Amazon AWS Reviews

We primarily use the solution for POCs, different experiments, or IoT devices.

The flexibility of the solution is excellent.

The ease of use is great. You can bring something up very easily and tear it back down just as easily. 

Our first system is about to be released. It's our flagship and it's going really well.

The solution scales up extremely well.

They're spinning up and going faster. Anything and everything would you ask for in terms of your feedback they take back and build it and the next thing you know the feature you wanted is available.

The product has a lot of new functionality.

There's always room for improvement, however, they're building out new products. 

The problem with AWS is you have to keep up with the technology. If you don't stay up to date with the technology and its latest changes then you won't know what to use in your infrastructure. For example, as soon as you finish building one thing, then they've already updated to something new. They're always continually updating, rebranding, and rebuilding. 

They tend to oversell before a product is ready.

The solution needs to have more security features continuously added to it.

It would be ideal if they could continue to build a more hybrid collaborative solution - something that allows users to be on-prem, on cloud, or wherever they need to be to build. I'm looking for more AWS to Microsoft (or AWS to Linux) authentication solutions.

There are a lot of management requirements. You need to manage every aspect surrounding the solution, and it can sometimes be a lot.

I've been using the solution for ten years. We've used it over the last 12 months. We have a lot of experience with the solution.

Every system has bugs and glitches, however, for the most part, I haven't had any problems with it. In maybe out of 10 years, I might've seen servers fail three times in my life. Their durability is almost perfect. The stability is excellent. You can rely on their product.

The solution scales up very well. You can easily expand to however big you like. There doesn't seem to be much of a limit. It's very easy to do so as well.

If you scale something up and if you already have your scripts, your JSON, your LAN, and scripts running, and it sees the joint unit, then it brings it right back down. For example, it only uses what you need. If you build in it according to AWS's best practices, then you have a lean mean machine. If you're using their best practices, you'll be fine. 

We are using the solution more for POC purposes, and therefore there are only three people on it currently.

I would them a nine out of ten as a rating. However, the problem we have is not with AWS. Rather, we don't allow them to touch our infrastructure. We've got a lot of security issues and protocols. It's not an AWS issue, it's the way the corporation is built, and that's due to the fact that what we do is highly sensitive.

We would need to ask for specific professional services if we did run into issues.

I have experience with Microsoft as well. 

The difference is that Microsoft is everybody's house and everybody's corporation. AWS is more for if you want to do something new. If you want to just test something new and if you don't have the money, if you just want to learn, you can do something for almost nothing. You can just spin up something and just spin it back down and pay zero. They're moving into what they call this Self-Service Arena now, so then that way you can start building infrastructure. For example, your developers or your designers can actually go in and have a space that they can play in. That's one of the problems that people have with development. People need spaces, where they can go in and build stuff to try.

The initial setup is not complex. It's very straightforward.

The pricing can be very difficult to determine due to the fact that there is so much selection.

We are an AWS customer.

We're using the latest version of the solution. It's always updated, as it's on the cloud and is constantly the latest.

I'd recommend the solution to others. We've been pretty happy with it in general.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten due to the fact that they're very flexible. They can be overzealous and challenging at times, however, they really believe religiously in their product, and you can go find many people that know how to use AWS. 

I've used it to create some internal projects for my organization, particularly for designing the infrastructure of those projects.

One feature I find most valuable is the easy deployment by using the channel model for  serverless architecture. Another feature I find valuable is the versatility of the service S3 because it allows you to give permissions to describe the users from their own accounts, from external users, or external accounts.

On the console, they used to have some shortcuts making this solution easier to work with, but now we have been dealing with so many problems on the console, and some of the options are not very useful in my perspective, so they should bring back those options that make things easier to run some of the services.

Most of the time the options are pre-selected, or you have to go with the default settings, but from my perspective, there are some services which are now more complicated to use than before.

An additional feature I'd like to see in the future is more integration with public repositories, though some use their own repositories for security purposes, but I think it'll be easier to deploy services through public repositories.

I've been using this solution for almost four years now.

This solution is stable. I've been using it for a long time and have only seen an outage in one of the regions. It's a good solution.

The scalability of this solution is good.

The technical support of AWS is very good. When I need something, they reach out to me fast.

The initial setup was straightforward. The complexity of the setup will depend on the number of services e.g. it's something that involves a lot of services, it could get complex, but for a complex setup, you could use things like transformation or Terraform because they will enable you to use infrastructure as a code to make it easier. There's a lot of things to configure.

Licensing of this solution is paid on a yearly basis.

I evaluated Microsoft Azure.

This was deployed on the cloud. I don't remember which version because I didn't deploy it. I was not the person running the project of implementing AWS, but I know the client used it, but I don't know which version.

It's not so difficult to use because there's a lot of tutorials.

I'm not completely sure about the number of AWS users in our organization. We have a partnership with them so we have some accounts, but we don't completely have our load on AWS. We are mostly on Azure. Our main server is on Azure. On AWS, we mostly have some internal projects and services, but most of the main load is on Azure.

We have a small workload on AWS. Sometimes we use it to deploy some of our best projects. We use it on some internal projects. It's a random thing so it could be 1,000 users or 50 users. I'll say approximately 200 to 500 users.

We don't require too many people for deploying this solution because our projects are proof of concepts. Up to ten people from different departments would be needed for deployment if it's a business requirement e.g. people from Approvals and Projects, etc.

As for increasing AWS usage, the organization sometimes thinks of moving some of the load to AWS because of good pricing, because currently, our main streams are on Azure, but it's not a sure thing.

I'm unsure if there's any additional cost aside from the need to pay the license annually because I don't directly manage it.

My advice to organizations looking into implementing AWS, especially if they're going to use it on a big scale, is to take advantage of AWS' organization model to make integration with their policies easier. It will also make administration easier for the different accounts, departments, and structure of the organizations thinking of moving to AWS.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use this solution in our company and for our clients' companies.

I like the IAM, the directory, and the storage.

They should implement the command shell by default. As it is now, to open the console, you have to download the command application. When you compare with GCP, they have the command shell inbuilt.

It would make it more seamless for the administrator to include this. There are times where the machine is not connecting and you can't wait for the RDP because you have to create them quickly.

Building a shell directly from the console is a good solution. This is missing by default. there are ways that it can be done and integrated.

I have been working with Amazon AWS for six years.

Amazon AWS is very stable.

It is a scalable solution, but you can only scale-out. You can't scale up.

We have approximately 200 users in our company who are using it.

Technical support could be improved, they could be better. We don't get SLA with AWS.

They give us a specific time for a solution but they don't advise further. We have to check to see if the issue has been resolved. There should be an automatic email to notify us that the issue has been resolved, by default.

The need to work on proactiveness.

I also work with GCP and with Azure.

The initial setup is easy. It is not complex.

We have a team of 50 people who maintain all of our solutions. It's spread across the team to run 24/7.

The pricing is one of the best in the segment.

They have actually reduced their prices, with the exception of the MLD which has increased.

It's by design itself.

They have placed the pricing well for a reduced market.

I would rate Amazon AWS a seven out of ten.

We host the service for customer products. Those services are utilized by different product lines, which can be used on AWS.

One of the features offered is scalability on demand.

It's user-friendly.

There are some areas that are not great. For example, with some Microsoft technologies such as .NET, you will have a difficult time deploying it on AWS. It works very well with open-source solutions like Java, but not with .NET technologies.

I would like to see more alerts added to the system. Preemptive alerts would be very good. It is something that happens and you have to do a lot of configuration at that time, which can be complex.

I have been using this solution for ten years.

It's stable and a pretty robust solution.

It's a scalable solution that features scalability on demand, which is working perfectly fine.

We change the core on demand. We can increase the capacity on demand.

We have 10,000 users in our organization who are using this solution.

We have dedicated support. Once we have deployed it, support comes as part of the service because it is incorporated with the solution.

We get all of the support that we need.

The initial setup was definitely complex, but not because of AWS. It is complex because we need to upgrade to be compatible with AWS, which is related to the product and not AWS. The setup of AWS is straightforward.

We deployed it in a cluster way. Initially, it took a week to set everything up.

The first time it took longer, then became straightforward. It only takes a couple of hours now.

Licensing can be purchased on a yearly basis, which is an auto-renewal. We also have an on-demand on-pay purchase.

If, for example, we have provisions for other things and we have a three-peak season then we add more core, more hardware for the on-premises machines. During those periods it is on-demand but the rest of the time it is licensed with a yearly subscription.

The pricing is reasonable.

I would recommend this solution but there are some areas that need improvement. It doesn't integrate well with some technologies and preemptive alerts would be very helpful.

I am happy with this solution, and I would rate Amazon AWS a nine out of ten.

AWS is part of our network, we provide services to our internal customers and we have 2,000 plus applications which sit on the VMs and different blade servers. It's a mix, we're using a hybrid environment. I manage the company network and security; we are partners with Amazon AWS.

I value the automation and the stability of this product. Whether it is S3, EC2, the LSG, ASG, for us it's all good to implement.

AWS cloud has an issue with accessibility to the customer, it's very limited and if there's an internal issue, we won't know about it because they don't expose their APIs to many things. This is a generic cloud problem for all cloud products. It's not just AWS. It's Azure, Google, all of them have the same problem. They will never give you any information, and you can't even check their logs properly. That kind of transparency issue is critical because whether I'm using their infrastructure or not, I should have visibility with regard to what is happening in my network.

I'd like to see compatibility extended to include additional applications which are widely used but not compatible on the public cloud. Without them, you can't build the ecosystems for each and every thing. I realize there are so many applications around and you can't source everything but I'd like to see additional compatibility.

The solution has some limitations because you won't have the space for some of the applications. For example, Google is the only provider with a VMware product line. Some of the applications still need a physical server.

I've been using this solution for six years. 

The support is average, just like other cloud providers. It's not so great but it's average. You can't always blame someone, but cloud architecture is like that. Visibility is an issue. They don't offer the latest services and if you don't know, you can just track back to your VMs or the services which you have deployed. 

The initial setup was quite complex. You're designing something and have downloaded the infrastructure of cloud providers which is always complex. Once you start using the solution it becomes easy. 

It is most cost-effective to go for a long-term license option, that way you get a better deal for the cloud. 

I think at the cloud maturity level, I would rate AWS first, Azure second and GCP has just started. In 2015/16, AWS had a lot of issues, but now they are coming up with better solutions and better flexibility. That said, the transparency issue is still there. 

Azure is good for the Microsoft product line and if you are using that you should go with Azure - they will give you better service. But for third parties, it's the same transparency issue, just like any other cloud provider.

I rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We are using it for hosting some of our workloads. We offer managed services for our customers, mostly in the space of security in managed IT services, and some of these workloads are hosted on AWS.

It is highly available and on-demand. So, you can scale up and scale down whenever required.

Another thing that really attracts us is the pricing, which is based on the actual consumption of resources, and that's what really helps us.

They're really good on the business computing side, but there are other services where they can do really well. They can improve the data analytics platform and the data warehousing platform.

Its pricing can be simplified a little bit more.

I have been using this solution for more than three years.

It is quite stable. We did not find any challenge in the reliability of the platform.

We do contact their tech support, and we get the help whenever it is required. We are pretty much satisfied with them.

It was not too complex. We are very straightforward and not too complex in terms of our infrastructure.

Its pricing can be simplified a little bit more. Even though they have been reducing it, I still believe they can do better as compared to GCP, Google Cloud.

We advise people to go on AWS. We also do a readiness assessment for our customers. We do a kind of a TCO analysis for our customers, and depending on the use case, workload, and pricing model, we advise our customers. We do it for AWS, Azure, and GCP. I would expect customers to do the same thing. They should do a proper analysis because it depends on what workloads they want to move to the cloud. Based on that, they should select a hyperscaler.

I would rate Amazon AWS an eight out of 10.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

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).

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.

The customer can deploy their application on Amazon AWS instead of taking care of their infrastructure.

The most valuable features of Amazon AWS are ease of use, deployment, and short lead time. If you are using an on-premise solution, you need to wait for the hardware, and nowadays it is very difficult, the lead time becomes very long. We propose to our customers to use Amazon AWS because it is very easy, no need to wait for hardware delivery.

If Amazon AWS can offer more self-paced learning tools, on their website, on CBT,  it'll be easier for more people to familiarize themselves with their service. Especially when they are delivering new services from time to time. Educational tools that can help users familiarize themselves with their service. It would be great.

I know they have a Free Tier service, but they need to register their credit cards. Some of my colleagues have concerns. If the usage exceeds a certain value, they exceeded the Free Tier usage time and they will start charging your credit card. My colleagues forgot about the usage and credit card payments. They needed to pay for the additional amounts which they used on top of the Free Tier usage. If Amazon AWS could improve the free service model to be more user-friendly in a way of not using a credit card, that would be great.

For personal learning, you also need to register your credit card. You need to be careful or you will have to pay.

I have been using Amazon AWS for approximately two years.

Amazon AWS is stable. However, they have had a few outages but nothing very serious.

Amazon AWS is quite scalable. And they have a lot of auto-scaling functions for their VMs.

I don't have direct information of the support from Amazon AWS because sometimes we are relying on Amazon's partner, not directly contacting Amazon AWS support teams. We need to have some support plan with Amazon AWS, otherwise, they will not provide direct email or technical support.

The length of time and difficulty of the implementation depends on the scale and the complexity of the project.

For the implementation of Amazon AWS, having two to three engineers focusing on it would be ideal. Small to middle size companies, don't have dedicated teams or engineers for a particular service.

Amazon AWS is offering different pricing, and saving plans, it's very easy for a customer to consider the Amazon AWS service.

Amazon AWS charges based on the user usage and some software license, such as the OS are included in their monthly charge. The transparency is quite sufficient, the customer knows what they're paying for.

The usage fees are an OPEX and they are offered monthly or annually.

I have evaluated Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

I would recommend Amazon AWS to others.

Amazon AWS are the market leaders in the public cloud service and after them, we have Microsoft Azure, and maybe Google Cloud.

I rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten.