as advertised, but they're expensive if you don't know what you're doing. I'm not sure if I can knock them for not being transparent about pricing. Cloud costs are challenging. There's an entire industry popping up for managing cloud costs with consultants who can tell you how to get the most out of your AWS allocation.
I don't have a lot of advice. If you're planning to implement a cloud solution, just pick one. I mean, if you're a Microsoft shop, it probably makes more sense to go Azure. If you're not, then I would recommend AWS. It depends on what you're looking to get out of it.
There are references, architectures, case studies, and a million other things that would off better advice on whether to go with AWS or not. But if you're looking to go to the cloud, AWS is as good as everybody else. AWS is probably better than Azure and GCP, but that's a tricky thing to pin down. It depends on what your goals and requirements are. My best advice is to evaluate your goals before making a decision.
I hope that people take what I say about AWS with a massive grain of salt because it's like asking an ant about an elephant. What's an ant going to know about an elephant? It's just too big for any one person to know.