Item: Amazon Web Services
Rating: 10
Author: Calvin Nystrom

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use Amazon Web Services in multiple parts of our organization. We use it for the development of our product, QA, Sandbox and UAT scenarios, as well as in our production environment. AWS allows us to reliably provide our customers with the services we have to offer. It also allows us to test the latest technologies and make future plans to develop our software to use them.

Pros and Cons

AWS allows us to scale up (or down) depending on our busy season. Our software has fairly predictable "busy" seasons, so this allows us to properly spend on infrastructure based on needs.
EBS Snapshots allow us to create in-time based backups. We use these as part of our DRP/BCP.

Understanding the AWS bill is very confusing. Sometimes it is nearly impossible to track what charges are for which particular service is using which feature.
The ability to tag all items, including Marketplace items for cost usage report would be especially useful. The cost usage report being more detailed when filtering by usage and cost allocation tags would also be exceptionally helpful.

Return on Investment

AWS has allowed us to properly budget our infrastructure and IT costs. This helps us plan our expenditures for future development and projects.
AWS has allowed us to leverage some of the newest technologies (FSx) to make our software offering one of the most dependable in the industry.

Alternatives Considered

We didn't really evaluate any other services, but we have researched the capabilities of other vendors and have decided that the offering that AWS is far superior to any other vendors.

Support Rating

For the few times we have had to use their support, they have done a phenomenal job addressing our issues. Most of the issues we have had were either initial limits or billing inquiries. We have had one incident that ended up being resolved very quickly alongside their support team.

Key Insights

Do you think Amazon Web Services delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Amazon Web Services's feature set?

Yes

Did Amazon Web Services live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Amazon Web Services go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Amazon Web Services again?

Yes

Other Software Used

SolarWinds N-central, LastPass for Business, Slack, Microsoft Office 365

Likelihood to Recommend

The flexibility that Amazon Web Services offers is nearly unbeatable in comparison to any other cloud offering. AWS is constantly making improvements on existing services while simultaneously creating new service offerings. In our environment, we have a very heavy MS SQL footprint. AWS allows us to scale up our servers to the best possible instance size based on the current needs.

Great Service For All Your Needs

Overall Satisfaction with Amazon Web Services