What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for POCs, different experiments, or IoT devices.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
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.
What do I think about the stability of 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.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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.
How are customer service and technical support?
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.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
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.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is not complex. It's very straightforward.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing can be very difficult to determine due to the fact that there is so much selection.
What other advice do I have?
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.
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.
Thank you for the information on the AWS solution.