Steven Odera - PeerSpot reviewer
Independent Contractor at Legacy Lighthouse Ltd
Real User
Reliable, and scalable, but artificial intelligence tools could improve
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of Amazon AWS are the EC2 instance for web applications with CDN Networks."
  • "There is a feature called Kinesis, which has to do with image processing. There are a few artificial intelligence tools that Amazon AWS should improve on."

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of Amazon AWS are the EC2 instance for web applications with CDN Networks.

AWS Cloudfront is the official reference for the Global content delivery network (CDN) which significantly reduces latency or slow loading times.

What needs improvement?

There is a feature called Kinesis, which has to do with image processing. There are a few artificial intelligence tools that Amazon AWS should improve on.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon AWS for approximately five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have found Amazon AWS to be stable.

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May 2024
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Amazon AWS is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support has been challenging. I have found more tickets are being placed and the availability of the agents has been limited for some of the team members.

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

We selected Amazon AWS because it was the most mature at the time. It was the initial cloud provider. Then Google and Microsoft also came up with Azure and TensorFlow. TensorFlow is catching up with a few code web programming tools, and that is a point of interest as well as image processing.

In a future release, the solution could improve on the IoT integrations and API access.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Amazon AWS is complex due to how infrastructure is set up in different organizations.

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

For the initial 12 months, the solution is reasonably priced. On enterprise license contracts where you negotiate, have been reasonable too.

What other advice do I have?

I would encourage the student package for someone who is starting out, they can get acquainted with the interface and the tools available.

I rate Amazon AWS a seven 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
Fed Yunis Zapata - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Solutions Architect at Canvia
Real User
Top 10
Control Tower enables us to organize the different accounts our clients have
Pros and Cons
  • "It's a very flexible and customizable service"
  • "Monthly costs can be high if you don't maintain your usage"

What is our primary use case?

All of our clients look to migrate their workloads to the cloud and we propose the use of AWS depending on the technology of the client or the workload they want to migrate. Our primary use cases are workloadmigrations, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), sometimes platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS). We use different AWS services, Elastic cloud compute, Web application firewall, AWS firewall, LAMBDA, CloudTrail, and others.

What is most valuable?

AWS has a lot of services that are very good. One of the services I use is AWS Transit Gateway. This service allows me to communicate between different networks in different accounts. It's good for network communication. The other service I use a lot of is "Control Tower", it's a service used to organize the different accounts our clients have.

What needs improvement?

With regards to improving the service, I don't see any room for improvement at this time. I love the technology, it is a very good public cloud offering with very good services. Until now, there are no services that I don't like.
One other aspect, it would be good to see the basic service level improved with regards to response time. They don't offer 24-hour support. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon AWS for around two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

AWS is very stable. They have an SLA of 99.99%.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

AWS is very scalable.

How are customer service and support?

My experience with AWS support is very good. There are four types of support: basic, free, business and premium. It depends on the level of support you have which determines how quickly they can respond about an incident, ticket or request you have. 

How was the initial setup?

It's very easy to set up services in AWS. Depending on the solution you need to deploy it can be very quick. A virtual machine can be deployed in 5 minutes. 

What about the implementation team?

Our company is a partner with Amazon, we implement in-house. 

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

What is hard with the public cloud service like AWS, is ensuring you maintain a good budget. Plan the monthly consumption properly. If you don't have the expertise in the cloud, your monthly cost can go very high. It's also very easy to set up services in AWS.

I would also suggest companies look for a good partner that has the necessary experience to deploy the services when moving to the cloud. It's very simple, but you need to design a very good architecture for cost optimization and performance.  

What other advice do I have?

The solution is good for integration. It's very flexible and customizable with other services, public, cloud and on-premise.

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:
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Amazon AWS
May 2024
Learn what your peers think about Amazon AWS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2024.
771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Naresh Rayakwar - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead architect at Tech Mahindra Limited
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
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.
PeerSpot user
Rodrigo Bassani - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Technology at Elogroup
Real User
Top 10
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:
PeerSpot user
System Administrator and DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Plenty of services, simple to understand, with significant support
Pros and Cons
  • "Some of the valuable features I have found to be the virtual server is easy to understand, a secure environment, and AWS has a fast community for finding solutions to problems you might be facing."

    What is our primary use case?

    There are different services, approximately 150 of them, this solution can provide. There are a few services I most commonly use. I am using it for the virtual servers, Lightsail which are lightweight virtual servers, and a simple storage service which is called S3.

    What is most valuable?

    Some of the valuable features I have found to be the virtual server is easy to understand, a secure environment, and AWS has a fast community for finding solutions to problems you might be facing.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using the solution for three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    We have approximately 15 users using the solution in my organization.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The scalability of the solution all depends on the services that you are using. It is very easy to scale in the cloud if you want to launch multiple servers and if you want to vertically or horizontally scale up the servers. It can support many environments such as Windows and Linux.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    The support is fast at responding and resolving issues.

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

    I have used Microsoft Azure and DigitalOcean previously.

    How was the initial setup?

    The solution is an on-demand service. There is a monthly billing requirement which is for the virtual machines we currently use.

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

    The solution is expensive compared to other providers because you need many of the services and it can add up fast.

    What other advice do I have?

    I recommend this solution to others and I plan to use the solution in the future.

    I rate Amazon AWS a ten 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
    Lead Architect - Expert Enterprise Data Solutions at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Good storage and API gateway but needs a metadata framework
    Pros and Cons
    • "The storage on offer is excellent."
    • "Their metadata management in AWS needs improvement."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are primarily using the solution as real-time streaming to our data-lake. We also have microservices publishing to APIs. It's a customer 360 application. 

    We also used the product for migration from on-prem Hadoop to AWS EMR.

    How has it helped my organization?

    We used to spend about $57,000 on-perm with another solution. Then we lifted and shifted to AWS. It came down in cost to about $33,000 while maintaining the same inner software with Apache Kafka. However, we then got into ECS Fargate, and that brought costs down further to about $22,000. When we removed ECS, we moved into a serverless Lambda for 45 million, and our billing is now $8000 per month. It's an amazing amount of savings.

    What is most valuable?

    The solution's API Gateway is very good.

    The storage on offer is excellent. 

    Recently they improved a lot in the analytics that they have on the backend. 

    It's great that the product is completely serverless. 

    The implementation for end-to-end, for Lambda serverless implementation, is excellent. I do run about 16 million messages per day with their Lambdas, for my API microservices.

    The initial setup is not difficult.

    What needs improvement?

    We get a lot of exception errors, and we're working with AWS to figure out how to fix that. when we lift and shift . We get a lot of alerts. 

    As our serverless Lambda is maintained by AWS, in a certain aspect,  we need to gain some more visibility into what is going on when problem happens with AWS serverless 

    Their metadata management in AWS needs improvement. They need a centralized metadata management tool, where it can be integrated with  outside metadata tools  with the API. We really need a central metadata framework.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been using the solution for four years. It's been a while at this point.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The stability of the solution is very good. there are no bugs or glitches. it doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. That said, initially, we did have a few problems, however, everything has ironed out. It's great now.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Scalability-wise, the product is very good. The Lambdas and the serverless architecture are very good on AWS. If a company needs to expand, it can do so with ease.

    We have a lot of APIs, and we'll run them on my customer 360. There are six departments that use the product. We have about 1,000 users currently.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    We've dealt with technical support in the past and have not been satisfied for the most part. Azure's technical support is much better. AWS often can't help us resolve our issues. But they brought some good consultants basing on our request and helped us . The account Manager always there when he took over this account .  

     i recommend IAAS AWS , for IPAAS ( integration as platform service) and Hybrid cloud Azure

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

    We've also planed for  Azure. We've found Azure to be much more helpful when dealing with issues than AWS has been. I prefer them over AWS in support , application development  and integration as platform. But AWS has great products like S3 , API gateway , transit gateways , route 53 . AWS has  more OS options than AZURE and database offerings. their EMR is good with spark and python but not well supported for Scala and HBase. AWS serverless offerings are very good with out any major problems which includes ECS with fargate and EKS . But we got a good support from account manager

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is not complex. When we lifted and shifted faced lot of problems on EMR. Moved to ECS, as well as serverless Lambda, it's was that difficult then. That said, we had to think about how we run our Lambdas, and what problems we are facing or might face.

    We're also facing a few problems due to the fact that we use encryption, HCM. When we initially started loading this data, batch data, a lot of Lambdas came, and our limit in HCM is only about 5,000 a minute, however, it quickly jumped up to 20,000 which made it so that we could not load, and errors came up. We had to turn to AWS to get assistance. We just ask them if we can have space over a few days for 20,000 and then they scale it back to 3,000. they helped us 

    In terms of the implementation strategy, ours took about eight months. The lift and shift happened within 3 months. Then, we took another four months as we had a lot of problems with our scale-up programming due to multiple issues - for example, libraries, EMR, AWS doesn't have. We faced some problems when we had to change our code according to AWS, or we have to bring in those libraries on our own. So that's where it took time, maybe four months.

    For ECS, it took about 30 days to move everything we needed to. 

    We don't have a lot of staff to maintain the product. We have about eight people who are capable of doing so. For example, we have someone on infrastructure, who is an architect and we have an enterprise architecture team. I have four developers, two for API and two for Lambda, and one is a systems admin. 

    What about the implementation team?

    Initial setup environment helped by AWS free . We were able to handle every aspect of the implementation in-house. We didn't need any consultants or integrators. We used our systems manager so that all of our deployments - including environments and keys - can be stored on our SSM. A lot was automated as well.

    What was our ROI?

    excellent in covid -19 situation . 

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

    We saw a lot of cost savings when we switched over to AWS. It can really save a company a lot of money.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    Azure and AWS 

    What other advice do I have?

    I'm a user and  implementer.

    The solution is on the cloud; it's always the latest version. It's constantly being updated, and we're always using the latest version.

    We use both public and hybrid clouds as deployment models.

    I'd rate the solution at a seven 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.
    PeerSpot user
    Director of Platform and Information Security at Brace Software
    Real User
    Perfect for startups and easy to implement but offers a confusing amount of tools
    Pros and Cons
    • "The solution offers a low footprint. We don't have to come up with a data center ourselves. We basically don't have to own any hardware. We just rent a slice of their platform and we have everything we need."
    • "They should really consolidate and make things simpler rather than offer you hundreds of random options. The way everything is arranged really forces users to figure out everything on their own and then, on top of that, to calculate the total costs. There's an infinite number of combinations even just with cost calculations. It's just too much."

    What is our primary use case?

    We're building an application and host on Amazon. We are a startup company, so it's in a very early development stage. We're trying to build a particular application for multiple customers. The idea is if you have a VPC for each customer you can segregate each client with their own isolated environment. That's what we're building. We're going to build one application that can be personalized for each client. 

    How has it helped my organization?

    The fact that we as a startup don't have to invest in expensive hardware and a place to house it is very helpful for our small business. It saves us money in the long run in overhead costs and allows us to stay streamlined. There's no heavy investment on the outset and we're really just renting the exact amount of what we need.

    What is most valuable?

    AWS is a cloud platform. There are hundreds of tools within it. The cloud handles the updates so we never have to worry about looking for the latest version of the solution.

    The solution offers a low footprint. We don't have to come up with a data center ourselves. We basically don't have to own any hardware. We just rent a slice of their platform and we have everything we need.

    What needs improvement?

    The biggest area for improvement is the fact that there are a vast amount of tools. The best way to describe it is this: you have lots of Lego pieces, hundreds of Lego pieces, but they all do something specific. However, it's very difficult to understand the purpose of these tools, how are they fit into our environment, our design ideas, etc. To assemble all of these tools, to make them fit into the architectural vision of the company, is very difficult. This is especially true for a startup that doesn't have unlimited resources for research and study. We cannot comprehend the vast amount of information that Amazon produces.

    The pricing is very confusing.  

    They should really consolidate and make things simpler rather than offer you hundreds of random options. The way everything is arranged really forces users to figure out everything on their own and then, on top of that, to calculate the total costs. There's an infinite number of combinations even just with cost calculations. It's too much. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    While the company has been around for three years and has used the solution since its inception, I have only worked here for three months and have a total of three months of experience with the solution.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The solution is very stable. AWS is quite reliable and we haven't had issues. There haven't been bugs, glitches, or crashes. It works well and as expected.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    AWS is extremely scalable. It's designed to be. The sky really is the limit. Users and organizations can expand as much as they like.

    We're a small company right now. We're still in the startup phase. We have about 20 people at the moment. We have a dozen developers directly on it now. That said, you probably only need two people for development and maintenance.

    We do plan to expand in the future.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Personally I haven't used their support yet. I cannot give more info. I've only been at the company for three months and haven't faced any issues that required me to reach out to technical support.

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

    We are just a startup so the company is young. The founders made the choice to use the database and they've used it since day one. 

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is both really straightforward and complex. At first, it's simple. However, as you get deeper into the solution and work in all kinds of variations or all kinds of scenarios, things get really complex. The more you have to consider the more complicated it can get. The complexities multiple quickly.

    We use Terraform to provision the best infrastructure, which makes our platform really easy to manage in terms of our implementation strategy.

    What about the implementation team?

    We handled the implementation ourselves. We didn't need to hire on an integrator or consultant to assist us.

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

    The calculating of costs is quite difficult. There are all kinds of variables to consider and it's all very unclear.

    It's my understanding that our company is charged a few hundred dollars on a monthly basis.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    My understanding is that this product was used from day one. I don't think other options were considered. However, I was not at the company when AWS was implemented.

    What other advice do I have?

    We're a startup company. It's a very small company with only 20 people. Everything we use is cloud-based. We're simply a customer of AWS. We don't have a special relationship with the company.

    I'd warn others considering using the solution that the environment is vast and complex, and a company will need a lot of tools at their disposal for research and to understand the product. If there are people within the organization who already have experience with the architecture or with similar solutions within the AWS environment, that will help make implementation successful. It's important to bring people who have previous AWS architecture experience into the organization.

    I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. It does do everything we need it to do, however, as a small company, figuring it out is a big effort. Making it more streamlined or straightforward in the future would probably give it higher marks.

    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
    it_user677697 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Sr. Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
    Vendor
    CloudWatch provides many plugins to manage various types of logs centrally.

    What is most valuable?

    Auto Scaling and CloudWatch Logs are the most valuable features. With just a few criteria to scale in/out of, you can save the life and time for DevOps.

    The CloudWatch Logs feature provides many plugins, so that we are able to manage various types of logs centrally.

    How has it helped my organization?

    In the era, we used private clouds as network virtualization must be controlled by the IT division, server rooms were in the remote branches and DevOps were distributed in various areas. Now, we can use the same API and the same workflow without considering to centralize the logs.

    What needs improvement?

    IaaS is sometimes way too complicated to complete one task.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have used this solution for around eight months.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    So far, the VPC is sometimes not that reliable. Therefore, we have to set up a redundant VPC to make sure the connection is always available.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    We do not have any scalability issues until now.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    I have never used technical support.

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

    Previously, we surveyed OpenStack. However, due to the time, budget and manpower limitations, building a private cloud is not practical in our case.

    How was the initial setup?

    Managing IaaS was very difficult in the beginning, i.e., tons of jargon to get up and I struggled for months.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    Try the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). It is yet another good choice because sometimes, what you need is just a platform and not to build a platform from the infrastructure.

    What other advice do I have?

    When your division grows to a certain scale and you really need DevOps, then you could move either to a private/public cloud. Otherwise, it is a waste of time and money.

    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: May 2024
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Amazon AWS Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.