Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) vs. IBM Cloud Object Storage

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon S3
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Amazon S3 is a cloud-based object storage service from Amazon Web Services. It's key features are storage management and monitoring, access management and security, data querying, and data transfer.N/A
IBM Cloud Object Storage
Score 7.1 out of 10
N/A
IBM Cloud Object Storage is an IBM Cloud product in the endpoint backup and IaaS categories. It is commonly used for data archiving and backup, for web and mobile applications, and as scalable, persistent storage for analytics.
$5,000,000,000
per month
Pricing
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)IBM Cloud Object Storage
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
One-Rate Plan
As low as USD $12/TB a month
per month
Standard Plan
Free up to 5GB—no minimum fee, pay only for what you use
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon S3IBM Cloud Object Storage
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsThe One-Rate and Standard service plans for Cloud Object Storage include resiliency options, flexible data classes and built-in security. Pricing is based on the choice of location, storage class and resiliency choice.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)IBM Cloud Object Storage
Features
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)IBM Cloud Object Storage
Data Center Backup
Comparison of Data Center Backup features of Product A and Product B
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
9.0
Ratings
8% above category average
IBM Cloud Object Storage
-
Ratings
Universal recovery9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Instant recovery7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Recovery verification8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Business application protection8.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple backup destinations9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Incremental backup identification9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Backup to the cloud9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Deduplication and file compression8.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Snapshots9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Flexible deployment9.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Management dashboard8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform support8.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Retention options10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Encryption9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Enterprise Backup
Comparison of Enterprise Backup features of Product A and Product B
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
8.8
Ratings
7% above category average
IBM Cloud Object Storage
-
Ratings
Continuous data protection9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Replication9.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Operational reporting and analytics8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Malware protection8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-location capabilities9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Ransomware Recovery8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
-
Ratings
IBM Cloud Object Storage
7.9
Ratings
2% below category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
User Ratings
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)IBM Cloud Object Storage
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.6
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.8
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
5.8
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)IBM Cloud Object Storage
Likelihood to Recommend
For archiving old data that is infrequently accessed it is perfect. You can choose to let it go into cold/glacier storage which saves even further costs but at the expense of accessibility. I like that you can set access rules to automatically move it to the next storage tier after a certain amount of time that it has not been accessed. I also use it a lot with PHP via the API. We have some custom in-house applications that have a fair amount of data uploaded into them. S3 has been a perfect solution to store these files, taking the load off web servers and never having issues with running out of storage.
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IBM Cloud Object Storage is well suited for businesses that require scalable and cost-effective data storage solutions. It excels in scenarios involving massive unstructured data, like multimedia content, backups, and archives. However, it may be less appropriate for organizations with minimal storage needs or those requiring high-performance, low-latency access to data, as it's optimized for durability and data integrity rather than real-time data retrieval.
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Pros
  • Reliable and secure way to store objects in cloud: Storing any type of file(text, pdf, doc, csv, etc) is very easy with S3. Fetching this stored content as and when you require is also pretty easy and can be done using both the console and AWS CLI. Appropriate permissions can be set up for buckets using IAM roles/policies.
  • Versioning in buckets: S3 gives you a very handy feature to store multiple versions of objects stored in a bucket.
  • Lifecycle policies: You can set up lifecycle policies in S3 that can move your older objects to IA or Glacier. This setup is very easy and can be done within minutes for a bucket.
  • Replication: The cross-region replication that S3 provides is wonderful. Beware of the inter-regional data transfer costs though.
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  • Cloud storage allows you to save data and files in an off-site location that you access either through the public internet or a dedicated private network connection.
  • Cloud storage delivers a cost-effective, scalable alternative to storing files on on-premise hard drives or storage networks.
  • Cloud storage services provide elasticity, which means you can scale capacity as your data volumes increase or dial down capacity if necessary.
  • Business continuity of Storing data offsite supports business continuity in the event that a natural disaster or terrorist attack cuts access to your premises.
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Cons
  • The biggest problem is to rename the bucket. There is no direct way to do it. One need to copy entire content to the different bucket with intended bucket name and then remove the old bucket. Sometimes it creates issues.
  • There is no direct way to upload .zip file and extract it to inside the bucket.
  • While uploading large files, sometimes you will find a drop of upload speed. I observe it so many times and while checking my internet speed, I find it absolutely perfect. So there must have something wrong on the AWS side.
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  • Unexpected errors are known to occur when downloading/uploading files.
  • Not easy to get started. In order to take full advantage of the platform and its features, additional training and reading documentation is needed.
  • The UI of the platform can get a bit confusing and it's easy to get lost.
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Likelihood to Renew
Due to princing, availability and scalability.
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because it is a robust, safe and flexible product
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Usability
The UI could have some improvements (better filters) and there is a lack of some useful functionality, such as renaming an existing bucket: the latter is much needed in the context of rapidly evolving companies. Overall though, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is easy to use and to onboard people and tools to, thanks to its various APIs and flexibility.
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For my use cases, it has been a very smooth experience. Even my new colleagues have been able to get on top of things very quickly. This shows how easy it is to work with
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
We rarely face downtime or access issues with IBM Cloud Object Storage. It’s mostly available when we need it, even during peak hours or heavy data loads.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
I would give it a 9 because it works smooth with our AI and analytics tools, no major slowdown. Pages and dashboards load fine most of the time, and reports finish in decent time even when data is heavy.
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Support Rating
It depends on your tier within Amazon on how great of support you get. For us we have a dedicated Point of Contact that is great in taking in what we need and discussing it with the S3 team. The best thing is features we need or suggest have a good chance of landing on their roadmap.
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I have been working in IT sector for more than 15 years. I have worked with various vendors. IBM's sales team, support team have been really helpful. After we start to use their product, their UX design team also contacted us to get feedback from us. They are really interested about our experience.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
I just researching and applying the tools on their platforms to ensure a good learning path, based on my needs. Reading the documentation related with resources, tools. Is too big, but I am trying to know more about it every day. It is a good way to know more about their resources. A new way to attract new customers. At the end of the day, we are all involved in improvement and automation of our tasks and resources for customers and end-users.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
IBM's professional service for migrating data and implementing new cloud environment was perfect. They started to help us before we begin to bring together all data such as how can it could be best to transfer all data without problems. During the migration they watched all the process closely to prevent any failure. Lastly, after the migration, they gave us trainings on implementation.
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Alternatives Considered
S3 is the most mature simple storage service on the web. It has direct competitors from Google and Azure, as well as a bunch of other competitors that focus on different aspects. For example, Backblaze specializes on file backups, and while s3 can also be used for that, Backblaze provides a better price point in exchange for more focused functionality. S3 really shines in that it performs simple things astonishingly well, while also being flexible enough to stretch itself to other situations (data lakes, file mounts, backup/restores systems, web hosting, etc.).
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As Google Cloud Storage is our main product for this kind of thing, it remains the standard but in terms of overall performance, flexibility, stability, durability, and scalability, IBM Cloud Object Storage has put it through its paces. I think having a product put Google through its paces is always a good thing, both for businesses and for the industry overall.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
Scaling up the number of users can lead to significant increases in licensing costs, which, while not a technical limitation, can be a practical constraint for some organizations
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Return on Investment
  • Allows us to store large amounts of raw traffic from data providers to allow us to view data our systems received at particular times, in order to reconstruct inputs in case of errors
  • Is capable of storing very large amounts of data cheaply without material impact to our business
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  • In our company, we moved from on-premise to IBM cloud, our ElasticSearch Solution storage in block storage to an ICD elastic search solution with Object storage, and we reduced our cost by more than 45%.
  • Object Storage is a managed service, so you can have savings in your storage-managed team.
  • We have improved our data availability because the Regional solution of COS is distributed in three different Availability Zones.
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ScreenShots

IBM Cloud Object Storage Screenshots

Screenshot of Cloud Object Storage set upScreenshot of storage bucket creationScreenshot of the Access Management interfaceScreenshot of the interface to create, add and management of Storage BucketsScreenshot of data uploadingScreenshot of usage details