We didn't switch to EC2 per se. We are still using all the solutions we had before. We still have our on-premise databases.

I'm also familiar with other cloud providers. 

We chose Amazon EC2 because of easy management.

I've been using AWS for quite a while, there are some use cases where I have not directly used any other cloud product so far, I mostly stick to Amazon. 

I am familiar with Azure servers and I find them more expensive than EC2. I find them quite difficult to use and they are not as scalable as AWS. They are not even that robust. I don't like Azure that much. The setup is also confusing.

I have not used another similar solution to Amazon EC2.

I have had a little bit of experience with Microsoft Azure. We evaluated it directly in the cloud.

If we compare different cloud providers, Microsoft has its own advantages, but EC2 is catching up quickly.

The advantage Microsoft has just depends on the typical use case. If you are a Microsoft customer and have been a customer for a few years, then you will probably find it easier to handle Azure than AWS. AWS has its certified AMIs available. But native support of Azure is better in terms of those technologies. Similarly, people generally find that AWS is a bit cheaper, but there are personal preferences or design concepts, which will be handled better depending upon the use case or tech stack in different cloud providers.

We previously used on-premise hardware. 

We only ever used an on-premises solution. We've never used anything cloud-related. 

I am a consultant on all of the services that I have listed. F3, EC2, WorkMail. Obviously, F3 goes with Route 53.

I have been working with all of the products listed for three years.

I am starting from scratch with support and everything.

WorkMail is a bit expensive per user. That is something they must correct.

They provide excellent service, but it is too expensive for South Africans. We are losing clients because the price my clients pay for email alone is nearly equal to the price they pay for an entire Microsoft Office license, which includes email.

Where they will have Microsoft Word and other productivity tools, as well as email. And you will pay nearly that much for an email with WorkMail. It's far too costly. That is unaffordable.

I did not use other solutions prior to using Amazon EC2.

I did not use other solutions similar to Amazon EC2.

We have previously used many other services.

EC2 was the first service that I used. If we are talking about cloud platforms, I actually started with Azure eight years ago. I went for the AWS platform because it had a maturity of services over Azure in the past, that is, a year or two ago. If I were to do it over again, I would choose Azure based on what the customer needed at that point in time.

Prior to the AWS stack, we were mostly a .NET stack. Our company partnered with AWS, and looking at their offerings, seemed just using their EC2 offering would be a waste. Having said that, I think using the Azure platform may have provided a better end-to-end solution.

My data science team is using TensorFlow.

We've used Google Cloud Platform. We switched because Amazon AWS offers more services and a lot more settings.

Previously we were using VMware. We decided to use the current solution to take advantage of its ability to scale.

Local VMs were being used before switching to AWS EC2. Local resources were not scalable and increased operational complexity. They were also costly to maintain.