Yes, if you stay on the beaten path, invest time in figuring out the subset of functionality that actually works, and tease out through experimentation its majo

Yes, if you stay on the beaten path, invest time in figuring out the subset of functionality that actually works, and tease out through experimentation its major quirks, the basic AWS services can be made to work fairly reliably. I stand by my description of this state of affairs as "half baked." The true AWS advantage is that the boss can't get fired for choosing it so the individual contributors already have spending authority inside its walls. Unfortunately, that's a trump card.