Amazon AWS Reviews

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.

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.

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.

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

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. 

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.

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.

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

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.

We use AWS for multiple purposes, such as developing APIs and API integration using API Gateway. We use API Gateway, Python Combinator, Lambda Glue, and ETL Process. We have used EMR for big data processing. If we need a tool for computing, we go with the Lamda DMS. There are many services available in AWS that meet our needs.

The feature that's most valuable depends on your use case. Elasticsearch is good for testing and DynamoDb for database applications. There are so many things I could name, but you have to go with the service that is right for the use case you are looking for.

AWS has room for improvement on the Kubernetes side. I would like to go a little deeper into the Kubernetes target, Elastic, inner system, and all that. The EKS, target, and all these areas need to be improved, but that is not my key area because I am mostly working on the application side. However, I sometimes still need to work with Kubernetes container management.

I've been using AWS for the last seven years.

AWS has "11 9s" service availability, which means the service is available 99.99999999999 percent of the time. 

I would rate AWS support four out of five. They're good. I can activate cases on the technical calendar through AWS development support. I've gotten a lot of support through AWS Blue. 

Positive

The deployment complexity depends on which template you're using: AWS Terraform or CloudFormation. It's easiest to deploy services via Terraform, so you can go with that. That is the most straightforward way, and you can do all automation within Terraform.

I rate AWS nine out of 10. Everything is moving to the cloud now, and AWS covers a lot of services, including computing, networking, storage, IoT, and management, and they are good in every way.

They face competition from GCP and Azure, but Azure is entirely a Microsoft stack, so people will go with that when they're working with Microsoft solutions. It is a little cheaper than AWS. In the end, the cloud you choose depends on the use case. It's up to the customer.

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.

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.

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 with the billing console and a clear dashboard to understand the usage.

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

Amazon AWS is very, very stable.

No maintenance is required.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

We have seen a return of investment with Amazon AWS.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I have been using Amazon AWS for two years.

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

It's a scalable solution.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

We did not encounter any issues with stability.

We did not encounter any issues with scalability.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

We are using it for certain business applications.

The scalability is a valuable feature. 

The improvement should be done as per business needs. 

I have been using Amazon AWS for five years. 

It is a stable solution. 

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

The initial setup is straightforward. 

The pricing is expensive. 

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

The solution is a critical part of modern retail architecture. There are as many as 3,000 different use cases, and each client uses it differently.

This video explains the whole microservice architecture of which AWS is a key player: (3) Microservice POS Design - YouTube Enjoy

It's been a while since I've looked at the AWS model, however, just at a high level, of course, being able to build a microservice architecture, that's the heart of modern retail. That's where they have to go. COVID has driven everybody to realize that's what you got to do. That's one of the key components of AWS. The cloud piece is a nice supporting concept and it's necessary to make the microservices features work and make the whole architecture really agile. That's a critical component of it as well.

Of course, being able to figure out how you want to coordinate services - that whole service management piece - is critical. You could have thousands of services and I'm pretty sure you'd just be overwhelmed due to the fact that you've lost track of everything and you're back to the way things were when you had the big monolithic models.

The stability is excellent.

The solution has good speed. It's very fast.

The execution is fantastic.

I haven't delved down deep enough into the solution in order to come up with an answer for what may be lacking.

The only real downside to AWS is they can easily shut you down if they want to.

Clients ask us "Well, what happens if I go and put this on AWS and they don't like me for some screwy reason and all of a sudden they shut me down, they've killed my entire company?"

While AWS often is at the top of my list to recommend to people, I always have to tell them, "Hey, you got to be careful because if they don't like you, they can shut you down in a heartbeat. And they can kill an entire company by doing that."

I've had a good understanding of how AWS works for a while. It's likely been about three or four years.

The stability is excellent. It doesn't crash or freeze. There aren't bugs or glitches. It's reliable.

The solution is extremely scalable. You can be a small company or a multi-billion dollar company and it will work for you. It's number one on my list of recommendations due to its scalability.

I've never reached out to technical support in the past. I can't speak to how knowledgeable or responsive they are.

I didn't actually set up an operating AWS model on my computer. Therefore, it would be difficult to discuss the initial setup.

I tell clients to use it, however, I don't go into building one on my own. I don't have a need for it here, and I don't have applications to run on it. In my case, it's more an architectural world rather than a physical world.

I work on the technology side, I don't work on the financial side. Therefore, I really don't have any clue how much it costs.

I'm just a consultant. I don't have a partnership with AWS or any other company.

AWS is a key part of the whole microservice cloud computing.

I would recommend the solution to other organizations.

However, if I'm a multi-billion dollar retailer and I need to depend on something, how do I trust a company that can shut me down on a whim? That's a real problem. That moves AWS down and it moves Azure up just on my recommendation list.

From a technology perspective, it's well-proven, it's extensive, it covers just about everything you want to do. That's what I talk about with clients mostly, is the technology side.

While I used to rate the solution ten out of ten, the fact that Amazon can just kill a company on a whim makes me lower my rating. Currently, I'd rate it at an eight out of ten. It's great in almost every way. However, a company needs to understand that AWS can kill your company in a moment if it feels like it.

We use this solution predominately to reduce the amount of effort we need to migrate to the cloud. 

We have had some difficulty figuring out how to monitor how many EC2 instances have been networked into our entire enterprise. We usually try to create a diagram outside of AWS. The types of information we are trying to determine are, for example, what hardware devices are interconnected, and when was the interconnection made.

It is difficult to extrapolate budgeting costs and schedules from the information gathered from the usage of the solution in our systems. We are given a large lump sum of money at the beginning of the year for our budget but it is hard to summarize costs to put down on paper for justification or projections.

I have been using this solution for approximately one year.

This solution is stable and reliable.

We are planning on moving more of our systems to the cloud. Currently, we have approximately 60% of our applications on the cloud.

Our developers found the installation a moderate level of difficulty, there was not anything that was complex. It is helpful to have some tutorials to follow.

The solution is on a pay-as-use pricing model. The price of the solution could always be better but it is priced competitively.

We have evaluated Lambda, and in some cases, it might be a better option than EC2. However, we have decided to go with EC2 because it is closer to a drop-in displacement which works better with our applications, for example, Spring Boot and other similar variations.

My advice to others is EC2 has its specific use case needs like other solutions, such as Lamda. If you have the need for a specific use case this solution could be the right choice. For example, it is possible to have your monolithic application on the cloud and decompose it into your microservice architecture or use it with Lambda capabilities. You can do this and have a high percentage of your application on the cloud. However, you need to be sure it is the right choice, it is something you need to be careful of.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Amazon AWS a seven out of ten.