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Amazon AWS vs IBM Public Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon AWS
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
255
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (2nd)
IBM Public Cloud
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
IoT Platforms (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS is 12.9%, down from 17.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.3%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds
 

Q&A Highlights

NC
Oct 16, 2021
 

Featured Reviews

Arun Srivastav - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for automatic scaling of resources and provides built-in firewalls and security features, eliminating the need for external security solutions
One thing that's a bit different is that we're still accustomed to speaking to someone directly. AWS doesn't offer that kind of support. It's only through bots. You're speaking to chatbots, and that can sometimes be frustrating because there's no person on the other side. AI is not a substitute for a person. AWS marketplace is very strong, but somehow AWS doesn't promote it much. They have a huge customer base across the globe, and if products were launched in their marketplace, they could sell like hotcakes. They should improve their marketplace and promote the same product across the globe. They can take a cut, but they should promote it. That's something they don't do very much. So, AWS should promote its marketplace software. The company should promote it aggressively. Currently, they keep it very subtle. If you ask for it, they'll help you out. But they don't seem to advertise, "You're building a product on our platform? Why don't you sell it in our marketplace?" Improvement in AI: AWS is a little behind Microsoft Azure in terms of AI. AWS is still getting there, but the kind of examples and help files available in Azure for AI are much better. So AWS still needs to work on its AI functionality.
Shivakumar Kuppannan - PeerSpot reviewer
No hidden charges, 100% stable, and allows us to have bare metal servers for dedicated workload
It pretty much has all the features. There are many applications and features, and because of that, we need to walk through or study all the material and do hands-on. We need clear documentation or support for using IBM Public Cloud. The UI is fine, and everything else in terms of usability and configuring the cloud is also fine. The only thing is that when we're stuck or get an error, we need some technical support. Normally, for any cloud, we get a lot of information on the web, but that is missing in the case of IBM Public Cloud. We need some technical support documents. That is the only thing missing in IBM Public Cloud.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is that it is simple."
"The AWS feature that I most enjoy is Lambda functions. I primarily use serverless components because they allow you to process things without having to compromise on resources like when running EC2 instances or virtual machines. With minimal effort, you can scale up an unlimited number of processes, even concurrently, to process things. I frequently work with web APIs, so I use Lambda a lot in this area."
"We've built several AI ML solutions and done lots of work on the GPUs available on Amazon servers. We did a lot of work around web spidering, natural language processing, and machine learning or deep learning workloads."
"Easy to upgrade, easy to expand storage and change your EC2 types."
"Cloud Trail API log storage."
"This solution offers a very detailed dashboard that has some metrics, such as performance and budget."
"The price forecasting and billing dashboard by service, with billing budgets and alerts, have helped us shut down resources that were accruing costs that we no longer needed, saving us money."
"It is very easy to set up. It is also easy to use. It has a lot of services and integrations. We've been able to integrate whatever we need until now."
"I've found the stability to be excellent. The performance is good."
"The price of IBM Cloud is most valuable for us. The service is personable and gives us a good rapport. I can't say it's the best, but it was enough for our needs."
"There is no installation for this product because it is a cloud product."
"One of the features that I really like about IBM Cloud is the flexibility where you can order your own hardware."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations."
"The availability is second to none. Customer support is very good."
"An advantage of IBM Public Cloud is the bare metal server. We can take the bare metal server. It's not shared with anyone. We can deploy our applications without sharing them with anyone. That is an advantage of IBM Public Cloud."
"The initial setup was very easy. It's quite straightforward. Deployment took about fifteen minutes. Everything is well organized."
 

Cons

"Some services that are not used often have poor quality and need to be improved."
"Its price should be lower. The price for in-house usage should be different from production usage."
"I'm not an expert on the product, but if I had to suggest one improvement, I know a feature that would allow a person to backup his on-premise solution to the cloud directly with one click would be useful. This solution should be agnostic because sometimes a product that was backed up with Veeam is highly compatible with Commvault. I think it would be better if these backup features were agnostic. Viewing a build could also be improved. It's not easy to follow up on your consumption and see how much you're paying and how much you will be paying. Viewing the build could be more clear."
"In the next release, I would like to see better pricing."
"We would like to see if AWS includes any inbuilt automation. Also, we are very interested in AWS's AI/ML features, as well as IoT, AR, and VR."
"Some services which were easy to use through shortcuts are now more complicated to use."
"It could be made cheaper. I know we spend a lot of money each month on AWS."
"Some of the storage services could be cheaper."
"The product should offer more computing, similar to Amazon."
"Recently, we just faced some issues with the operating system due to the end of life of CentOS 6...So, then the client wanted to try it out under AWS instead of IBM. In short, it has some complexities."
"They do not have a very good virtual network implemented, and the VPC is the most important feature that needs to be improved."
"It will be challenging to implement if you do not have any experience."
"The solution needs to be more autonomous. It should let the DL go to allow for more jobs on the cloud. It could have a better interface as well."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly deployment process in the next release of this solution."
"It could be more secure."
"They could improve on customizing reporting capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS is scalable depending on your needs so pricing is dependant on what you use."
"When we shifted the load to AWS we paid a high cost as the mail stores were hosted on EBS. The storage cost drastically reduced after moving to S3."
"Its price should be lower. Currently, the price is the same if you are working in-house or in production. If you have to do internal testing or you are checking if things are working in-house, you need to pay for that, and the price is the same. The price for in-house usage should be different from production usage."
"The pricing of Amazon is higher than that of SalesForce."
"The solution is expensive, and I rate it an eight out of ten."
"The solution is on a subscription-based model, and it is pay-as-you-go. The price could be cheaper."
"I find Amazon AWS very expensive compare to Microsoft Azure."
"It's expensive. It costs you an arm and a leg."
"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."
"IBM Public Cloud is pretty cheap. They have an ongoing free tier that basically won't expire, so as long as your solution is small enough, you can have a test set that you can use for demos, which will cost you almost nothing."
"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."
"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or Azure."
"It pretty much has a standard price. There is no hidden price with IBM Public Cloud."
"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."
"IBM has a lesser price compared to other cloud service providers like Azure and AWS."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Answers from the Community

NC
Oct 16, 2021
Oct 16, 2021
I agree with Vik and Marcelo. AWS cloud is more matured, but you would like to run some specific IBM business tools like document management, IBM Watson for AI, SPSS analytics then IBM Cloud should be preferred.
2 out of 3 answers
VD
Oct 12, 2021
Amazon AWS is superior to IBM public for several reasons.  The most important reason is the diversity of software tools, the geographic diversity and availability, lower operating costs and excellent customer service. All cloud companies are simply playing catch-up to AWS. 
MJ
Oct 14, 2021
AWS, the main reason is the number of DC distributed arround the world
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
27%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or ...
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS?
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS? Amazon AWS offers options both in terms of upgrading and expanding capabilities as well as acquiring greater storage space. These upgrades can ...
Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful...
Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...
What needs improvement with IBM Cloud?
The front end is not pervasive, so it is very difficult get the status of your current services or account from a mobile device.
What do you like most about IBM Public Cloud?
The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations.
 

Also Known As

Amazon Web Services, AWS
IBM Bluemix
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
Uvionics Tech, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alpha Modus, Inventive, Web Business Consulting, FindBrok, SilverHook Powerboats, United Way of Allegheny County
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon AWS vs. IBM Public Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.