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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 (23rd)
 

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 17.4%, up 14.7% compared to last year.
IBM SoftLayer, on the other hand, focuses on Public Cloud Storage Services, holds 1.4% mindshare, up 0.2% since last year.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon AWS17.4%
Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)10.2%
Microsoft Azure9.9%
Other62.5%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM SoftLayer1.4%
Amazon S313.8%
Amazon S3 Glacier10.9%
Other73.9%
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

"We are able to run up a platform, say UAT, entirely in about an hour."
"The scalability of Amazon AWS is excellent. I would rate it as a 10 out of 10 because they have massive power."
"They are enterprising and pretty good in terms of features. It has good security. Its availability is also pretty good. It is available everywhere in the world. It has pretty good integrations, and it is working well. They have done a lot of improvements, and its UI has improved a lot."
"I like that the products are specific and objective; we can resolve a problem using a simple configuration, and it's so easy to implement a solution and solve a problem using AWS solutions."
"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."
"The product is nice and stable. Its performance is great."
"This tool is indispensable, and must be taken into account when designing."
"The initial setup is simple and straightforward."
"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

"Faster API response times and an improved console experience would be better. Enhanced performance across APIs and the console would streamline our workflows."
"In the next release, I would like to see better pricing."
"This solution could offer more security."
"Customer Service: Could be made much better"
"There is a feature called Kinesis, which has to do with image processing. There are a few artificial intelligence tools that Amazon AWS should improve on."
"The pricing is reasonable but there is always room to be better."
"Some of their well-listed services are not super configurable."
"Amazon needs to develop better tools for troubleshooting network traffic, application insights, performance, and even some aspects of integration mapping. I'm hoping AWS implements something like Azure's Network Watcher and a log analytics solution where a can pull logs from various services and present them in a single dashboard. I want to summarize the performance and usage of every service and application."
"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
"For us, the versioning was an issue."
"For us, the versioning was an issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When you compare Amazon AWS to Microsoft Azure, the pricing of both is almost the same. There are some instances when one is cheaper than the other in one area but it is difficult to pinpoint which one is cheaper because it depends upon a lot of factors, such as the use case. However, the overall price of both solutions could be reduced."
"The price is good and licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"I rate the tool's pricing a six to seven out of ten."
"Monthly licensing fee."
"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 seems to be reasonable. It's the first one that I've used as a cloud platform, so they've set the benchmark for me, and now, I'm comparing everything else to them."
"Amazon AWS could have more options and transparency in its pricing model. You need in-depth knowledge to adopt AWS. So someone without that knowledge base might not understand all of the costs associated with AWS."
"The prices are somewhat on the higher side. It would help if they can bring it down, especially for the sporting segment and for on-demand instances."
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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
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Educational Organization
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), Akamai and others in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS). Updated: March 2026.
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