Amazon AWS Reviews

We use Amazon AWS together with MuleSoft's CloudHub, because CloudHub is an extension of Amazon VPC. As part of that, when we set up the infrastructure and everything, we will be interacting with Amazon products. And with big customers, we have data in the private cloud and within that private cloud we have the MuleSoft CloudHub which is connected through the organization's private cloud to a specific geographical AWS public cloud. Regarding security, we also have a number of layers there, too.

As an example, we have seen approximately 300 ETFs developed for different areas, e.g. for United Arab Emirates and other customers. And the internal customers are also using AWS. All in all, there are approximately 10,000+ users who are using it, and things are going pretty well.

The reason I like AWS is that they have a large market share and a large presence. When it comes to our use case, a big positive is that MuleSoft and AWS are working together very well. So instead of competing against each other, they're meshing together.

There have been some issues in the past when it comes to file integrations in AWS's cloud products. However, there are now alternative solutions out there that are helping to integrate them all.

One thing is that sometimes it becomes a problem when troubleshooting our tools because when you have some things local and some things remote on a foreign server, it can get complicated. We find that sometimes it's a challenge to gather the necessary information from logs and such because you need the proper agreement to capture those details. 

In the future, I would like to see Amazon move more into local clouds, by capturing more of the small market. Nowadays, spending a lot of money is not on the list of priorities for many companies, especially considering what's going on in the world. We want to leverage whatever amount is available and still get all the benefits of new AWS cloud offerings.

I have been using Amazon AWS for a couple of years now. 

The infrastructure of AWS is very stable.

AWS is very scalable. 

I've never worked with technical support personally because we have a lot of network engineers to handle that. 

When it comes to pricing, not all applications require that much performance. That's the reason why other cloud markets are also catching up, because the two predominantly high-performance platforms, AWS and GCP, are almost the same.

Looking at the primary market for AWS, I see that there's a lot of customers who have only mid-level performance requirements, because you will have all these normal applications such as online auction websites, gaming applications, voice applications, and so on. These are not, for example, large monitoring applications, financial independents, or brick and mortar companies. So AWS caters to about 40% of the market when it comes to general applications.

As it happens, in many cases, you simply don't need the high-performance offerings from AWS, nor the innovative products from Google Cloud Platform, which can come with large price tags.

Overall, AWS is pretty good and I can definitely recommend it because it's a proven product. When you're solving big problems, you want — first and foremost — proven infrastructure, technology, tools, and mechanisms. Then slowly, you'll be able to remove dependencies by moving to others as needed. So for project initiation and everything, you get to rely on something which is rock solid and proven in the industry with a long track record.

I know AWS can be an expensive option, but it doesn't have to be out of budget if you choose the appropriate level of product for your performance requirements. They can provide high-performance computing resources, while at the same time catering to the mid-level market with lower performance offerings. 

Previously, in the initial days of AWS, back in 2005/2006, there were some concerns about security and such things, but nowadays there is not much to worry about because a lot of those concerns have been taken care of. Recently, there has been another shift in attitude towards them, because not everybody is a big fan of public cloud because of what is happening in the world with respect to data privacy and everything.

Regardless, the three big names of Microsoft, Google, and AWS are really grabbing the market, and IBM is also catching up well. Because of the data privacy concerns, however, I do see some customization in European countries who are interested in interacting with the cloud market at a more local level.

I would rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten.

I am using the solution to create my own virtual servers in the cloud. We use one of the servers to deploy the database for NoSQL database on MongoDB. MongoDB allows all types of databases. 

Here is a more detailed explanation. I needed to deploy a backup API that was not in the project I needed it for. To back up the API is essentially treating data from the MongoDB database. Initially, we implemented it locally and tested all the endpoints, and then we deployed it to the AWS services. We needed this to be online and to communicate with the front end, which is an angular app that says you receive the data from another database which is another NoSQL.

This solution offers a very detailed dashboard that has some metrics, such as performance and budget. You can find all the documentation on how to do almost anything. It supports multiple services where you can use Linux. Depending on your use case, you can also manage the allocations, for example, your hard drive and memory.

Additionally, the solution is user-friendly, has intuitive dashboards, and plenty of graphs and charts available.

We had some problems with bandwidth because of high usage. There were so many queries going to the API and since we were on a budget, we did not provide the needed requirements for our software. At those times the performance was really slow, I needed to log in using a remote session to check whether there is a problem and if there was I had to restart the server. If you have the required budget and you know how to customize it, I think it would be working fine.

In a future release, I would like to see more support for AI because it is the future. 

I have been using the solution for the past year.

The solution is really reliable even when we were using it as a demo to showcase to clients.

The cloud-based environment was secure for everything I used it for. It does not allow you to just log in for the remote sessions. You need to configure it to have a computer log into your accounts properly for user management.

The solution is scalable, whenever you want to scale up the solution and improve it, they really offer you that opportunity. For example, increase the hardware and resources.

The customer support is exceptional. I was having some problems with deploying the server and had to contact support. I began chatting with the chatbot and when it did not help me I was transferred to one of their support attendants. Once the ticket is submitted, they send you another email, in three days to check whether the problem was resolved or not. They are really helpful.

Additionally, at one of the AI summits, Amazon had a room that was filled with many technical professionals. They all had different technical backgrounds willing to give support to those who asked questions. It was really helpful.

The installation for me was straightforward since I have some technical background. However, I did still need to read some documentation. The installation documentation is good and informative. Those who are new to the solution can search the internet for information to guide them and there are courses online to follow too.

When I first started using the solution I used a free trial, and then we upgraded to a pay-as-you-go subscription. We have an allocated budget of $50. I am happy with the pricing because the free trial project helped me progress. In our country, there are limitations for what payment methods we can use, we do not support PayPal, and credit card transactions are delayed. Hopefully, this gets better in the future. However, in other countries, this is not a widespread problem.

The type of deployment of the solution depends on the need of the organization. There are some solutions that we deploy for the clients that we need in a more stable environment. In this case, we use the cloud. For testing purposes for internal projects, we use our own servers within the company. I think by the IP numbers, we can request to create a certain server and they created this for us. There are some clients that require a cloud-based solution, we have this capability but it is still in testing and it is not what we use our servers for.

I would recommend this solution for companies like small companies just starting out. It would be really helpful for them.

I rate Amazon AWS a nine out of ten.

While I cannot say for certain, I believe that we are using the latest version. 

We primarily use the solution to rent servers for storing certain commercial applications.

I especially like the flexibility and scalability of the solution. It is totally scalable. 

While feasible, custom configuration will be more time consuming than standard, although we have not encountered many instances which required us to seek support or advice.

I believe we have been using Amazon AWS for more than 10 years.

The solution is absolutely stable. This is one of its best features. 

The solution is absolutely scalable. 

Amazon allows us to scale up and then down, something important to one of our customers who was in need of temporary increases in the throughput provided to the servers. This allowed us to meet the client's needs for the days or weeks that they required more dynamically located servers, after which we were able to scale down. This we were able to do through Amazon. This was difficult to accomplish beforehand, as the client had private servers for which he was forced to buy machines which he would subsequently keep. 

I cannot comment on Amazon's technical support, as we have not made use of it. 

We did use other solutions prior to Amazon AWS. We made use of local service and dealt with projects involving Google and Microsoft. We also used Microsoft Azure. 

Not long ago  we used Microsoft Azure, though this is necessary with some of our projects. We have different projects which vary with the customer's specifications. Some utilize Azure, although most require the use of Amazon. 

When comparing Microsoft Azure with Amazon AWS, I do not see much disparity. It really comes down to a business choice. If the customer is familiar with Microsoft, then the testing team maintaining the product will need to be acquainted with it as well and its ongoing use is required. Similarly, Amazon will continue to be employed if this is already the case. As such, the difference betwen the solutions does not come down to considerations of a technical nature as they are largely similar. The primary consideration is one of business, the use of one solution and provider over another. 

When it comes to standard configuration, the installation is quick, usually taking one or two days to complete. Custom configuration, while feasible, takes somewhat longer. So far, we have not had many instances in which we required support or advice concerning custom configurations. 

The technical team would be in a better position than I to address any technical issues involved in the setup. From my perspective as a project manager, I feel what we have to be sufficiently good. There is much advertising, information on the advantages of the product and guides available. 

Installation was carried out by our own internal integration team, not externally outsourced. I did not handle it myself. It was done by a team specialist. 

The technical team responsible for the deployment consists primarily of engineers. 

I cannot comment on whether we have seen an ROI, return on investment, as I do not possess this information.

The licensing cost varies with the project involved. Certain projects run around $6,000 per month, some less and others more. We handled many projects, each with its own complexities and specifications. The price ranges of the licenses varies with the complexity of the project. 

Broadly speaking, there is a need to rely on specialists for properly setting up one's accounts and addressing his needs. This is not specific to Amazon, however, but is something prevalent with all providers.

I have assumed the role of both customer and integrator. In the past, I worked as a project manager with different projects employing Amazon products, services and software. 

For the most part, the solutions I used have been public, not private, such as AWS cloud. 

The number of users of the solution varies with the individual project. This can range from 20 to 200 to 500 users. 

Our teams have undertaken every role, be them architecture, development, design or testing. They are all internally integrated. 

I am a fan of Amazon products and generally recommend them to others. Of course, we employ Azure and Google products when the customer specifically requests these. 

Since all products have room for improvement, even when this is not apparent to me, I rate Amazon AWS as a nine out of ten.

The most valuable feature of AWS is that you can scale it up and down as you need. The environment is a rich playground, and if you tried to do the same things on-premises that you do on AWS, it would be a lot more challenging to execute. You can open up a virtual machine on AWS, run some experiments, and be done with it. It's much easier than buying new servers, provisioning them, etc. 

Most of the companies that I've worked for deal with AWS. 

I don't know how many servers they say they have, but AWS is a highly reliable platform. I'm sure they've had outages because it's all over the news when they do, but it's stable overall.

Cloud solutions like AWS are supposed to have near-infinite scalable. That's the point. You can just keep going and make them as big or small as you need. 

AWS is like all the other cloud providers. They're all like vacuum salesmen, where they come in, and they say, "Do you want to buy this hose or this vacuum?" And you're like, "Yeah, it's not that expensive. It's a hose." And then they say, "How about these extra bags?" And you're like, "Okay. I'll buy the bags. It's not that much." Then, at the end of the day, you've bought an entire vacuum store's worth of stuff. You don't know upfront what it will cost, but they have cost calculators and other things like that.

You'll probably experience some sticker shock with AWS. You attempt to understand the cost, but you don't realize what you're paying until you get your first bill. I don't know if Amazon does that on purpose, but costs can get out of control quickly if you don't have someone who specializes in AWS cost management.

I don't even know how many microservices they have now. It seems like hundreds, so what do you do. What would you tell them to do with Aurora compared to their other stuff? There's just so much there that it's tough to get a comprehensive understanding of what you're getting into with AWS. And that's just the nature of AWS. It's a giant ecosystem. Azure is the same. I'm not familiar with GCP, but I'm sure it's the same. They do their best to make it as clean as possible from a sales perspective, but the AWS sticker shock is real.

I'm not sure about the exact costs. When I used to do stuff with Commvault and stuff, I knew the ingress and egress fees and the data cost for storage on AWS, but that was a long time ago.

I guess I would rate Amazon AWS eight out of 10. AWS works as advertised, but they're expensive if you don't know what you're doing. I'm not sure if I can knock them for not being transparent about pricing. Cloud costs are challenging. There's an entire industry popping up for managing cloud costs with consultants who can tell you how to get the most out of your AWS allocation. 

I don't have a lot of advice. If you're planning to implement a cloud solution, just pick one. I mean, if you're a Microsoft shop, it probably makes more sense to go Azure. If you're not, then I would recommend AWS. It depends on what you're looking to get out of it. 

There are references, architectures, case studies, and a million other things that would off better advice on whether to go with AWS or not. But if you're looking to go to the cloud, AWS is as good as everybody else. AWS is probably better than Azure and GCP, but that's a tricky thing to pin down. It depends on what your goals and requirements are. My best advice is to evaluate your goals before making a decision.

I hope that people take what I say about AWS with a massive grain of salt because it's like asking an ant about an elephant. What's an ant going to know about an elephant? It's just too big for any one person to know.

The solution is a critical part of modern retail architecture. There are as many as 3,000 different use cases, and each client uses it differently.

This video explains the whole microservice architecture of which AWS is a key player: (3) Microservice POS Design - YouTube Enjoy

It's been a while since I've looked at the AWS model, however, just at a high level, of course, being able to build a microservice architecture, that's the heart of modern retail. That's where they have to go. COVID has driven everybody to realize that's what you got to do. That's one of the key components of AWS. The cloud piece is a nice supporting concept and it's necessary to make the microservices features work and make the whole architecture really agile. That's a critical component of it as well.

Of course, being able to figure out how you want to coordinate services - that whole service management piece - is critical. You could have thousands of services and I'm pretty sure you'd just be overwhelmed due to the fact that you've lost track of everything and you're back to the way things were when you had the big monolithic models.

The stability is excellent.

The solution has good speed. It's very fast.

The execution is fantastic.

I haven't delved down deep enough into the solution in order to come up with an answer for what may be lacking.

The only real downside to AWS is they can easily shut you down if they want to.

Clients ask us "Well, what happens if I go and put this on AWS and they don't like me for some screwy reason and all of a sudden they shut me down, they've killed my entire company?"

While AWS often is at the top of my list to recommend to people, I always have to tell them, "Hey, you got to be careful because if they don't like you, they can shut you down in a heartbeat. And they can kill an entire company by doing that."

I've had a good understanding of how AWS works for a while. It's likely been about three or four years.

The stability is excellent. It doesn't crash or freeze. There aren't bugs or glitches. It's reliable.

The solution is extremely scalable. You can be a small company or a multi-billion dollar company and it will work for you. It's number one on my list of recommendations due to its scalability.

I've never reached out to technical support in the past. I can't speak to how knowledgeable or responsive they are.

I didn't actually set up an operating AWS model on my computer. Therefore, it would be difficult to discuss the initial setup.

I tell clients to use it, however, I don't go into building one on my own. I don't have a need for it here, and I don't have applications to run on it. In my case, it's more an architectural world rather than a physical world.

I work on the technology side, I don't work on the financial side. Therefore, I really don't have any clue how much it costs.

I'm just a consultant. I don't have a partnership with AWS or any other company.

AWS is a key part of the whole microservice cloud computing.

I would recommend the solution to other organizations.

However, if I'm a multi-billion dollar retailer and I need to depend on something, how do I trust a company that can shut me down on a whim? That's a real problem. That moves AWS down and it moves Azure up just on my recommendation list.

From a technology perspective, it's well-proven, it's extensive, it covers just about everything you want to do. That's what I talk about with clients mostly, is the technology side.

While I used to rate the solution ten out of ten, the fact that Amazon can just kill a company on a whim makes me lower my rating. Currently, I'd rate it at an eight out of ten. It's great in almost every way. However, a company needs to understand that AWS can kill your company in a moment if it feels like it.

We primarily use the solution for our partner.

We are using it for moving all the banking and insurance domains from on-premises systems to the cloud platform, which is managed by services. It is right from data integration, data inception to data processing, to advanced visualization and analytics. We are also using the AI and machine learning aspects as well.

We have been using the data ingestion. 

There are native tools which are AWS Glue, which we are using for data integration. 

We also use the Spark and Python-based integration which are both very good. 

The solution has very good Lambda functions within AWS.

We also use AWS Redshift for data modeling along with the integration with Snowflake.

The solution is very stable.

The scalability is excellent.

We've found the initial setup to be quite simple and straightforward.

Technical support is pretty good.

The pricing could be more competitive.

There need better integration tools whereby you could have widgets. It already technically has this, however, if they had widgets that could help with the journey from an on-premises legacy database management system, that would be ideal. There should be some accelerators that can convert and automate data pipelines into AWS so that users don't have to start from scratch. 

Basically, if we had accelerators and tools that can help fast track and leverage existing data schemas, models, and then also, data pipelines that are already set up, it would help items to be quickly migrated rather than doing everything from scratch on the cloud.

We've used the solution for a couple of years. It's been a while.

The stability of the solution is very good. The product does not have any bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The solution is the number one cloud product. It is extremely salable. A company shouldn't have any trouble expanding it.

From a user perspective, I would say from accounts, we are primarily into banking and insurance. We have around four to five of our banking accounts using it. They are a mid-scale bank. 

We do plan to continue using the product.

Technical support is good. Overall, they are the number one cloud provider and they have an overall very high market capitalization. The support they have on offer is very good. We're satisfied with the level of service they offer.

We have also used the Azure platform as well.

The initial setup is easy. It's not overly complex. The deployment depends, however, it could take a few hours to maybe a day, as it is platform and software as a service. It is all managed by AWS. The installation and management require a bare minimum configuration.

The cost structure could be better. It needs to be more transparent. After COVID, it is competing directly with Azure - which is a bit more of a cost-effective option. It's also competing directly with Google. If they were cheaper, they would be much more competitive in the space.

From a licensing perspective, the cost of ownership is based on usage. 

We are consultants.

We are using the latest version of the solution. I cannot recall the exact version number at this time.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've enjoyed its capabilities so far.

I would recommend this solution to other companies and organizations.

There's a lot of due diligence which happens before organizations choose cloud solutions and then, of course, it needs to fit into the scenario. There is a cost-benefit analysis that has to be performed. It's a good idea to compare it to other platforms as well. Companies need to make sure it factors in the strategic landscape and the tools and technologies that the organization already has. If clients need assistance, we do participate in those strategic initiatives.

I've used it to create some internal projects for my organization, particularly for designing the infrastructure of those projects.

One feature I find most valuable is the easy deployment by using the channel model for  serverless architecture. Another feature I find valuable is the versatility of the service S3 because it allows you to give permissions to describe the users from their own accounts, from external users, or external accounts.

On the console, they used to have some shortcuts making this solution easier to work with, but now we have been dealing with so many problems on the console, and some of the options are not very useful in my perspective, so they should bring back those options that make things easier to run some of the services.

Most of the time the options are pre-selected, or you have to go with the default settings, but from my perspective, there are some services which are now more complicated to use than before.

An additional feature I'd like to see in the future is more integration with public repositories, though some use their own repositories for security purposes, but I think it'll be easier to deploy services through public repositories.

I've been using this solution for almost four years now.

This solution is stable. I've been using it for a long time and have only seen an outage in one of the regions. It's a good solution.

The scalability of this solution is good.

The technical support of AWS is very good. When I need something, they reach out to me fast.

The initial setup was straightforward. The complexity of the setup will depend on the number of services e.g. it's something that involves a lot of services, it could get complex, but for a complex setup, you could use things like transformation or Terraform because they will enable you to use infrastructure as a code to make it easier. There's a lot of things to configure.

Licensing of this solution is paid on a yearly basis.

I evaluated Microsoft Azure.

This was deployed on the cloud. I don't remember which version because I didn't deploy it. I was not the person running the project of implementing AWS, but I know the client used it, but I don't know which version.

It's not so difficult to use because there's a lot of tutorials.

I'm not completely sure about the number of AWS users in our organization. We have a partnership with them so we have some accounts, but we don't completely have our load on AWS. We are mostly on Azure. Our main server is on Azure. On AWS, we mostly have some internal projects and services, but most of the main load is on Azure.

We have a small workload on AWS. Sometimes we use it to deploy some of our best projects. We use it on some internal projects. It's a random thing so it could be 1,000 users or 50 users. I'll say approximately 200 to 500 users.

We don't require too many people for deploying this solution because our projects are proof of concepts. Up to ten people from different departments would be needed for deployment if it's a business requirement e.g. people from Approvals and Projects, etc.

As for increasing AWS usage, the organization sometimes thinks of moving some of the load to AWS because of good pricing, because currently, our main streams are on Azure, but it's not a sure thing.

I'm unsure if there's any additional cost aside from the need to pay the license annually because I don't directly manage it.

My advice to organizations looking into implementing AWS, especially if they're going to use it on a big scale, is to take advantage of AWS' organization model to make integration with their policies easier. It will also make administration easier for the different accounts, departments, and structure of the organizations thinking of moving to AWS.

I would rate this solution a 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.