What is our primary use case?
We build business applications for our customers using Amazon AWS in 15 different industries.
Many of my customers use many cloud services together.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of Amazon AWS are the high level of capabilities, cloud-native environment, developer-friendly, intuitive interface, and automation. The solution overall is easy to learn from the resources available.
What needs improvement?
The customization could improve. However, it depends on the customization needed.
To enhance its capabilities, Amazon AWS should improve its integration with other digital security platforms and solutions, especially those used by companies in domains, such as banking, financial services, and insurance. While Amazon AWS has its own solution, there are many other initial vendor companies that perform exceptionally well. Therefore, it is crucial for Amazon AWS to have better integration with those platforms and solutions, including how to host and integrate them with the rest of the Amazon AWS services. Although Amazon AWS has its strengths, it doesn't always work seamlessly for customers, making it a significant obstacle to migrating applications to Amazon AWS. Rather than focusing on developing new features, Amazon AWS could better serve its customers by supporting these existing solutions in the digital security space.
There are many excellent encryption solutions available, along with many other solutions. By supporting these solutions and offering easy integration, Amazon AWS can create a win-win situation for its customers.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon AWS for approximately seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
When you have complex deployments, such as with more than two availability zones, there are reliability, and resiliency options that are complex to implement and expensive. Providing stability or more complex deployments is possible, but very expensive.
I rate the stability of Amazon AWS a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have more than 50,000 users using this solution in my organization. Everyone in our company is using the solution.
The solution is highly scalable.
I rate the scalability of Amazon AWS a ten out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
The support provided by Amazon AWS is highly responsive. We have a strong alliance with Amazon AWS, and we regularly interact with their teams. They conduct knowledge-sharing sessions for us and keep us informed about new features. They are always available to support us. They have helped us from the inception phase of any large engagement up to providing help in troubleshooting some problems. They are extremely helpful.
I rate the support of Amazon AWS a ten out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have worked with Google Cloud Services and Microsoft Azure.
Amazon AWS is known for building many industry platforms, and companies often look to all three hyper scalers to help them build such platforms on Amazon AWS. Large consortia of companies collaborate on such initiatives. However, Google and Azure are more interested in partnering with and supporting industry-level consortiums and technology initiatives, while Amazon AMS sees it more as an engineering capability and expects developers to build everything from the ground up. Therefore, Amazon AMS may need to adjust its approach slightly in comparison to its competitors.
How was the initial setup?
The simplicity of Amazon AWS depends on the engineering processes implemented by the client's organization. Setting up these processes may take some time, but the AWS SDK provided by Amazon is helpful. Moreover, integration with other tooling is also necessary.
Once the processes and platforms are configured, the execution becomes automatic. This has been successfully accomplished in many engagements where pipelines are run for tasks, such as provisioning new infrastructure and making multiple releases.
For a business with a small deployment and with minor features needed the process of implementation can take 30 minutes and in some instances less than 15 minutes. However, if it's a large release with multiple features, including verifications, it can take up to one and a half hours maximum. The more features added the longer the implementation will take.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
In comparison to Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure, the database offered by Amazon AWS is relatively expensive. However, the database also offers rich features.
I rate the price of Amazon AWS a six out of ten.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
If you compare Amazon AWS with other hyper scalers, such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, Amazon AWS is the most sophisticated cloud development platform.
What other advice do I have?
The amount of people for the maintenance of the solution depends on the engagement we have with our customers. Some of our customers are sophisticated with modern infrastructure and can handle most of the maintenance themself.
The engineering team responsible for development also handles maintenance, upgrades, and support without any differentiation. However, some customers still follow an older mindset, where a separate ops team is responsible for platform maintenance and operations.
One approach is to have a centralized model where a team of 20-30 members manages all the applications, including operations and maintenance. Alternatively, a distributed model may be used, where four or five different teams manage different aspects. However, on average, the team size for the entire IT organization is typically around 20-30 people.
I strongly recommend this solution to others.
I rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten.
I gave my rating of eight because the price of the feature is more expensive than the competitors.
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.