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Technical Director at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
High Availability, with High Performance, IAM access control, and server-side encryption at a low cost
Pros and Cons
  • "It's good for starting up because you only pay for what you use."
  • "A feature that should be included is to find and provide a HIPPA compliant solution for the Presigned URL."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case of this solution is for the storage of large amounts of data.

It's a public cloud deployment model that anyone can deploy.

There is no need to upgrade as they don't have versions, it's a managed service, it's hybrid. There are changes that we make internally. It's Amazon S3.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the high availability, high performance, IAM access control, and server-side encryption.

What needs improvement?

Some of the areas that could be improved are the dashboard, and to have a richer functionality.

Because there are so many services offered by Amazon, they can do anything. If we were to add anything it wouldn't be anything inside of it, but services on top of it. 

There is a concern with security. In one of our main use cases, we prescreen, but we have to create a gateway or layer on top of it to access the data in that particular case. Because the user accesses the data, they to be authenticated before doing so. 

It indicates that the users of our systems need to gain access to this data. Amazon allows access with this mechanism called Presigned URL. 

We need to share files, so we upload the file and request a link from Amazon, which allows you to share with anyone. The link is signed, which is the reason it is called Presigned. However, this sign is not compliant with internet regulations.

In our company, we are concerned with privacy regulations. In the United States, there is a law and regulation that is called HIPPA. It's a regulation on how to keep patients' data private and how to protect it. Amazon S3 is eligible for HIPPA compliance, but not with the Presigned URL.

This is very important and because we cannot use the Presigned URL, we have to build the layer on top of Amazon S3. As a result of having to do this, we lose performance, availability, and we lose some benefits of Amazon S3.

A feature that should be included is to find and provide a HIPPA compliant solution for the Presigned URL.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for five years.
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Amazon S3
October 2025
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This a stable solution. We are not aware of any technical issues.

We are a large company and everyone uses this solution. Approximately one hundred users in different areas made up of developers and administrators.

While we have a small technical team, there is almost no maintenance with this solution. It's fully managed.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This solution is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is very good. 

They are very professional and they respond quickly. If they don't have a solution, they will contact they development team in Amazon and provide you with a detailed response with a solution to resolve the issue. 

They are very thorough and I really appreciated it. They helped me.

I am more than satisfied with the support and would recommend using the support.

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

We have not used any previous cloud-based solutions.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward.

The download is very easy and can be used in seconds.

What about the implementation team?

I performed the implementation of this solution.

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

This solution has reasonable pricing and a low cost.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We didn't evaluate other options. Amazon accounts are straightforward. 

There is always a choice on whether or not you will use the cloud. If you make the choice to use the cloud then you can choose if you are just using Google or Microsoft. When you already have an account with Amazon, your choice is Amazon S3.

There are other solutions, but for us the choice to use Amazon S3 was clear.

What other advice do I have?

It's difficult to offer advice as it depends on the use case and what this solution is intended for.

This solution is managed fully, and there is no need for upgrades or anything. It's cloud-based. If you just Gmail, you don't upgrade Gmail.

I would recommend this solution for companies of any size. It's good for starting up because you only pay for what you use. It's internet-capable, making it good for any company.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
OS, Network and Storage Firmware Specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Vendor
I used the solution to prove my concept before deploying it on real hardware
Pros and Cons
  • "Set up a performance and stress-based test suite to measure the endurance of a web application on Amazon AWS cloud system using S3 as the back-end storage infrastructure."
  • "I used Amazon AWS/S3 solution to prove my concept before deploying it on real hardware. It was a great experience and was really scalable."
  • "The down side is the web app should be aware of all the features that S3 provides in order to leverage its full potential."
  • "Maybe they need to expand their range of physical locations."

What is our primary use case?

Set up a performance and stress-based test suite to measure the endurance of a web application on Amazon AWS cloud system using S3 as the back-end storage infrastructure. 

How has it helped my organization?

In order to test application and measure its performance, it is not possible to buy the real hardware at the infant stage of product development. Hence, I used Amazon AWS/S3 solution to prove my concept before deploying it on real hardware. It was a great experience and was really scalable.

What is most valuable?

S3 provides various other ways than what a traditional web app provides. The down side is the web app should be aware of all the features that S3 provides in order to leverage its full potential.

What needs improvement?

It is a great product now. Maybe they need to expand their range of physical locations.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Amazon S3
October 2025
Learn what your peers think about Amazon S3. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2025.
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it_user572622 - PeerSpot reviewer
BI Architect & Developer (contract) at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
Enabled us to recover internal document storage and replace it with offline storage. The web interface was frustrating when dealing with a large numbers of files.

What is most valuable?

Speed, size, and security are the most valuable features.

This was the company’s first foray into storing data offsite. The old way of thinking was that this was too dangerous to contemplate and you can get hacked either way.

How has it helped my organization?

This solution, indirectly, allowed us to recover internal and expensive document storage and replace it with cheaper offline storage.

Capacity-wise, we’re looking at 200GB of transactional data in Redshift. More importantly, you have a lot of storage of other assets, some slow and some fast. These include document archives and web images. This is several years of documents of more than 500GB, and most of it will remain untouched.

That stuff ends up in S3 Glacier storage. It is not really that large in the grand scheme of things, but certainly does not warrant the use of expensive internal storage systems or hiding the data on backup tape somewhere.

What needs improvement?

The web interface was frustrating when dealing with large numbers of files. We ended up using an interface client (via FTP, I think) which also had its own issues.

How do you make it easy to manage 50K documents in one folder using a web interface? I guess some more advanced filtering and selecting capabilities would have been nice, but it was in the early days. It would only read about 120 files into the cache. If you wanted to remove 1000 out of 2000 documents, you had to continually repeat your actions.

This happened surprisingly regularly when you have a live data transfer that ships 100 files per cycle and does 20 cycles per hour. It could eventually delete them itself, but we didn’t have time to engineer that piece.

Amazon’s approach was to delete the old files after a certain number of days. That is money in the bank for them right there.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There were no stability issues.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support always met my expectations.

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

There were business intelligence solutions via the web. We had similar home-grown reporting applications running on in-house hardware for over 10 years prior, but this was directly impacting our ERP resources.

How was the initial setup?

It was exceptionally simple to configure servers, although most of this was done by the boss.

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

Even though it appears cheap, be careful on how you use it. Optimizing early will save money spent on storage and resources long term, so make it part of the design process. The beauty is you can control it at a very fine level.

What other advice do I have?

Follow the guidance. The documentation is excellent. Take the time to get it right.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Amazon S3 Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: October 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Amazon S3 Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.