The use cases depend on the projects. The project that I am currently working on uses Rekognition heavily. It also uses S3 and EC2. My previous project was using it for the text-to-speech feature.
Senior Software Engineer at Userlytics Corporation
The product has an all-encompassing ecosystem, but the pricing should be improved
Pros and Cons
- "The ecosystem offered by the product has almost everything."
- "The initial setup is not easy at all."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The ecosystem offered by the product has almost everything. A couple of weeks ago, I was trying to build a server with RabbitMQ for real-time communication in an environment. Amazon already has a service called Amazon MQ. We don’t need to configure the server ourselves because we already have one integrated into the ecosystem. It’s easy to install the server in our system. We can run it in ten minutes instead of waiting three to four days.
What needs improvement?
The initial setup is not easy at all.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for six to seven years.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable. I never had any issues with Amazon. It works all the time, 24/7.
How are customer service and support?
I have contacted support. It was just a couple of calls. We weren’t able to reach the server. There was some issue at the country level in Iceland. The problem was not with Amazon specifically.
How was the initial setup?
We will have to learn to setup the tool. Someone with no experience would not be able to do it. In some companies, there is a person that works only with Amazon. The person will be profiling the company to work with the service center infrastructure inside Amazon.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution should improve the pricing. The area that I work for is expensive. The product is cheap when we start using it. It provides AWS Free Tier. However, it is not the same when you work continuously with Amazon. We end up paying a lot at the end of every month.
The pricing depends on the traffic because they charge by the traffic. They do not charge us based on servers. The price also depends on the services we use. It would be different if we used S3.
What other advice do I have?
The product is not the best option for a small company. If someone is trying to use Amazon for the first time and already has an NPP running, they can use it. If someone has used Amazon, they would already know what they are going to deal with. The cost is a concern for me. Some people are trying to leave Amazon and are searching for other options. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Assistant to Vice President at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Useful automation, learning resources easily available, and intuitive interface
Pros and Cons
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
We build business applications for our customers using Amazon AWS in 15 different industries.
Many of my customers use many cloud services together.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon AWS for approximately seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
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.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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.
How are customer service and support?
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.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
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.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
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Manager - Solution Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
A scalable and reasonably priced solution that is easy to use and has a high availability
Pros and Cons
- "The product is easy to use."
- "IAM must be made simple and straightforward."
What is most valuable?
The product is easy to use. Its availability and support are its biggest strengths.
What needs improvement?
IAM must be made simple and straightforward. It is a little bit complicated compared to GCP.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for three to four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The product is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
My company had signed up for professional support. We did not have any issues with support. It would be really tough to reach out to the support team on a personal level. For personal users, I rate the support a three to four out of ten. For professional users, I rate it a nine out of ten.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We are also using Google Cloud Platform. The choice of the product depends on people’s familiarity and their inclination toward using a certain product.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The tool’s pricing is reasonable.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend the solution. Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
Cloud Security Architect at Capgemini
Reliable with good security but is difficult to set up
Pros and Cons
- "There is no downtime. The solution is reliable."
- "It's a good cloud, however, if I compare it with Azure, Azure is more of a feature-rich cloud."
What is our primary use case?
I work on the AWS - the AWS Lambda portions of the Amazon cloud.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for two to two and a half years at this point.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
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.
How are customer service and support?
We've never needed to solicit the help of Amazon technical support, In contrast, in the case of Microsoft, we definitely needed their help.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Right now we are working on three clouds actually, Azure, AWS, and Google and we have SAP Cloud in the pipeline as well.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
Founder and Managing Director at Analytic Brains Technologies Private Limited
Quick deployment and offers automated vulnerability audits, ensuring system security
Pros and Cons
- "Security, quick deployment, and scalability are the top three features for me."
- "Pricing is the one feature everyone wants AWS to improve."
What is our primary use case?
It is primarily for cloud hosting. If you're developing a solution for a customer who wants it on the cloud, then AWS and Microsoft Azure are two major choices. There are other providers too, but AWS is quite user-friendly.
We use AWS for scalable cloud hosting and computing services. We store all our customer data on Amazon EC2 Instances.
How has it helped my organization?
We haven't had any security problems, and Amazon offers automated vulnerability audits. This helps us test our solutions for vulnerabilities and show customers that our systems are secure.
What is most valuable?
Security, quick deployment, and scalability are the top three features for me.
What needs improvement?
Like every other customer, I'd suggest pricing is the one feature everyone wants AWS to improve.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution. We've worked with about five customers so far.
How are customer service and support?
We haven't needed technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Sometimes, customers ask for AWS solutions, but we offer choices based on their needs. Price and geographical preferences can influence their decision. Sometimes, the customers can go for a cheaper product. We don't force them, but we make recommendations.
How was the initial setup?
The quickest way to set it up is the most beneficial feature. We can set up resources quickly and scale them as needed, starting small and growing as requirements increase. That's very helpful. It saves us a lot of time.
The initial setup is straightforward if you spend some time learning it. They're improving the user interface, which helps.
What about the implementation team?
My team takes care of the implementation. They find it easy to deploy. We haven't faced any issues so far.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It's not very pricey, but it could be cheaper. There are other options like GoDaddy and HostGator.
There are various options, and some can be cheaper than paying a full license.
What other advice do I have?
Read the documentation carefully before starting. Preparation saves time in the long run. For example, the ease of integrating different AWS services depends on your expertise.
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Software Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Great EC2, simple storage, and good security
Pros and Cons
- "We deploy our core application and our integration platform on AWS EC2 instances. These applications contain multiple containerized Python Django applications, which need to scale up and down dynamically."
- "It could be made cheaper. I know we spend a lot of money each month on AWS."
What is our primary use case?
We deploy our core application and our integrations platform on AWS EC2 instances. Both applications contain multiple containerized Python Django applications, which need to scale with how often and how intensely customers use the platform.
We need a secure cloud environment to support our new self-service API, allowing customers to hit our services from outside an outside service. AWS provides the security, scalability, and flexibility to make this happen.
We also store large customer files on AWS S3 Buckets.
How has it helped my organization?
Without AWS, our organization simply would not exist. Our entire tech stack is served on AWS. Thanks to AWS, we have been able to save money. Thanks to AWS, we have been able to save time and utilize technical resources in other ways. Other ways include building out the front end of our application as well as the back end of our application. Without AWS, we would have to hire network/server engineers, which would take away from our overall speed of growth.
What is most valuable?
We have found the Elastic Cloud Compute service (EC2) as well as the simple storage solution (S3) to be the most valuable aspects of the solution.
We deploy our core application and our integration platform on AWS EC2 instances. These applications contain multiple containerized Python Django applications, which need to scale up and down dynamically. They also need to be secure to prevent unwanted bad actors from using our AWS compute instances for malicious activity.
Finally, we find the S3 buckets to be quite valuable. S3 allows us to securely store large customer files without fear of them being compromised, changed, lost, or corrupted.
What needs improvement?
I am not an expert in AWS, nor do I work in the dev-ops department, so I might not be the best person to ask this question. It could be made cheaper. I know we spend a lot of money each month on AWS.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using AWS since the company was founded in 2017 - about five years.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Head of Implementation and Security at a financial services firm with 1-10 employees
It makes deployment and management of infrastructure easier
Pros and Cons
- "AWS's containerization is the most useful feature for us."
- "I'd like to see AWS implement consolidated billing for businesses operating under one group. We want to consolidate the functionalities but keep the billing separate. That is a challenge we've faced, and I feel it's something they can improve on. For example, maybe you have three businesses that are operating under one group, and you want each entity to have a separate bill for the respective workload that they're using."
What is our primary use case?
AWS makes deployment and management of infrastructure easier. We are using so many features, including Lambda, Elastic Beanstalk, Elastic Container Service, EC2 instances, and Landing Zone. We rely heavily on AWS, and we're constantly taking advantage of new features as they come out to see how they can add value to the business.
What is most valuable?
AWS's containerization is the most useful feature for us.
What needs improvement?
I'd like to see AWS implement consolidated billing for businesses operating under one group. We want to consolidate the functionalities but keep the billing separate. That is a challenge we've faced, and I feel it's something they can improve on. For example, maybe you have three businesses that are operating under one group, and you want each entity to have a separate bill for the respective workload that they're using. But in terms of technical expertise, you want to consolidate the technical support and function of the three accounts. That's an area where AWS is struggling.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using Amazon AWS for about four or five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
AWS is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
AWS is scalable. We're serving close to 7,000 or 8,000 end-users with it.
How are customer service and support?
AWS support is good.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
AWS is pay as you go.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We reviewed the main three cloud providers: GCP, Azure, and AWS.
What other advice do I have?
I rate AWS 9.5 out of 10. I would recommend it.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The most valuable feature is the backup ability
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature is the backup ability. Most people are used to one type of backup solution that they're using, but most of these solutions have features that make it difficult to transfer to the cloud. I know that Veeam now gives people the opportunity to backup some on-premises solutions to the cloud. This feature is something that a lot of people are looking for."
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
One of the most common use cases is people using the solution for hosting. Many people use it to backup their on-premises solution to the cloud. This is the most common use case I know of.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is the backup ability. Most people are used to one type of backup solution that they're using, but most of these solutions have features that make it difficult to transfer to the cloud. I know that Veeam now gives people the opportunity to backup some on-premises solutions to the cloud. This feature is something that a lot of people are looking for.
What needs improvement?
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 back up 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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Amazon AWS for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
This solution is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
Two years ago, I was working on proofs of concept and I got in touch with their support. It was okay and they handled it.
How was the initial setup?
The setup process was quite simple.
What about the implementation team?
My company implemented through an in-house team. My company also provides the maintenance for this product.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Amazon AWS is on the cheaper side, as their pricing is more competitive. There are no additional costs besides the license. However, Azure sells Microsoft licenses, so they have an advantage.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I was aware of Google Cloud and Microsoft Cloud, but I chose Amazon because they have better products and more features. At the moment, Amazon is the leader in everything.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend trying Amazon AWS. You have nothing to be afraid of, as long as you're clear that you can handle your build.
This product is suitable for any company, whether small, medium, or large.
I would rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten, just because there's always room for improvement.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

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