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.
Manager at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
Very good automation, flexible with cloud maturity
Pros and Cons
- "Very good automation and very stable."
- "Customer access to APIs is limited so that logs cannot be checked properly."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for six years.
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How are customer service and support?
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.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is most cost-effective to go for a long-term license option, that way you get a better deal for the cloud.
What other advice do I have?
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.
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: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Info Sec Consultant at Size 41 Digital
It is more stable than any infrastructure you will have in your own server room. The only problems I had with deployment were with Amazon authorizing our account initially.
Pros and Cons
- "Cloud Trail API log storage."
- "It can be daunting because of the number of AWS products there are."
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What is most valuable?
- S3 storage buckets
- Glacier storage
- EC2 instances
- Cloud Trail API log storage
What needs improvement?
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?
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
None. Amazon's cloud is more stable than any infrastructure you will have in your own server room.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's very easy to spin up virtual machines and deploy load balancers.
How are customer service and technical support?
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.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I used to use Rackspace but AWS's innovation and range of products meant I swapped over.
How was the initial setup?
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).
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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January 2025
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Senior QA Manager Performance Testing & Engineering at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Enterprise-level technical support is easily accessible, and it includes a vast number of useful features
Pros and Cons
- "It has a lot of new features that make our lives easier in terms of what we want it to do in the house."
- "There are numerous use cases, and the setup varies from complicated to very simple in some cases."
What is our primary use case?
We build our own service virtualization tools. We use Amazon AWS for cloud hosting. AWS has a lot of services that we use.
What is most valuable?
Everything in AWS is valuable? AWS itself is valuable in multiple ways. Whatever I use is valuable, which is the reason we use it.
It has a lot of new features that make our lives easier in terms of what we want it to do in the house.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon AWS for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Amazon AWS is quite stable, which is why it is used by many people.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Amazon AWS is highly scalable.
How are customer service and support?
There's no tech support. AWS operates under a different model. There is no simple tech support available, as there is in other traditional methods. We have an enterprise account, so it's not like individual tickets; we have an enterprise client relationship, so it's very different.
It is easy to access them.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I've worked with a variety of service virtualization tools.we have not used anything from IBM. We don't use Azure, we use Amazon AWS. AWS as an IaaS or PaaS cloud solution.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward. However, you can't give a broad overview of your setup as it depends on your use case.
There are numerous use cases, and the setup varies from complicated to very simple in some cases. As a result, I don't want to give a generic answer.
What other advice do I have?
It's quite good, I would rate Amazon AWS a ten out of ten.
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.
Lead architect at Tech Mahindra Limited
Stable, scalable, and offers many services
Pros and Cons
- "Amazon AWS is easy to use and in the past two years, I've never had any issues with scalability or stability."
- "This solution could be improved by a better licensing model, especially for third-party software. Amazon AWS could also potentially be improved by more free storage, but I think that it's okay when compared to competitors' products."
What is our primary use case?
This solution has many use cases. Amazon AWS offers a lot of services, all of which are useful. How useful this solution will be for you depends on how it fits your business.
What is most valuable?
Amazon AWS is easy to use and in the past two years, I've never had any issues with scalability or stability.
What needs improvement?
This solution could be improved by a better licensing model, especially for third-party software. Amazon AWS could also potentially be improved by more free storage, but I think that it's okay when compared to competitors' products.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon AWS for more than two or three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This solution is stable. I haven't had any problems with stability in the past two years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
This solution is cloud-based, so it's scalable. It is elastic, so as soon as you want to increase storage, you do so without any issues. There are about four thousand to five thousand people using AWS in my organization.
How are customer service and support?
I have contacted Amazon's technical support and it was quite an easy process. You will have a solution within 24 hours.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I didn't use another fast cloud solution before Amazon AWS.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is easy and you don't really need to install anything. If you understand cloud solutions, you can easily do it yourself.
What about the implementation team?
I implemented myself, with an in-house team.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We need to pay for everything. If someone is a personal user, they get one year free. But if you are using this as a professional or enterprise solution, then your company has to pay. The license pricing is comparable to that of competitors'.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Amazon AWS a nine out of ten, primarily because I have a background in Java. Someone else with more experience in Microsoft technologies would probably prefer Azure. I recommend AWS to anyone considering implementing it because it's easy to use.
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.
Principal Consultant at High Sierra Consultants
Good elasticity, good performance, and reasonable price
Pros and Cons
- "Macie is great. It is a service that makes recommendations on a data layer for cybersecurity. It is a great service."
- "One thing that Azure offers that I think is good is Migrate appliance. So, Azure has a migrate appliance that allows you to run against workloads to determine the cost, preparedness, and scalability. I haven't found a similar feature in AWS. That kind of service would be great on AWS too if you could point it to the data center."
What is our primary use case?
I am using it for enterprise warehousing. I am using it for web development, data warehousing, and also for building apps.
I am using its latest version. In terms of deployment, it is a platform as a service.
What is most valuable?
Macie is great. It is a service that makes recommendations on a data layer for cybersecurity. It is a great service.
Its elasticity is good, and I haven't come across any problems with it. So far, everything has been good.
What needs improvement?
One thing that Azure offers that I think is good is Migrate appliance. So, Azure has a migrate appliance that allows you to run against workloads to determine the cost, preparedness, and scalability. I haven't found a similar feature in AWS. That kind of service would be great on AWS too if you could point it to the data center.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for well over five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not had any performance issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's very easy to scale. Its elasticity is good. If you want to scale up or down, you can. You can scale out. There is no problem at all. That's one of the features that I like about it.
We have less than 50 people who are using this solution.
How are customer service and support?
I've not used their tech support yet.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We didn't use a different solution previously. They're the first.
How was the initial setup?
You need to know what you're doing. I know they're trying to make it easy. Some things are easy. Some things you have to know what you're doing.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It seems to be reasonable. It's the first one that I've used as a cloud platform, so they've set the benchmark for me, and now, I'm comparing everything else to them.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise others to just plan out what they are looking for in terms of use cases.
I would rate Amazon AWS an eight out of 10.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Data Scientist at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Scales well, works fast, and offers great price forecasting
Pros and Cons
- "The price forecasting and billing dashboard by service, with billing budgets and alerts, have helped us shut down resources that were accruing costs that we no longer needed, saving us money."
- "I don't have complaints. Previously, we asked for more end-to-end workshops, examples, and tutorials and these have been added and improved."
What is our primary use case?
My primary use case is to set up an end-to-end application to deliver a business case involving data ingestion, processing, transformation, and checking, followed by outputs to other functions and processes in AWS and also to external systems.
We are using Step Functions as a core automation tool and it offers great power through its simplicity. It is quite easy to use, although there is a learning curve when using the Step Function scripts. Once mastered, after a week or so, the flows can be built quickly and effectively, allowing us to link a custom business process to multiple other AWS service automatically.
That done, most business cases can be delivered easily and quickly, all in a serverless and cost-effective way.
How has it helped my organization?
AWS has improved my organization by:
- saving us time, cost, and difficulty by allowing us to use serverless services
- enabling us to assemble complex applications with the minimum of boilerplate and plumbing
- allowing us to pay-as-we-go, so we can rapidly prototype, test, and then deploy to a production application setup
We can run advanced demos with our own data very quickly, showing potential clients the value of our services when we assemble apps for them.
We can show customers clear cost benefits and clearly effective solutions when assembling AWS services together.
What is most valuable?
The security has great IAM, roles, and carefully partitioned permissions that allow us to fine-tune control across our applications. External intrusion attempts will never get past application boundaries, which increases trust.
The composition of apps has everything wrapped according to function and applications. We can assemble services as we go. This speeds delivery times by orders of magnitude.
The price forecasting and billing dashboard by service, with billing budgets and alerts, have helped us shut down resources that were accruing costs that we no longer needed, saving us money.
What needs improvement?
The service's power lies in its simplicity. It is great in that respect.
The UI is constantly being improved and the billing dashboard has been improved.
Previously, we asked for more end-to-end workshops, examples, and tutorials and these have been added and improved.
Recently, AWS has been adding improvements across services, documentation, tutorials and we have now got workshops with real-world scenarios which are tremendously useful It makes me a very happy user.
AWS and the cloud is a space for constant learning and AWS has increased their output in that respect.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using AWS since 2014.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable. The only errors I encountered were my own. Some services took a few minutes to refresh and propagate across my environments, and once these had propagated, the solutions were rock solid.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is excellent. At no point have I hit scalability limits with AWS services and features.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer service and tech support were excellent a few years ago when I needed them.
My general process is to explore and check options and run from a tutorial or AWS workshop. If this doesn't get me results, I then do a web search, and I generally find either further AWS docs or a specific example I can use to solve my issue. Within the last few years, my colleagues and I have been able to deliver as required.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did previously use a different solution when building AWS Lambda cloud functions. I could compare them directly with Azure Functions and Google Cloud and have found that the AWS Lambda solution is simpler, clearer, deploys quicker, and is generally much more simple and effective to use.
In terms of documentation, AWS is the clear leader. Their end-to-end examples and workshops are much more effective.
AWS services in many cases are deployed to AWS after being validated in Amazon.com's operations. This is evident in the ease-of-use and simplicity of many of the service features, and also in the excellent options offered for more complex services like AWS Forecast, where, for example, a checkbox and drop-down allows the user to add holidays for the country they work in when doing forecasts.
AWS has a stronger focus on business solutions than either GCP or Azure, and in many of the solutions, I have used. This is why in many cases I have switched from using other clouds, to AWS.
How was the initial setup?
The setup in AWS is a whole service in and of itself. To set up AWS applications, AWS offers a full service, CloudFormation, with some added features that allow us to automate the deployment of the full solution stack.
This makes setup complex, in that one must modify the CloudFormation template one requires and validate it. An external resource was required to check the templates.
Once this is done, the full solution stacks are automatically deployed.
What about the implementation team?
I handled the initial setup in-house and by myself.
What was our ROI?
A recently deployed Step Function automation fulfilled all the needs of a workflow automation engine while remaining below the free operation per month, so we were able to deliver a fully automated application approval process without paying for any workflow automation engine license fees or any server hardware or infrastructure costs.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I would advise others to work from an architecture overview.
Be aware of the very powerful schema-less data services in the cloud. They can help remove the need for data warehouses - e.g. multi-TB datasets - can be read, joined, queried and made to output daily reports within minutes, on temporary clusters, and that cost less than USD1000 per month. This is compared to the hundreds of thousands of USD for data warehouse licensing costs, plus the schema design time and ongoing DevOps they require.
Moving to serverless operations in the cloud frees up your people to deliver business services rather than spend days and days on administering data centers and the associated concerns that come with them.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I also looked at Azure and it was deemed less reliable than AWS as AWS has not had as many outages and uptime concerns as Azure has had of late. Azure Function Apps, Data Factory, Managed SQL.
Besides Azure, I looked at GCP and VMs, Cloud Functions, Speech-to-Text transcription, BigTable, and BigQuery.
What other advice do I have?
Empower your in-house people to start building and running their workloads in AWS.
Let them learn as they go. There are multiple online courses for a few dollars that can assist with specific, individual AWS services, as well as running through the AWS workshops.
Incentivize AWS certifications. Involve your tech people with business solution prototyping.
Tag your resources, name them well, and set budget thresholds. Assign people to tune the resources being used. Incentivize communications and publish the AWS services and features being used to deliver your business capabilities.
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.
Head Of Technology at Elogroup
Frequent feature updates, easy to scale, and helpful technical support
Pros and Cons
- "The services that we are using have frequent updates, at least twice a year. They provide a new version that has more capabilities or features that fit our process and procedures."
- "The setup of the solution is not so easy, it requires various skills to complete it. The whole implementation can take a month."
What is our primary use case?
We use Amazon AWS to deploy our architecture.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features are CodePipeline, CodeDeploy, CodeBuild, and CodeCommit. We use them to deliver our solution.
The services that we are using have frequent updates, at least twice a year. They provide a new version that has more capabilities or features that fit our process and procedures.
I am an integration specialist and Amazon AWS always seems to be a step ahead of the competition when it comes to the solutions integration abilities with its services.
EventBridge is a tool provided by AWS and it enables integration with the API gateway. We are using it as a solution to our projects and with our clients to integrate with external features, such as B2B or B2C. The Amazon API gateway integrates with EventBridge and other messaging layers. It is a highly integrated solution with those platforms.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for approximately five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Amazon AWS has a very easy tool to scale in terms of scaling up and down. We have different options to do this operation and they are very useful.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support has been helpful.
How was the initial setup?
The setup of the solution is not so easy, it requires various skills to complete it. The whole implementation can take a month. However, different parts can take more or less time depending on the knowledge of the implementor.
The messaging layer, in general, is easy today than before when you had to create all the data centers around the world and create the steps to connect the data centers to each other. They have improved a lot over the year but they could still improve more.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Amazon AWS has pay-as-you-go options available.
What other advice do I have?
It is important for people who want to use Amazon AWS to have a very good implementation strategy to make the migration. Amazon has provided some framework to help those wanting to start the migration process.
I rate Amazon AWS 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:
Senior Manager IT at OakNorth Bank
Easy to set up, good support, and feature-rich
Pros and Cons
- "The installation and initial setup are easy."
- "We have had several issues with the products and services but as of now, there are no good alternatives."
What is our primary use case?
We use the AWS Cloud service for storing company-related information.
What is most valuable?
The cloud-based infrastructure has several good products that people normally use.
What needs improvement?
We have had several issues with the products and services but as of now, there are no good alternatives.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon AWS for the past seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I use AWS several times each day, and we plan to continue using it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have 7,000 users on AWS.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support and customer service are good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have also worked with Microsoft Azure and I find the initial setup of AWS to be easier.
How was the initial setup?
The installation and initial setup are easy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
This is a subscription-based product.
This is not an expensive product but it would be an improvement if the price were cheaper. Google Cloud, for example, is cheaper.
What other advice do I have?
This is definitely a product that I recommend.
I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
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.
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Learn More: Questions:
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Wow, Aimee, it's great to know you have a 'no complaint' sentiment about AWS!
Given that you had originally spent what sounds like a large amount of time dealing with customer service, how did they succeed in delivering you to a place where you have 'no complaints' about the platform?