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SundaresanSubramanyan - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder and Managing Director at Analytic Brains Technologies Private Limited
Real User
Quick deployment and offers automated vulnerability audits, ensuring system security
Pros and Cons
  • "Security, quick deployment, and scalability are the top three features for me."
  • "Pricing is the one feature everyone wants AWS to improve."

What is our primary use case?

It is primarily for cloud hosting. If you're developing a solution for a customer who wants it on the cloud, then AWS and Microsoft Azure are two major choices. There are other providers too, but AWS is quite user-friendly.

We use AWS for scalable cloud hosting and computing services. We store all our customer data on Amazon EC2 Instances.

How has it helped my organization?

We haven't had any security problems, and Amazon offers automated vulnerability audits. This helps us test our solutions for vulnerabilities and show customers that our systems are secure.

What is most valuable?

Security, quick deployment, and scalability are the top three features for me.

What needs improvement?

Like every other customer, I'd suggest pricing is the one feature everyone wants AWS to improve. 

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February 2025
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For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for five years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable solution. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable solution. We've worked with about five customers so far. 

How are customer service and support?

We haven't needed technical support.

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

Sometimes, customers ask for AWS solutions, but we offer choices based on their needs. Price and geographical preferences can influence their decision. Sometimes, the customers can go for a cheaper product.  We don't force them, but we make recommendations.

How was the initial setup?

The quickest way to set it up is the most beneficial feature. We can set up resources quickly and scale them as needed, starting small and growing as requirements increase. That's very helpful. It saves us a lot of time. 

The initial setup is straightforward if you spend some time learning it. They're improving the user interface, which helps.

What about the implementation team?

My team takes care of the implementation. They find it easy to deploy. We haven't faced any issues so far.

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

It's not very pricey, but it could be cheaper. There are other options like GoDaddy and HostGator.

There are various options, and some can be cheaper than paying a full license.

What other advice do I have?

Read the documentation carefully before starting. Preparation saves time in the long run. For example, the ease of integrating different AWS services depends on your expertise.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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David Jothidoss - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager - Solution Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5
A scalable and reasonably priced solution that is easy to use and has a high availability
Pros and Cons
  • "The product is easy to use."
  • "IAM must be made simple and straightforward."

What is most valuable?

The product is easy to use. Its availability and support are its biggest strengths.

What needs improvement?

IAM must be made simple and straightforward. It is a little bit complicated compared to GCP.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for three to four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

My company had signed up for professional support. We did not have any issues with support. It would be really tough to reach out to the support team on a personal level. For personal users, I rate the support a three to four out of ten. For professional users, I rate it a nine out of ten.

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

We are also using Google Cloud Platform. The choice of the product depends on people’s familiarity and their inclination toward using a certain product.

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

The tool’s pricing is reasonable.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend the solution. Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
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Buyer's Guide
Amazon AWS
February 2025
Learn what your peers think about Amazon AWS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.
FlorianPriede - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Account Manager Premier Services at Hyland
Real User
Scalable, easy to deploy, and makes a lot of sense if you are growing
Pros and Cons
  • "Scalability is one of the biggest benefits we have."
  • "We have a very good approach internally with what we have developed. It involved overcoming some hurdles regarding the single point of truth or single point of configuration, which is sometimes not that easy for AWS. There are dashboards and you have your web service, but bringing all these together and orchestrating is sometimes quite difficult."

What is our primary use case?

We're a native AWS customer and a provider as well. We have multiple solutions running in there, and we are also doing infrastructure as a code and infrastructure as a service. For example, we can offer you lower prices than the price that you would pay for an AWS instance because we are an official partner of Amazon. So, we are taking all the advantages of what we currently have with AWS. 

It is being used for ECM. In terms of deployment, from an AWS perspective, it is partly self-developed based on Terraform, and we are also using services like S3, S9, and all the things we have in AWS for DNS, but it is highly automated. When a customer comes in and says that they need an instance clustered with certain options and a certain amount of service, it's usually firing up one line of code, and then everything gets set up, including the infrastructure.

We're working with its newer version.

What is most valuable?

Scalability is one of the biggest benefits we have.

What needs improvement?

We have a very good approach internally with what we have developed. It involved overcoming some hurdles regarding the single point of truth or single point of configuration, which is sometimes not that easy for AWS. There are dashboards and you have your web service, but bringing all these together and orchestrating is sometimes quite difficult.

For how long have I used the solution?

My estimate is six years, but it might be way earlier. We ramped up way early with AWS on the market and developed together with them.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very scalable. Our customers are from every corner you can imagine. There is no specific type of customers we are serving.

How are customer service and support?

We have a direct relationship with AWS. We are not running with the usual support with AWS. We have other possibilities and are directly integrated. 

How was the initial setup?

It is easy. With our solution, it's really a piece of cake. Even my seven-year-old would be able to set up a cluster with high availability, as long as I tell her what to enter.

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

It is quite expensive in my very personal opinion. Going on-prem in a data center is, for sure, not as expensive as going to AWS, but when it comes to a point where you are raising and growing, it simply makes a lot of sense to stay in AWS. It is awesome in that way. I am not aware of any extra costs.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Azure is something that we are currently looking into as a second option, but there are no concrete actions planned.

What other advice do I have?

It boils down to two points. The first point would be to have correct planning. You need to know what you want to do and you need to be familiar with what you can do in AWS. The second very important point is that you need very stable and very good monitoring of your AWS instances. This is mandatory because if you fire up a very expensive environment and forget it over weeks, you need to pay for that. I've seen a lot of companies struggling to get an overview of all these AWS machines. It starts by tagging and so on.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Julio Cesar-Cunha - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Sales Account Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Organization visibility, great support, and highly scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "We have many projects where we can resolve a lot of issues with Amazon AWS. It has given customers a lot of visibility with their data. Many customers do not know what they can learn from their data and I provide them with this using useful information using Amazon AWS."
  • "The difficulty of the implementation depends on the project. We have a lot of very complicated and complex project which make the implementation more difficult. However, a small project can be very simple to implement. In general, over 90% of the project tend to be complex implementations."

What is our primary use case?

We used Amazon AWS when we work on a lot of projects in different situations or scenarios. We have done migrations from on-premise to cloud computing, projects involving data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

Many of our customers use the website application that is hosted by Amazon AWS.

What is most valuable?

We have many projects where we can resolve a lot of issues with Amazon AWS. It has given customers a lot of visibility with their data. Many customers do not know what they can learn from their data and I provide them with this using useful information using Amazon AWS. 

The Redshift features are very useful for large amounts of data. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon AWS for approximately two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Amazon AWS is scalable and it is very important for our customers.

We have a lot of customers using this solution and our largest customer has approximately 16,000 users using the solution.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is very good.

How was the initial setup?

The difficulty of the implementation depends on the project. We have a lot of very complicated and complex project which make the implementation more difficult. However, a small project can be very simple to implement. In general, over 90% of the project tend to be complex implementations.

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

We are on an annual subscription for Amazon AWS.

What other advice do I have?

We create some processes to resolve some questions the customers have. They want to improve and have more visibility of their data, and how to extract information about their data. We help them with this problem.

Amazon AWS is the most important provider in the market. They have helped many of my customers.

I rate Amazon AWS a nine 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
Founder CEO at PROZM Knowledge Services Pvt Ltd
Real User
Has good compute features and Relational Database services
Pros and Cons
  • "The features that I have found most valuable are their compute and their Relational Database Service."
  • "The features that should be improved are that there should be better clarity on their invoicing. There are so many things they charge for - high line items in the invoice. I think there should be more clarity and more ease of use with their billing. I'd like to see better ease of use of with the billing console and a clear dashboard to understand the usage."

What is our primary use case?

We use it to host our e-learning platform.

AWS is a platform, wherein they give you a virtual instance of a server. So there is no version per se. They just give you a virtual server. The other software we use is free. We use it for conducting our exams and everything. We use a free, open source software, which is not a commercial software.

How has it helped my organization?

Remember, this is a plain vanilla platform. So we don't have to do any actual investment in servers and other things. That is the general advantage of cloud that everybody gets. You don't have to pay a lot of money. And at any point, if you feel you don't want to use it, you stop. It is as simple as that.

What is most valuable?

The features that I have found most valuable are their compute and their Relational Database Service.

What needs improvement?

The features that should be improved are that there should be better clarity on their invoicing. There are so many things they charge for - high line items in the invoice. I think there should be more clarity and more ease of use with their billing.

I'd like to see better ease of use with the billing console and a clear dashboard to understand the usage.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon AWS for almost three years. We are continually using it.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Amazon AWS is very, very stable.

No maintenance is required.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is unlimited. From one to 10, it is 10.

We use it, but our training participants access it. A lot of people access it. In a year, at different points in time, 200 people might be using it.

I don't think we will be expanding usage because we purchased a little more than what we needed. We don't need to spend any money now. We only pay our monthly charges.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is good. If you raise a ticket, they're very good. Even with billing, if you have some issues they take care of it. If you are overbilled or you're not using it and then you turn one thing by mistake, and all of a sudden the bill has increased - they'll take care of it.

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

Previously, we were using general hosting, they even call it shared hosting. But it was not scalable and it was not fast.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is all easy. It's very easy.

Our deployment took just a few clicks. You are talking seconds.

What about the implementation team?

I had our technical team do it. But you need a technical person. It's not that anybody can do it or a person like me can do it. You need to have a technical person doing it.

What was our ROI?

We have seen a return of investment with Amazon AWS.

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

We are just a customer. We just pay monthly for the subscription cost. I mean, hardly $50. We are a very small company. 

What other advice do I have?

My advice to anyone considering Amazon AWS is that they should plan properly for their spending and they should have good control over their technology team. Otherwise, if the technology team doesn't know enough and they keep on creating more services, you'll be surprised with the invoice. Technology and finance should work very, very closely in the cloud.

On a scale of one to 10, I give Amazon AWS a 10. It's a really good product.

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
Senior Oracle Database Administrator at Refinitiv
Real User
A reasonably-priced and stable platform for transitioning our customers from on-premises to the cloud
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is that it is simple."
  • "They can launch the Oracle service in Azure, and we expect that this should be possible in Amazon AWS as well."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case of this solution is to migrate our customers into the cloud, integrating all of their applications.

In my previous organization, we moved some customers from on-premises to the cloud, and they are happy with the change.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is that it is simple. We don't use complex services for our small business customers.

What needs improvement?

When it was only Amazon AWS in the market, no one was concerned about the pricing. However, now that there are so many competitors, there is more comparison for cloud service providers. They should look into reducing the price of this solution to stay competitive. It would be a benefit.

The current trend is multi-cloud. They can launch the Oracle service in Azure, and we expect that this should be possible in Amazon AWS as well. 

I would like to see better integration between Oracle and AWS.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon AWS for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Amazon AWS is stable and we have not faced any issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's a scalable solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have not used technical support. We provide that to our customers.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is easy. 

Deployment is not a problem for us because we have experience. For new people, they are a bit worried about new features, until they develop a routine.

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

The Oracle licensing is higher than it is with Amazon AWS.

What other advice do I have?

The deployment varies, as some of our customers would like the hybrid cloud while others want a public cloud.

I have recommended this product to our customers and will continue to do so.

I would rate this solution 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: partner
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
IT Solution Architect at HCS
MSP
Top 20Leaderboard
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
Amarjit Rathee - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems, Ltd.
Real User
Top 5
Has good scalability
Pros and Cons
  • "The scalability is a valuable feature."
  • "The pricing is expensive"

What is our primary use case?

We are using it for certain business applications.

What is most valuable?

The scalability is a valuable feature. 

What needs improvement?

The improvement should be done as per business needs. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon AWS for five years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable solution. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable solution. Presently, 3,000 users are using the solution. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. 

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

The pricing is expensive. 

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine 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
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Amazon AWS Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: February 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Amazon AWS Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.