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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
7.2
Number of Reviews
257
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 16.6%, down 19.0% compared to last year.
IBM SoftLayer, on the other hand, focuses on Public Cloud Storage Services, holds 0.6% mindshare, up 0.2% since last year.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon AWS16.6%
Microsoft Azure14.9%
Alibaba Cloud12.0%
Other56.5%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
Public Cloud Storage Services Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM SoftLayer0.6%
Amazon S314.1%
Amazon S3 Glacier13.8%
Other71.5%
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

Asif  Meem - PeerSpot reviewer
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
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

"In general, Amazon's performance is good."
"I like the flexibility of this solution."
"IaaS with easy management and rapid implementation using Python Django Mezzanine."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the S3."
"The documentation is very good."
"The most useful feature of Amazon AWS is it can be accessed from anywhere."
"There are many valuable features, I find the EMR in the platform easy to use and to learn."
"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."
"The stability is the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."
"The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer."
 

Cons

"As far as the automation is concerned, the backups should be scaled."
"The price could be better."
"They are mainly generalists without access to the operating system. As such, they can provide container level insights,not necessarily at the application level."
"Scaling is an area that can be improved."
"They can launch the Oracle service in Azure, and we expect that this should be possible in Amazon AWS as well."
"They should really consolidate and make things simpler rather than offer you hundreds of random options. The way everything is arranged really forces users to figure out everything on their own and then, on top of that, to calculate the total costs. There's an infinite number of combinations even just with cost calculations. It's just too much."
"They currently have fewer regions in Asia, especially in India, China, and other places. They can maybe put more data centers in this region."
"The interface is relatively complex."
"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
"For us, the versioning was an issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon AWS has pay-as-you-go options available."
"It is much more expensive than any other cloud provider."
"For the initial 12 months, the solution is reasonably priced. On enterprise license contracts where you negotiate, have been reasonable too."
"It is not the cheapest one, but there is a good ratio between the quality of service and the pricing. Its price is good for me."
"This is a subscription-based service and there are licensing fees."
"It is subscription-based, and we are happy with its pricing."
"Licensing can be purchased on a yearly basis, which is an auto-renewal. We also have an on-demand on-pay purchase."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
Information not available
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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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business131
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise112
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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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: September 2025.
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