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Amazon AWS vs IBM SoftLayer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
258
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (2nd), PaaS Clouds (2nd)
IBM SoftLayer
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Public Cloud Storage Services (21st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Cloud Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Amazon AWS is designed for Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) and holds a mindshare of 16.2%, up 13.0% compared to last year.
IBM SoftLayer, on the other hand, focuses on Public Cloud Storage Services, holds 1.8% mindshare, up 0.3% since last year.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon AWS16.2%
Microsoft Azure9.0%
Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)8.7%
Other66.1%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM SoftLayer1.8%
Amazon S315.0%
Amazon S3 Glacier9.7%
Other73.5%
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

Asif  Meem - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Machine Learning Engineer at sportsbet
Managed cloud services have helped accelerate experiments with flexible configuration options
Sometimes the costs associated with spinning up a service, especially managed services, have implications. For example, if I create a Glue job, that will create S3 buckets and other resources that have cost implications, but once I clean up a Glue job, it does not delete the other accessory resources. Sometimes, I have to go hunting for what resources Amazon AWS might have provisioned and how it is costing behind the scenes. It can be complex depending on your level of expertise. It is not as easy to get started, especially when it comes to secure practices. Amazon AWS is more hands-on than other platforms.
reviewer1032702 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Principal Cloud Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Stable with excellent speed and agility
The most valuable aspect of the solution is simply to have the ability to host in a cloud form and out of the data center - the IBM big iron solution. It's the speed and the agility that really sell SoftLayer. The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer. The ability to extract act from your current location, load into your future location, with limited change, and then be able to take the transfer actions slowly and methodically after you're in your new location is the part that really makes this awesome. The stability and scalability are quite good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would recommend this solution to others who are considering using it; it's very scalable and serverless, and we are only charged for the functions that we use, including Lambda, which is a nice feature, in my opinion."
"The experience with Amazon AWS is error-free. That was also, of course, something that I really appreciate. That means it's really well-tested and, as published or as declared."
"AWS is effortless to configure and has high availability."
"The most valuable features of Amazon AWS are ease of use, deployment, and short lead time. If you are using an on-premise solution, you need to wait for the hardware, and nowadays it is very difficult, the lead time becomes very long. We propose to our customers to use Amazon AWS because it is very easy, no need to wait for hardware delivery."
"You can build and release applications quickly with AWS instead of waiting for months to get the necessary hardware."
"The solution is really reliable even when we were using it as a demo to showcase to clients."
"We have many projects where we can resolve a lot of issues with Amazon AWS. It has given customers a lot of visibility with their data. Many customers do not know what they can learn from their data and I provide them with this using useful information using Amazon AWS."
"This solution is stable and reliable."
"The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer."
"The solution is highly stable."
"The stability is the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."
"The ability to extract from your current location, load into your future location with limited change, and then be able to take the transfer actions slowly and methodically after you're in your new location is the part that really makes this awesome."
 

Cons

"It would be better if there was a way to see which components were still on. We have some situations where I forget that some components are turned on. We forget some components are on, and we only see that these components are on when we see the bill at the end of the month. It would also be better if AWS had specialized firewalls or integrations with leading products. For example, a specialized firewall with content filtering. We were looking for some firewall tools, and we saw that AWS doesn't have any specialized firewall tools in its services portfolio. So, we are looking for other tools like FortKnox, Forcepoint, and Check Point because we didn't find the solutions in AWS services."
"There are numerous use cases, and the setup varies from complicated to very simple in some cases."
"Amazon AWS would be improved if it were more stable and if customer support's responses were faster."
"Its subscription model or pricing model is too complex, which should be improved."
"The interface needs a bit of work. It's not intuitive."
"Our API Management solution is integrated with Lambda, and last year, we had an issue while upgrading Lambda from version 8.0 to version 10."
"Amazon doesn't have the most friendly educational platform. It is very obtuse, in fact."
"I'd like to see AWS implement consolidated billing for businesses operating under one group."
"For us, the versioning was an issue."
"For us, the versioning was an issue."
"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you can plan capacity for one or three years, you can use the upfront payment option which allows you to save up to 50%."
"It's an expensive product."
"One of the best thing in Amazon AWS is you are billed for the service you use."
"They have a pay-as-you-go subscription."
"The solution is on a pay-as-use pricing model. The price of the solution could always be better but it is priced competitively."
"A few of our customers pay for it yearly and monthly. Sometimes, when it's related to the data, the pricing seems to be high. It could be cheaper on a transactional basis."
"It is much more expensive than any other cloud provider."
"Licensing fees depend on the contract. It can be monthly or on-demand resources."
Information not available
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business131
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise114
No data available
 

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Also Known As

Amazon Web Services, AWS
CloudLayer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
Whogohost Ltd., Skypicker, Infinity Computers and Communications Company, Grace Co. Ltd., Keyword, Uvionics Tech, Tennis Australia, immixGroup, Salesbox, Cxense ASA, Avnet Inc., Komsomolskaya Pravda, Seekr
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and others in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS). Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.