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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
255
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 13.0%, down 22.8% compared to last year.
IBM SoftLayer, on the other hand, focuses on Public Cloud Storage Services, holds 0.3% mindshare, up 0.2% since last year.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

Arun Srivastav - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for automatic scaling of resources and provides built-in firewalls and security features, eliminating the need for external security solutions
One thing that's a bit different is that we're still accustomed to speaking to someone directly. AWS doesn't offer that kind of support. It's only through bots. You're speaking to chatbots, and that can sometimes be frustrating because there's no person on the other side. AI is not a substitute for a person. AWS marketplace is very strong, but somehow AWS doesn't promote it much. They have a huge customer base across the globe, and if products were launched in their marketplace, they could sell like hotcakes. They should improve their marketplace and promote the same product across the globe. They can take a cut, but they should promote it. That's something they don't do very much. So, AWS should promote its marketplace software. The company should promote it aggressively. Currently, they keep it very subtle. If you ask for it, they'll help you out. But they don't seem to advertise, "You're building a product on our platform? Why don't you sell it in our marketplace?" Improvement in AI: AWS is a little behind Microsoft Azure in terms of AI. AWS is still getting there, but the kind of examples and help files available in Azure for AI are much better. So AWS still needs to work on its AI functionality.
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

"It's a very flexible and customizable service"
"I like the auto-scaling functionality and compliance requirements, whichever they are requesting."
"Amazon for DevOps is fantastic. Amazon has fast clouds, and the process and the Dev is very good."
"Elasticity has always been AWS's mandate. The flexibility of their platform from a systems perspective lives up to its claims."
"This solution is used as the basic requirement for any virtual machines use cases, the storage is used for each use case."
"Support is really good."
"We have seen an improvement in our infrastructure, as the code makes it very easy to deploy quickly to AWS."
"It improves the speed for us to access vendors."
"The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer."
"The stability is the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."
 

Cons

"They do not yet have a complete solution for APM monitoring. But this, along with real user monitoring, is something that they are actively working on improving."
"One thing that Azure offers that I think is good is Migrate appliance. So, Azure has a migrate appliance that allows you to run against workloads to determine the cost, preparedness, and scalability. I haven't found a similar feature in AWS. That kind of service would be great on AWS too if you could point it to the data center."
"We have had some difficulty figuring out how to monitor how many EC2 instances have been networked into our entire enterprise. We usually try to create a diagram outside of AWS. The types of information we are trying to determine are, for example, what hardware devices are interconnected, and when was the interconnection made."
"We like everything about the solution except for the general price."
"In terms of improvement, they should try to give more emphasis to the VoIP system."
"There is a bit of a learning curve. That said, it's likely no different than learning any other cloud."
"The product should reduce carbon emissions."
"It has the technical support features, but they need to be improved. It has lots of users, but they need to be managed accordingly."
"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
"For us, the versioning was an issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is subscription-based, and we are happy with its pricing."
"The price tends to be higher, but that is a usual case when prioritizing reliable backup solutions for servers and other infrastructure."
"We are on an annual subscription for Amazon AWS."
"The price can be better."
"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."
"When compared to GCP, Google, or Azure, the price could be lower."
"We need to pay for everything. If someone is a personal user, they get one year free. But if you are using this as a professional or enterprise solution, then your company has to pay. The license pricing is comparable to that of competitors'."
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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
Educational Organization
15%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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Comparisons

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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), Oracle and others in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS). Updated: March 2025.
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