AWS CodePipeline vs Salesforce

I think AWS CodePipeline is a great tool for anyone wanted automated deployments in a multi-server/container AWS environment. AWS also offers services like Elastic Beanstalk that provide a more managed hosting & deployment experience. CodePipeline is a good middle ground with solid, built-in automation with enough customizability to not lock people into one deployment or architecture philosophy.

For large sales organizations the analytics and reporting must be so valuable that it overshadows the difficulty of the end user to use the product. I've used several CRM's that are simple to navigate, easy to use and much more forgiving in terms of being able to make a mistake and quickly learn how to correct it. [SalesForce.com] does not fit into that category. I've used it at two organizations now and had the same experience. I do like that it has a clean look and I like the visualization elements in terms of tracking to goal.

While it's not perfect and can be overly complicated at times, there is not another solution out there that can do what it does. To get the same functionality you would need numerous disparate tools to match the amount of functionality Salesforce has. Having it all aggregated on one platform makes the complicated parts far more bearable

AWS CodePipeline is very useable because of its Infrastructure as Code (IaC) capabilities. Since changes to the pipelines can be version controlled, minor changes in the pipelines can be pin-pointed to causing specific issues and fix or rolled back easily as needed. More CI/CD solutions need to completely support IaC. However, Github support is weak within the product.

Salesforce is overpriced, has bad support, and is not very easy to customize. It is not user friendly like the more modern applications people are used to such as Google Meet, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drive etc. Salesforce is constantly trying to sell you another module rather than making their current offering better. And there charges for data storage are absurd. Very easy for your bills to increase.

Salesforce is always available securely from any internet-capable device anywhere in the world, UNLESS you choose to set security measures so that ONLY trusted IP ranges may access the system at certain times of the day. It's all about choice and flexibility with Salesforce products.

AWS CodePipeline only speeds the delivery of code, it does not slow down any other used software and integrates perfectly with other tools. Although it is a web-based tool, it has great performance and compatibility. Besides that, it is greatly enhanced by the other tools of AWS. It is not only limited to AWS tools but can be used with other tools such as GitHub, Jenkins, etc.

Salesforce performance in general is excellent. "The cloud infrastructure beneath Force.com has been fine-tuned over the past 10 years. It powers nearly 100,000+ businesses running more than 185,000 applications that 3 million users count on every day."
Points per Salesforce -
1) Multitenant kernel - With a multitenant platform, each business that uses the app doesn’t have its own copy. Instead, all businesses share a single copy and then customize it for their specific needs.
2) ISO 27001 certified security - You can’t compromise when it comes to enterprise-level security. Force.com is road-tested and trusted by nearly 100,000+ companies, including many of the world’s most security-conscious organizations, such as banks and health care providers.
3) Proven reliability - All Force.com apps run on world-class data centers with backup, failover, and disaster-recovery facilities. Force.com has had a proven 99.9 percent uptime record for years.
4) Proven, real-time scalability - Force.com is used by many of the world's largest enterprises, including Cisco, Japan Post Network, and Symantec. Applications can automatically scale from a few users to millions of page views, as needed.
5) Real-time query optimizer - You need fast access to your data. The Force.com query optimizer delivers under 300ms response time, at a massive scale.
6) Real-time transparent system status - You can always see real-time system performance, availability, and security information at trust.salesforce.com.
7) Real-time upgrades - Unlike traditional software platforms, our upgrades never break your customizations, code, or integrations. We upgrade the platform for you 3 to 4 times each year. As a result, you’re always on the latest version, with access to the latest features, performance, and security enhancements.
8) Real-time sandbox environments - With a single click, you can create copies of your applications, configuration, and data in separate environments for development, testing, and training.
9) Three global production data centers and disaster recovery - Force.com runs on three geographically dispersed, mirrored data centers with built-in replication, disaster recovery, a redundant network backbone, and no single points of failure

We didn't need a lot of support with AWS CodePipeline as it was pretty straightforward to configure and use, but where we ran into problems, the AWS community was able to help. AWS support agents were also helpful in resolving some of the minor issues we encountered, which we could not find a solution elsewhere.

It usually takes time to get escalated (a couple of days) and the first level of support is not good at all, most of their responses are from a script and sometimes they don't even know what they're saying. We're 3 experienced people supporting our instance, so when we go to support is because we really need it and it's something we cannot take care ourselves.

I attended two training sessions. I would rate them a 4 as an advanced user. It was very basic – great for someone new – would give 8+ for new person.

I had 3 years of experience at the time. I skipped basic and went onto advanced and still not helpful. A lot of it was best practices that didn’t feel relevant for our business

I have gone through multiple. The content that’s delivered is quite basic – I wish they had more advanced training.

We are grandfathered into premium support plus training. We get unlimited access to instructor led and online training for free. We have taken advantage of this

Just from an organizational standpoint - we standardized our data prior to moving to Salesforce. But we essentially standardized it wrong. That's created a big disgusting mess for us know that I'll have to deal with as the Admin. Be sure you think through use cases prior to doing something like that - seek outside opinions on how the data will work best, especially depending on what else you're going to integrate with Salesforce.

I've worked with Salesforce since 2001 in companies ranging from 4 to hundreds of sales people and the system has been able to scale and perhaps more importantly expand (functionally) to the needs of larger organizations. In fact in my previous company, as a provider of a solution that integrated with Salesforce, we had customers that had thousands of sales people using Salesforce.