Service Delivery Manager / Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Good user interface with great built-in monitoring and very good documentation
Pros and Cons
  • "All of my lower maintenance overheads are taken care of. I don't have to worry about it."
  • "Technical itself could be a bit more helpful, especially when it comes to integration assistance. When we talk to the technical team, often it's some issue with integration and they'll tell us to talk to the other company. Often, the other company will look at everything and not see an issue from their end and then we are at an impasse."

What is our primary use case?

We've been using the solution basically for provisioning our development in a less production-heavy environment. 

What is most valuable?

It's been quite easy for solutioning. 

It's easy to manage. 

There's a lot of support from the built-in framework.

The integration has been great.

The solution is very stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard.

The user interface is great.

The built-in monitoring is great. The reporting and analytics are pretty decent.

All of my lower maintenance overheads are taken care of. I don't have to worry about it.

There's great documentation available. 

What needs improvement?

The issue that I have seen, earlier, not now, maybe around 2014, was that the ports that we wanted to deploy to weren't all open. In general, we need to have a specific request made to get these ports opened. We had to go through a little bit of analysis and it was not quite straightforward. We needed to raise a request to open such ports. That was the only problem I've not seen it in a long time, and that was with AWS in a special case. However, these days, I don't have any such port issues right now. We don't have any custom ports used at this point in time. 

Technical support could be more helpful when it comes to dealing with integration issues.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been dealing with the solution for three or four years now.

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Amazon EC2
May 2024
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is pretty stable. We haven't had any issues with it per se. It's not buggy or glitchy. It doesn't freeze.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We build department dashboards for schools in the United States, so there are a number of users using it at any given time. It's likely in the hundreds of users.

How are customer service and support?

Support is okay. I'm not talking about the support from the team perspective, but rather from the framework. It's the mission framework side of it. The framework has got a lot of features, which supports the monitoring, and other things. It's all how you configure it.

If a person does need help troubleshooting, there's great documentation available for them. 

Technical itself could be a bit more helpful, especially when it comes to integration assistance. When we talk to the technical team, often it's some issue with integration and they'll tell us to talk to the other company. Often, the other company will look at everything and not see an issue from their end and then we are at an impasse.

The technical support teams should understand how to give some pointers with their experience due to the fact that AWS is huge and vast and spread across different industries, and different regions. They should have some kind of knowledge or insights. We can't be the only clients facing these issues. I'm not sure if this is an issue across the board, or just a problem with the current team we're dealing with.

In the end, in a specific example, we were trying to use Monitor with AWS and we really tried to make it work. However, it did not. AWS did not help us, and from iMonitor's side, everything should have just worked.

How was the initial setup?

As long as you are prepared with the groundwork, the implementation is okay. You need to have the specifications ready in terms of what kind of environment you want to create. 

Once you know what kind of environment you want to create it takes about five to ten minutes. That's all.

We only have one person that handled the deployment and maintenance. It was a pretty easy build, so it doesn't even really take up a person's full time.

We don't even really have any maintenance overhead. For us to actually deploy one particular individual or a resource for a full FTE isn't necessary. This is due to the fact that the infrastructure, the framework commission, has a lot of things that are already taken care of from a maintenance perspective and from a monitoring perspective. It's an easy job that isn't time-consuming.

We'll continue to use the solution in the future. We may expand its usage.

What about the implementation team?

We did not get someone to help us with the implementation. We handled the solution in-house.

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

The pricing is fine. It's not too expensive.

That said, if you don't have the right model in place, then the cost factor could be one thing that people need to think about because it's based on usage. For example, how long the server is up and running will contribute to the cost.

The model needs to be very concrete and work on how we want to use it. Based on that, if these factors are not known and if you don't take care of this, then the cost factor might go up as so it'll only take that one week to take care of any issues. We've never faced such a scenario because we are very clear on how we want to use it every time.

What other advice do I have?

We're just a customer.

I'd recommend this solution to others.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I'd rate it at a nine.

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
Head of Digital Transformation at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 5
Good tool with premium support that helps us to host applications
Pros and Cons
  • "The product helps us with scalability. We also need not have data centers."
  • "The product needs to improve its cost management."

What is our primary use case?

The tool helps us to host applications. 

How has it helped my organization?

The product helps us with scalability. We also need not have data centers.

What is most valuable?

It is also easy to make configurations and start a new part if necessary. 

What needs improvement?

The product needs to improve its cost management. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I am using the product for three years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I would rate the product's scalability a ten out of ten. We have plans to increase the tool's usage. 

How are customer service and support?

We use the product's premium support. The team is very dedicated. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The product's setup is easy. 

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI with the product's usage. 

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the product a ten out of ten. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
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Amazon EC2
May 2024
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Company Owner at a tech services company
Consultant
The serverless architecture solutions are most valuable, and the ability to start with little cost, and then expand as needed.​
Pros and Cons
  • "The serverless architecture solutions are most valuable, and the ability to start with little cost, and then expand as needed."
  • "I think the whole AWS stack is very disconnected from each other. in the .NET space, everything just works nicely together. In the AWS stack, there is a lot of head scratching."

How has it helped my organization?

As our infrastructure work is outsourced, it's not easy provisioning servers. Even virtual servers take time. Using serverless architectures means no need to involve the infrastructure team.

What is most valuable?

The serverless architecture solutions are most valuable, and the ability to start with little cost, and then expand as needed.

What needs improvement?

I think the whole AWS stack is very disconnected from each other. in the .NET space, everything just works nicely together. In the AWS stack, there is a lot of head scratching. Demos appeared easy, however, once you sit down and build a solution its gets very tricky quickly, and as it's a new technology stack, it's much harder to find best practices for common problems.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In terms of EC2 instances, we did notice a handful of times servers were terminated by AWS due to "health checks." Besides that, I think there were one or two major outages that affected a number of AWS systems for a few hours.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No, the serverless stack is actually extremely impressive with how well it scales.

How are customer service and technical support?

My experience with technical support from AWS has not been good. It all depends on who is assigned as your solutions architect. In terms of finding ways other developers solved issues or best practices in Google searches, as it's a relatively new technology stack, typically I find many people asking same questions and not many answers.

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

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.

How was the initial setup?

Starting up an EC2 instance is easy, starting an API gateway is also easy, so is setting up a lambda function and a dynamo store. The problem is, what you have just done, from looking at AWS presentations and tutorials, is a bad way of doing things in AWS. You pick up quickly that ideally everything should be scripted using cloud formations, or beanstalk, or serverless, or swagger, etc., and here is where the complexity lies. To do anything properly for an enterprise company, currently its very difficult. What tools do you use? Will they still be around in six months?

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

Pricing appears to be cheap, however, it is extremely difficult in calculating what something will cost. Someone accidentally starting a EC2 server could end up costing you notable dollars. Also once you start using services, let's say serverless architecture, you may quickly find you need to build dirty solutions just to keep the price down, or even go back to server based solutions due to costings.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

For some services like API Gateway, we did look at some other options, however, the serverless architecture concept was new and not available as a stack with any other company at such a competitive price. Now Microsoft has also joined the concept, and while I have not used the Microsoft offering, based on my other experience with the .net platform, i think it may be a better platform.

What other advice do I have?

For small startups it makes perfect sense. For large organizations with R&D team/budget, it may make sense. For medium-size companies, where they just need solutions built quickly, I am not convinced about AWS at the moment. Looks promising, but it's a very new platform, with issues that come with a new platform.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user702306 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user702306Works at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Vendor

dasdasdasd

Software Engineer at Apmosys Technology Pvt. Ltd.
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
A scalable and stable solution that is better than physical servers
Pros and Cons
  • "I believe that cloud solutions are better than physical servers."
  • "am concerned about the tool's data security."

What is most valuable?

I believe that cloud solutions are better than physical servers. 

What needs improvement?

I am concerned about the tool's data security. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I am using the product for an year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is fully scalable. We have five to six clients who use the tool. 

How was the initial setup?

The tool's setup is a bit complicated. You need to have some amount of technical knowledge to install it. The deployment gets completed within three months. We need to first connect to the instance and generate a token. Post that we need to connect to the additional server and then to the cloud. 

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the tool a nine out of ten. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Anteneh Asnake - PeerSpot reviewer
Modern Data Center and Cloud Engineer II at IE Network Solutions PLC
MSP
Top 5Leaderboard
Very user-friendly
Pros and Cons
  • "This is a user-friendly solution."
  • "The initial deployment was complex."

What is our primary use case?

We use EC2 for different kinds of websites that can be hosted, and for other directories. 

What is most valuable?

I've found this to be a user-friendly solution and I intend to explore it further because I haven't had that much experience with it. 

What needs improvement?

The first implementation we did was complex. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for six months. 

How was the initial setup?

The first deployment was very complicated, but over time it became easier. 
You have to understand the logic. The initial deployment took around two hours but after that we were able to deploy more quickly. It's preferable to use an integrator if you're in a production environment with many customers. 

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

This is not an expensive solution. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate this solution nine 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: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
UMAIMA SURTI - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at Chistats
Real User
Top 20
Stable, with good potential, however security needs to be improved
Pros and Cons
  • "What we have found most valuable is that we have not lost stability in the program."
  • "I think the pricing needs to be adjusted and better security."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case for Amazon EC2 is for front-end and back-end deployment.

What is most valuable?

What we have found most valuable is that we have not lost stability in the program. 

What needs improvement?

I think the pricing needs to be adjusted and security improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon EC2 for a couple of months.

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

My data science team is using TensorFlow.

How was the initial setup?

I like the setup with Azure more than Amazon EC2 because I am more comfortable there.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend any solution that helps solve the needs assessment. I would rate Amazon EC2 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
it_user693852 - PeerSpot reviewer
Full Stack Software Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Consultant
The solution offers a wide range of infrastructure services with an easy way to configure them.
Pros and Cons
  • "An advantage of Amazon is that it offers a wide range of infrastructure services with an easy way to configure them."
  • "Regarding availability, a noticeable improvement would be the possibility of more load balancing configurations and the deployment of more datacenters, mainly in Latin America."

How has it helped my organization?

It has helped to reduce costs with infrastructure.

What is most valuable?

Scalability, reliability and easy to use settings. These features are essential for our company.

The services our company offers to our users require high scalability. We need to scale our infrastructure horizontally to meet our users' demands and Amazon can offer this type of elasticity with total reliability.

An advantage of Amazon is that it offers a wide range of infrastructure services with an easy way to configure them.

What needs improvement?

Price and availability.

I think Amazon could offer lower costs for customers who have a high use demand, as in our case. Nowadays, the cost for little use is attractive, but when your company needs more computing power, costs can be very high.

I believe that a significant improvement to contribute to cost reduction would be a wizard that allows the migration of a certain infrastructure configuration for another solution, such as switching EC2 + RDS instances with a LightSail or Elastic Beanstalk.

Regarding availability, a noticeable improvement would be the possibility of more load balancing configurations and the deployment of more datacenters, mainly in Latin America.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We did not encounter any issues with stability yet.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We did not encounter any issues with scalability yet. One of the greatest advantages of Amazon AWS is the ability to grow on demand.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is very nice and fast, even for unpaid support.

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

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

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup is always a little bit complex, because we use many services, such as database instances, DNS zones, load balancing setup between multi-zones and so on.

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

Price is attractive, but at a large scale not so cheap, especially if you use many services. Regarding licensing, we don't have any issue with it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We were using Google Cloud Platform before using Amazon AWS. We've also analyzed DigitalOcean and a Brazilian datacenter named Locaweb.

What other advice do I have?

You have to consider some factors, like scalability of the services offered by your company. If you need to be online 24/7, then you need a powerful and reliable infrastructure.

Our company, Drivver, uses a wide range of services offered by Amazon AWS, from computational instances to artificial intelligence services, so we need a cohesive and concentrated infrastructure in a single IaaS provider.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user702306 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user702306Works at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Vendor

asda

See all 2 comments
Enterprise Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
An easy-to-use, scalable solution with good support
Pros and Cons
  • "Its ease of use is valuable."
  • "Its price can be reduced."

What is our primary use case?

We used it for one of the supply chain products.

What is most valuable?

Its ease of use is valuable.

What needs improvement?

Its price can be reduced. I don't see any other area for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Amazon EC2 for a couple of years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's scalable. In our organization, almost all people are using it. There are about 1,000 people. We have plans to increase its usage.

How are customer service and support?

I've used their technical support, and I am satisfied with their support.

What was our ROI?

It's worth the investment.

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

It's expensive, and it could be cheaper.

What other advice do I have?

I'd recommend Amazon EC2 to others. I'd rate it an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user