Amazon AWS Reviews

I work on the AWS - the AWS Lambda portions of the Amazon cloud.

It's a good cloud for beginners.

There is no downtime. The solution is reliable. 

Deploying resources on AWS is fairly easy and more secure than any other cloud. That's what our initial impressions are.

Amazon AWS is very lame in the sense that it's into some sort of beginner stage stuff. Most of our customers prefer Azure Cloud over AWS. Azure has lots of features, especially on the identity side. It has integration with the social media built-in plugins. It has integration with a plethora of applications. It has that sort of an ecosystem. Amazon, on the other hand, on most of the integration side, there are applications in Java or there are customer-specific applications and therefore we have to do the development. This is in contrast to Microsoft Azure, where we get the ready-made plugins.

Our experience is AWS should be preferred for the financial sector where there are not very many changes. It's more minimal changes that come into play on the implementation side. We recommend Microsoft Cloud to most of our customers, especially when they want quick implementation and there are a plethora of things to integrate the cloud with. 

With AWS, we feel it has a lot of improvement areas. It's a good cloud, however, if I compare it with Azure, Azure is more of a feature-rich cloud. 

The initial setup can be a bit difficult. 

I expect AWS to come up with more identity features. They should have a very robust identity federation system, like what Azure and maybe Google Cloud are offering. Identity has some sub-verticals, like single sign-on and multifactor authentication and federation with some on-premise systems like ADFS servers or LDAP directories. Those things are very difficult to configure in AWS. AWS should come up with more connectors and more robust and user-friendly IdAM systems so that we can reduce time. We should be able to implement our projects faster.

I've been using the solution for two to two and a half years at this point. 

In terms of stability, the first impression is whatever services we have provisioned in the AWS cloud, we've never caught any issues where we needed to reach out to the Amazon support team. There is no downtime, for example. There are no application crashes. We don't need to plan any high availability or disaster recovery for any of our servers. In regards to that, Amazon is doing a very good job of offering good performance and reliability.

We've never needed to solicit the help of Amazon technical support, In contrast, in the case of Microsoft, we definitely needed their help.

Right now we are working on three clouds actually, Azure, AWS, and Google and we have SAP Cloud in the pipeline as well.

The initial setup is kind of difficult. It's not just users going to Amazon and buying it from an Amazon account. You have to do a lot of configurations.

On a scale of one to five, one being easy and five being hard, I'd rate the implementation process at a four. 

We don't buy the clouds. We give them to the customers and our customers buy the tenants, the subscriptions. They are aware of the license documents with Amazon and the other cloud vendors. Once we have the subscription of a customer, we do the technical implementation.

We don't get into procurement or subscription renewals or product updates or anything like that. We are more on the technical side.

We were doing some research on Oracle Cloud. Whether we are going to build the practice on Oracle Cloud or not, that's the call that has to be taken by my leadership. 

My job role is as a Cloud Security Architect. I prepare solutions and I sell them to the customers. My work primarily involves working on identity systems. I primarily work on the identity federation side. You have identities and disparate sources, and we prefer to have a single identity source using federations and then we prepare solutions around it and sell them to our customers. Those kinds of solutions are the ones I work in.

My advice for first-time users is, if you wish to migrate your private data center to a private cloud where you have servers like VPN servers, radio servers, you have servers for your own applications, whether it's Windows, Linux, Unix, or ADFS, it's better to go for an AWS cloud. However, if you are looking for identity Federation or identity provisioning, then you need to go for a Microsoft Cloud. 

I'll rate AWS  at a seven out of ten due to the fact that it's very secure. It has very good migration categories for the on-premises servers and applications to the AWS private cloud. I can't rate it ten out of ten due to the lack of IdAM features I've seen, and AWS has less of a user base as it's not very user-friendly. This is where Azure scores a lot higher for me. It's very user-friendly and it's feature-rich, actually. If AWS can develop a more feature-rich offering, it will be on par with Azure.

I use AWS for our insurance portal, managing clients, investments, and other related data.

We use S3, Lambda functions, and EC2 instances for various tasks, including RDR instances.

Its set up is plug and play, so it improves the implementation.

AWS is known for its scalable cloud hosting and computing services. We use various features depending on our needs, including endpoint services, database instances, and EC2 instances.

There is room for improvement in pricing. 

I have been using it for two years.

It's stable. 

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. Maybe some technology gap, which we don't know is there. 

It's scalable. Currently, around 1500 users are using our application. We might increase the further usage. 

We only contacted customer service and support once. The response was very quick.

Setting it up was easy.

The entire deployment process took us around two to three months. It is a manual process but we plan to automate it with Terraform soon.

We did it in-house. We learned and upgraded our skills ourselves.

We had a team of admins and developers for the deployment process.

It's a bit expensive but stable and easy to use. Licensing fees depend on the contract. It can be monthly or on-demand resources.

AWS is very good to use. Moreover, the integration between various AWS services is very easy. 

Overall, I would rate my experience with AWS a seven out of ten. 

We build business applications for our customers using Amazon AWS in 15 different industries.

Many of my customers use many cloud services together.

The most valuable features of Amazon AWS are the high level of capabilities, cloud-native environment, developer-friendly, intuitive interface, and automation. The solution overall is easy to learn from the resources available.

The customization could improve. However, it depends on the customization needed. 

To enhance its capabilities, Amazon AWS should improve its integration with other digital security platforms and solutions, especially those used by companies in domains, such as banking, financial services, and insurance. While Amazon AWS has its own solution, there are many other initial vendor companies that perform exceptionally well. Therefore, it is crucial for Amazon AWS to have better integration with those platforms and solutions, including how to host and integrate them with the rest of the Amazon AWS services. Although Amazon AWS has its strengths, it doesn't always work seamlessly for customers, making it a significant obstacle to migrating applications to Amazon AWS. Rather than focusing on developing new features, Amazon AWS could better serve its customers by supporting these existing solutions in the digital security space.

There are many excellent encryption solutions available, along with many other solutions. By supporting these solutions and offering easy integration, Amazon AWS can create a win-win situation for its customers.

I have been using Amazon AWS for approximately seven years.

When you have complex deployments, such as with more than two availability zones, there are reliability, and resiliency options that are complex to implement and expensive. Providing stability or more complex deployments is possible, but very expensive.

I rate the stability of Amazon AWS a nine out of ten.

We have more than 50,000 users using this solution in my organization. Everyone in our company is using the solution.

The solution is highly scalable.

I rate the scalability of Amazon AWS a ten out of ten.

The support provided by Amazon AWS is highly responsive. We have a strong alliance with Amazon AWS, and we regularly interact with their teams. They conduct knowledge-sharing sessions for us and keep us informed about new features. They are always available to support us. They have helped us from the inception phase of any large engagement up to providing help in troubleshooting some problems. They are extremely helpful.

I rate the support of Amazon AWS a ten out of ten.

Positive

I have worked with Google Cloud Services and Microsoft Azure.

Amazon AWS is known for building many industry platforms, and companies often look to all three hyper scalers to help them build such platforms on Amazon AWS. Large consortia of companies collaborate on such initiatives. However, Google and Azure are more interested in partnering with and supporting industry-level consortiums and technology initiatives, while Amazon AMS sees it more as an engineering capability and expects developers to build everything from the ground up. Therefore, Amazon AMS may need to adjust its approach slightly in comparison to its competitors.

The simplicity of Amazon AWS depends on the engineering processes implemented by the client's organization. Setting up these processes may take some time, but the AWS SDK provided by Amazon is helpful. Moreover, integration with other tooling is also necessary.

Once the processes and platforms are configured, the execution becomes automatic. This has been successfully accomplished in many engagements where pipelines are run for tasks, such as provisioning new infrastructure and making multiple releases.

For a business with a small deployment and with minor features needed the process of implementation can take 30 minutes and in some instances less than 15 minutes. However, if it's a large release with multiple features, including verifications, it can take up to one and a half hours maximum. The more features added the longer the implementation will take.

In comparison to Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure, the database offered by Amazon AWS is relatively expensive. However, the database also offers rich features.

I rate the price of Amazon AWS a six out of ten.

If you compare Amazon AWS with other hyper scalers, such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, Amazon AWS is the most sophisticated cloud development platform.

The amount of people for the maintenance of the solution depends on the engagement we have with our customers. Some of our customers are sophisticated with modern infrastructure and can handle most of the maintenance themself.

The engineering team responsible for development also handles maintenance, upgrades, and support without any differentiation. However, some customers still follow an older mindset, where a separate ops team is responsible for platform maintenance and operations.

One approach is to have a centralized model where a team of 20-30 members manages all the applications, including operations and maintenance. Alternatively, a distributed model may be used, where four or five different teams manage different aspects. However, on average, the team size for the entire IT organization is typically around 20-30 people.

I strongly recommend this solution to others.

I rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten.

I gave my rating of eight because the price of the feature is more expensive than the competitors.

The thing is, in case of disaster, then you really need to think about the disaster, which is less cost-effective. If I'm the customer and I have a midsized environment, I need to host a web application or a front-end application. Why should I go with this on-premises data center, the firewall, the hardware, and then monitoring, then administration? These are more cost-effective. 

So, I will go with the midsized and small-sized public cloud where I can have the opportunity for high availability with the region side. And secondly, in case of disaster, we have the product available without any downtime.

The style, the thoughts, and the people are still not convinced with this public. But they don't have any other options. It has been changed after the pandemic only.

The best thing is scalability.

Some people complain that customization is very difficult in AWS. So they think there are other options. If we have everything ready in AWS or any public cloud, if I have two deployments in bulk, then I will get automation. If automation is ready, then I can do everything in a single click.

In future releases, I would like to see more automation.

I started using this solution after the pandemic. So, it has been three years now. And one thing I have noticed is that after the pandemic, it is more recommended to move to the public cloud. 

Prior to the pandemic, people were thinking of expanding their data strategically with Cisco UCS. They thought in that way. But now the approach has changed.

I used Amazon AWS for a small business, like a midsized business that wants to build their environment in the public cloud. And they want to get high availability, and in case of disaster recovery, they can have other opportunities.

We don't have a much bigger environment. So we have a smaller environment, like 10 to 15 VMs.

For a smaller project in Europe, we deployed Dell VXL for 35 sites. The customer has now invested in Dell VXL and is building 30 to 35 sites for Dell VX-ten. This is a huge investment, so they need to stay on this platform for five years. By the end of their standard support period, their hardware will be end of its life. In the meantime, they are exploring the public cloud to create a hybrid environment. Once their hardware becomes obsolete and offline, they will definitely consider the public cloud. Similarly, people who are still on-premises with legacy or Cisco systems will also consider the public cloud. They are in the existing environment and are just waiting for their hardware to reach the end of life. For the next expansion, they want to move to the cloud.

The initial setup is easy.

In a cloud environment, we need just to associate that business. If I have to build approximately 10 to 15 VMs, we have the templates. We have the AMI. We have everything in place. We need to just automate and place everything in the dashboard. It is very easy to customize.

I will recommend you to use it, at least explore what services they are offering, what features they are offering.  

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Amazon AWS provides a total solution and helps us to run applications.  

The tool is a hosting platform that we can leverage to open servers. We can use it to build databases. We use cost management and high-performance capabilities of the tool. 

Amazon AWS should integrate AI capabilities. 

I have been using the solution for five to six years. 

Amazon AWS has bugs. It is not a big issue since the product is a SaaS solution and fixes them. 

My company has around 1,000 users who use the product daily. 

I used Microsoft Azure before. I chose Amazon AWS since it has APIs that I can use for software development. 

I rate the product's installation a nine out of ten. One resource is enough to handle the deployment. 

We did the deployment in-house. 

The solution is expensive, and I rate it an eight out of ten. 

I rate the product an eight out of ten. 

We use several tools that are part of AWS, which are onboarded to our infrastructure.

We have five or six EC2 instances that make up our AppDynamics component of the link. We are using Paperclip for restoring files, and we use other scripts as well. These are tools that we use from day-to-day.

Using AWS is really helpful for saving costs. We used to have to budget a lot for hardware costs, but now we have EC2 instances that are based on the requirements. For example, if you want one CPU then the cost is based on that, whereas if you require more, then it is automatically included.

There should be seminars and online training sessions available from AWS because a lot of people who are not using it would benefit from having the basic knowledge or basic hands-on experience. If they gain experience with it, then they will be happy to use it in the future.

Training could be in the form of more documentation or training videos. Any increase would make this solution easier to handle.

I have been using Amazon AWS for almost two years.

We use AWS on a daily basis and it is really stable.

We have more than 10,000 users on AWS and we are definitely planning to increase usage. We are the MNP and we have close to one million users in our India location.

Currently, we are introducing our web support and once we need infrastructure to be installed, we will create more instances.

The technical support is really good because whenever we we need help, we just raise a ticket and we get a solution.

I know a little bit about  Azure and GCP, but I am only really familiar with AWS. From our perspective, 60% of users implement AWS.

The initial setup is straightforward. We have the guidelines and documents from AWS, so it is easy for us. AppDynamics is also supporting us for the installation of their components. 

The time required for deployment is not long. Creating an EC2 instance only takes between 15 and 20 minutes.

We no longer need a team for the installation. When we first started, they guided us, and now we have the experience that allows us to do it on our own.

AWS and its cloud platform are getting to be well known through social sites and other sources. It is definitely a product that we recommend. We have experience with it and encourage other people to use it as well.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

My use case involves hosting websites and setting up all the source code on the server. I manage their server, especially when new starters are launching.

It has helped by minimizing costs and setting up infrastructure efficiently.

Support is really good. The solution provides a user-friendly dashboard and a highly user-friendly user interface. It has contributed by minimizing costs and efficiently setting up infrastructure for the organization.

Recently, new dashboards have been launched. This new UI is an improvement that they have made.

I have been using AWS for three years.

Stability is rated as nine out of ten. There are no issues with downtime, bugs, or glitches.

It is a scalable product and works well.

The technical support is excellent, rated at nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is not complex and does not take much time.

Around six people were involved in the deployment.

AWS is cost-efficient and cheap for some services. Overall, it offers an affordable deployment with a very minimum possible rate.

I recommend AWS as it's very scalable and cheap for some services. 

I rate the overall solution nine out of ten.

It's a powerful infrastructure as a service solution, IaaS. It offers compute resources, storage, networking, and databases to quickly create your cloud infrastructure.

Apart from the infrastructure as a service, the AWS Lambda, which functions as the service FaaS, is really powerful. 

It's a powerful way of quickly assembling or developing applications, which can be scaled immensely and also at a fraction of the cost because you are charged per the execution time of each function. If you are writing a small function as an AWS Lambda function, then you are paying only for those milliseconds for the time at which it runs. 

It's a very cost-efficient way of running applications in the cloud rather than running an EC2-compute instance, which is charged by the hour or by the minute. You typically have to keep the EC2 instance updating all of the time. Whereas in functions, a function is invoked only when a user is calling it. Or, the front-end is calling the backend function. Lambda is very powerful and it is also typically used as a mobile backend. Essentially, it's a very strong API-based backend for mobile solutions.

It has many choices of computer options, storage options, and even database options.

It's flexible, you can run any kind of workload on the infrastructure.

One feature I would like to see is to have a better or a more user-friendly web console. 

The web console of AWS is not so user-friendly. They can make it more user-friendly, which will be good for administrators or users of AWS.

I have been using Amazon AWS for five years.

We are using the latest version.

It's very stable. It is highly reliable.

It is highly scalable. It's a very powerful platform.

In my previous organization, there were 12 people using AWS.

We have used technical support to an extent, and it's fine. We are satisfied with technical support.

I have used Azure Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and I have a bit of experience with Google Cloud as well.

You have to create an EC2 instance, which is the compute. We have to create that to get the compute platform, but you have to install your application. You have to patch the operating system and you have to upgrade your operating system.

The operating system and upwards is the customer's responsibility in an EC2 instance.

It's a straightforward installation because it's your application and your operating system just like you are on-premises, but you will do it on the cloud through a browser or through a CLI, a command-line tool.

The deployment timeline depends on how complex your application is. Because you are getting the platform from AWS as a computing platform, you have to install your application. It depends on the complexity of your application, so it varies.

Depending on how much you are using it, determines the maintenance. Typically, you will need different roles, you will need administrators who operate this environment, and if you are also developing applications, you would need developers.

The installation and deployment can be done by yourself.

You are not paying a licensing fee, you pay for consumption. You pay for your consumption and it' is typically paid on a monthly basis.

It's a pay-as-you-go model.

Some services are expensive, but the basic infrastructure services are a platform that is reasonably priced.

We plan to continue using this solution, and I would definitely recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten.