What does the aws do

AWS Cloud Essentials

GETTING STARTED GUIDE

Introduction

Taking the first steps as you start building on the cloud can seem overwhelming. Adjusting to a cloud-native approach can take time, especially if you are accustomed to the traditional on-premises way of provisioning hardware and building applications. Gaining familiarity with core concepts of cloud computing and the AWS Cloud will help give you confidence as you begin your cloud journey. In the following sections, we answer common questions about cloud computing and explore best practices for building on AWS.

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of compute power, database, storage, applications, and other IT resources through a cloud services platform through the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Traditionally, a developer looking to build an application had to procure, set up, and maintain physical infrastructure and the application. This is where cloud computing comes in.

A cloud services platform provides rapid access to flexible and low-cost IT resources that you can use to build and maintain software and databases, and create applications to delight customers. You don’t need to make large upfront investments in hardware and spend a lot of time on the heavy lifting of managing that hardware. You can access as many resources as you need, almost instantly, and only pay for what you use. On-demand, pay-as-you-go access to services is fundamental to the cloud computing model.

Advantages of cloud computing

The cloud provides developers with greater flexibility, scalability, and faster time to innovation. With cloud computing, you can

What is AWS Cloud?

AWS provides on-demand delivery of technology services through the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. This is known as cloud computing.

The AWS Cloud encompasses a broad set of global cloud-based products that includes compute, storage, databases, analytics, networking, mobile, developer tools, management tools, IoT, security, and enterprise applications: on-demand, available in seconds, with pay-as-you-go pricing. With over 200 fully featured services available from data centers globally, the AWS Cloud has what you need to develop, deploy, and operate your applications, all while lowering costs, becoming more agile, and innovating faster.

For example, with the AWS Cloud, you can spin up a virtual machine, specifying the number of vCPU cores, memory, storage, and other characteristics in seconds, and pay for the infrastructure in per-second increments only while it is running. One benefit of the AWS global infrastructure network is that you can provision resources in the Region or Regions that best serve your specific use case. When you are done with the resources, you can simply delete them. With this built-in flexibility and scalability, you can build an application to serve your first customer, and then scale to serve your next 100 million.

This video explores how millions of customers are using AWS to take advantage of the efficiencies of cloud computing.

Принцип работы AWS

Знакомство с AWS

Этот материал входит в серию технических статей, написанных командой архитекторов программных решений AWS для стартапов с целью помочь создателям стартапов заложить основу для быстрого развития их бизнеса. Эта серия является общим обзором технических решений, которые необходимо принять на этапе создания стартапа, а также сервисов AWS, наиболее подходящих для их реализации.

Создание своего первого стартапа – это невероятно увлекательный процесс, требующий решения множества проблем. Вам необходимо нанять квалифицированных специалистов для создания, обслуживания и запуска продуктов, завершения следующих этапов сбора средств, выхода на мировой рынок, а также завоевания доверия клиентов путем предоставления им великолепного опыта взаимодействия с вашим продуктом, сохранения инновационных преимуществ и защиты их данных. И все это необходимо сделать, не допустив повышения издержек.

Эксперты AWS понимают это, и многие из них не понаслышке знакомы с проблемами, с которыми изо дня в день сталкиваются основатели стартапов на ранних этапах. С 2006 г., когда компания AWS впервые представила миру облачную инфраструктуру, мы работали с сотнями тысяч основателей стартапов по всему миру, помогая им развивать и расширять свой бизнес. Некоторым из них удалось совершить революционный прорыв.

С AWS ваш стартап получит множество преимуществ. В этой статье мы расскажем, как можно использовать AWS, чтобы сократить издержки, быстро приступить к разработке и сосредоточить силы и время на развитии тех аспектов продукта или услуги, которые сделают ваш стартап успешным.

Что именно представляют собой облачные вычисления?

Облачные вычисления – это предоставление ИТ-ресурсов в сети Интернет по запросу с оплатой по факту использования. Это означает, что вместо покупки, обслуживания физических центров обработки данных или серверов и владения ими вы можете получать доступ к технологическим сервисам, таким как вычислительные мощности, хранилища и базы данных, через поставщиков облачных сервисов по мере необходимости.

Как работает AWS?

Теперь, когда мы знаем, что такое облачные вычисления, давайте подробнее рассмотрим возможности AWS. AWS – это наиболее совершенная и широко используемая облачная платформа с самым широким набором сервисов в мире. Миллионы клиентов создают инфраструктуру и приложения на базе AWS. Стартапы и организации всех типов и размеров используют сервисы AWS, чтобы экспериментировать, быстрее внедрять инновации, снижать затраты и становиться более гибкими.

Поскольку мы берем на себя всю тяжелую работу, вы можете создавать и запускать приложения практически любого типа, включая социальные сети, приложения для умного города и геномных исследований, игры, потоковое видео, онлайн-банкинг и многое другое. Вы используете эти сервисы без предоплаты или долгосрочных обязательств.

Благодаря модели с оплатой по факту использования вы можете экспериментировать с различными технологиями, пока не найдете те, которые соответствуют вашим потребностям и сокращают время выхода на рынок. Таким образом, стартапы быстрее завершают разработку продукта и функций с минимальными затратами.

Сервисы AWS бывают разных типов и форм: от инфраструктурных технологий, таких как вычисления, хранилища и базы данных, до новейших технологий, таких как машинное обучение и искусственный интеллект, озера данных, аналитика, Интернет вещей и многое другое.

В некоторых сервисах вам предоставляется полный контроль, тогда как AWS управляет инфраструктурой и базовыми ресурсами. В других сервисах AWS полностью берет на себя ответственность за функционирование и безопасность, поэтому вам остается просто использовать их. Мы называем это моделью разделенной ответственности.

При использовании сервисов AWS вы решаете, какую тяжелую работу (если таковая имеется) вы хотите взять на себя.

AWS в действии: реляционная база данных для стартапа электронной коммерции

Допустим, вы работаете над стартапом в области электронной коммерции и вам нужно реляционное хранилище данных для вашего приложения. После экспериментов с различными реляционными базами данных вы выбираете MySQL.

Вы можете установить эту базу на такой сервис, как Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), который по сути является безопасным виртуальным сервером с изменяемым размером. AWS управляет инфраструктурой вплоть до гипервизора. К сфере вашей ответственности относятся такие аспекты, как управление гостевой операционной системой, ядром MySQL или данными в БД.

Стартап электронной коммерции отвечает за обновления и исправления безопасности, масштабирование, резервное копирование, обработку отказов и многое другое. Как правило, эти задачи не имеют ничего общего с вашим основным бизнесом. Более удобным вариантом будет использование Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). Сделав несколько щелчков мышью в Консоли управления AWS, вы получите работающую реляционную БД по вашему выбору и за очень короткое время. RDS представляет собой управляемый сервис. Это означает, что он берет на себя трудоемкие задачи администрирования базы данных, такие как подготовка, установка исправлений, резервное копирование, обнаружение сбоев и восстановление. Это позволит вам сосредоточиться на своем приложении, данных и бизнесе.

Как только вы создадите свой продукт, захотите выйти на мировые рынки и расширить охват, мировое присутствие AWS придется как нельзя кстати. Глобальная инфраструктура AWS состоит из зон доступности, регионов и периферийных местоположений.

Центры обработки данных AWS объединены с помощью частных и резервных оптоволоконных линий в так называемые зоны доступности. В пределах одного географического региона существует несколько зон доступности, например Орегон, Ирландия, Токио и т. д. Эти зоны доступности географически удалены друг от друга, в них проведены независимые коммуникации и имеются иные различия. Использование нескольких зон доступности позволяет легко проектировать масштабируемые, отказоустойчивые и высокодоступные рабочие нагрузки и управлять ими.

Важно отметить, что регионы в AWS работают независимо друг от друга, а это означает, что цены и наборы доступных сервисов в разных регионах могут отличаться. Мы рекомендуем осуществлять разработку в регионе, в котором задержка для конечных пользователей минимальна, а сервисы предлагаются по самой низкой цене. При этом необходимо соблюдать все законы о местонахождении данных, применимые к вашему бизнесу. Благодаря периферийным местоположениям AWS ваше мировое присутствие расширяется еще больше. Они позволяют кэшировать и обслуживать контент, запускать код, использовать сервисы безопасности, подключаться к магистрали сети AWS и даже выходить в космос из любой точки мира – ближе к вашим клиентам.

Все элементы этой огромной глобальной инфраструктуры связаны через океаны и континенты с помощью специальной частной сетевой инфраструктуры, обладающей малой задержкой и высокой доступностью. Сейчас мы прокладываем транстихоокеанский кабель протяженностью 14 тысяч километров, который соединит Новую Зеландию, Австралию, штаты Гавайи и Орегон.

Высочайшие стандарты конфиденциальности и безопасности данных

Наша инфраструктура и сервисы разработаны с учетом стандартов безопасности наиболее чувствительных к риску организаций, и мы предлагаем одинаковые функции всем клиентам.

Эксперты по безопасности, которые контролируют и защищают нашу инфраструктуру, также занимаются разработкой и поддержкой большого количества инновационных сервисов безопасности. Благодаря этим сервисам значительно проще соблюдать собственные требования к безопасности и требования нормативно-правовых документов.

Чтобы дать вам возможность поэкспериментировать, AWS предоставляет уровень бесплатного пользования для многих сервисов. Узнайте, какие ресурсы и как долго вы можете использовать в рамках уровня бесплатного пользования, и посмотрите, можно ли распределить рабочие нагрузки с учетом их максимального использования. Вы также можете претендовать на участие в нашей программе AWS Activate, в рамках которой бесплатно предоставляются кредиты, поддержка и обучение. Посетите страницу программы Activate, чтобы узнать критерии отбора и подать заявку.

Каждое путешествие начинается с первого шага. Теперь, когда вы познакомились с облачными вычислениями и базовыми понятиями AWS, такими как регионы, зоны доступности и сервисы, начинается самое интересное.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a comprehensive, evolving cloud computing platform provided by Amazon that includes a mixture of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and packaged software as a service (SaaS) offerings. AWS services can offer an organization tools such as compute power, database storage and content delivery services.

AWS launched in 2006 from the internal infrastructure that Amazon.com built to handle its online retail operations. AWS was one of the first companies to introduce a pay-as-you-go cloud computing model that scales to provide users with compute, storage or throughput as needed.

AWS offers many different tools and solutions for enterprises and software developers that can be used in data centers in up to 190 countries. Groups such as government agencies, education institutions, nonprofits and private organizations can use AWS services.

AWS is separated into different services; each can be configured in different ways based on the user’s needs. Users should be able to see configuration options and individual server maps for an AWS service.

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More than 100 services comprise the Amazon Web Services portfolio, including those for compute, databases, infrastructure management, application development and security. These services, by category, include:

Amazon Web Services provides services from dozens of data centers spread across availability zones (AZs) in regions across the world. An AZ is a location that contains multiple physical data centers. A region is a collection of AZs in geographic proximity connected by low-latency network links.

A business will choose one or multiple availability zones for a variety of reasons, such as compliance and proximity to end customers. For example, an AWS customer can spin up virtual machines (VMs) and replicate data in different AZs to achieve a highly reliable infrastructure that is resistant to failures of individual servers or an entire data center.

Amazon Elastic Block Store provides block-level storage volumes for persistent data storage when using EC2 instances. Amazon Elastic File System offers managed cloud-based file storage.

A business can also migrate data to the cloud via storage transport devices, such as AWS Snowball and Snowmobile, or use AWS Storage Gateway to enable on-premises apps to access cloud data.

An AWS customer can use Amazon ElastiCache and DynamoDB Accelerator as in-memory and real-time data caches for applications. Amazon Redshift offers a data warehouse, which makes it easier for data analysts to perform business intelligence (BI) tasks.

AWS includes various tools and services designed to help users migrate applications, databases, servers and data onto its public cloud. The AWS Migration Hub provides a location to monitor and manage migrations from on premises to the cloud. Once in the cloud, EC2 Systems Manager helps an IT team configure on-premises servers and AWS instances.

Amazon also has partnerships with several technology vendors that ease hybrid cloud deployments. VMware Cloud on AWS brings software-defined data center technology from VMware to the AWS cloud. Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Amazon EC2 is the product of another partnership, extending Red Hat’s operating system to the AWS cloud.

An Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) gives an administrator control over a virtual network to use an isolated section of the AWS cloud. AWS automatically provisions new resources within a VPC for extra protection.

Admins can balance network traffic with the Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) service, which includes the Application Load Balancer and Network Load Balancer. AWS also provides a domain name system called Amazon Route 53 that routes end users to applications.

An IT professional can establish a dedicated connection from an on-premises data center to the AWS cloud via AWS Direct Connect.

A developer can take advantage of AWS command-line tools and software development kits (SDKs) to deploy and manage applications and services. This includes:

AWS SDKs are available for a variety of platforms and programming languages, including Java, PHP, Python, Node.js, Ruby, C++, Android and iOS.

Amazon API Gateway enables a development team to create, manage and monitor custom application program interfaces (APIs) that let applications access data or functionality from back-end services. API Gateway manages thousands of concurrent API calls at once.

A development team can also create continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines with services like:

A developer can also store code in Git repositories with AWS CodeCommit and evaluate the performance of microservices-based applications with AWS X-Ray.

An admin can manage and track cloud resource configuration via AWS Config and AWS Config Rules. Those tools, along with AWS Trusted Advisor, can help an IT team avoid improperly configured and needlessly expensive cloud resource deployments.

AWS provides several automation tools in its portfolio. An admin can automate infrastructure provisioning via AWS CloudFormation templates, and also use AWS OpsWorks and Chef to automate infrastructure and system configurations.

An AWS customer can monitor resource and application health with Amazon CloudWatch and the AWS Personal Health Dashboard, as well as use AWS CloudTrail to retain user activity and API calls for auditing.

AWS provides a range of services for cloud security, including AWS Identity and Access Management, which allows admins to define and manage user access to resources. An admin can also create a user directory with Amazon Cloud Directory, or connect cloud resources to an existing Microsoft Active Directory with the AWS Directory Service. Additionally, the AWS Organizations service enables a business to establish and manage policies for multiple AWS accounts.

Amazon Web Services has also introduced tools that automatically assess potential security risks. Amazon Inspector analyzes an AWS environment for vulnerabilities that might impact security and compliance. Amazon Macie uses machine learning (ML) technology to protect sensitive cloud data.

AWS also includes tools and services that provide software- and hardware-based encryption, protect against DDoS attacks, provision Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates and filter potentially harmful traffic to web applications.

The AWS Management Console is a browser-based graphical user interface (GUI) for AWS. The Management Console can be used to manage resources in cloud computing, cloud storage and security credentials. The AWS Console interfaces with all AWS resources.

AWS includes a variety of big data analytics and application services. This includes:

AWS offers a range of AI model development and delivery platforms, as well as packaged AI-based applications. The Amazon AI suite of tools includes:

AWS also provides technology for developers to build smart apps that rely on machine learning technology and complex algorithms.

With AWS Deep Learning Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), developers can create and train custom AI models with clusters of graphics processing units (GPUs) or compute-optimized instances. AWS also includes deep learning development frameworks for MXNet and TensorFlow.

On the consumer side, AWS technologies power the Alexa Voice Services, and a developer can use the Alexa Skills Kit to build voice-based apps for Echo devices.

The AWS Mobile Hub offers a collection of tools and services for mobile app developers, including the AWS Mobile SDK, which provides code samples and libraries.

A mobile app developer can also use Amazon Cognito to manage user access to mobile apps, as well as Amazon Pinpoint to send push notifications to application end users and then analyze the effectiveness of those communications.

AWS messaging services provide core communication for users and applications. Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a managed message queue that sends, stores and receives messages between components of distributed applications to ensure that the parts of an application work as intended.

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) enables a business to send publish/subscribe messages to endpoints, such as end users or services. SNS includes a mobile messaging feature that enables push messaging to mobile devices. Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) provides a platform for IT professionals and marketers to send and receive emails.

AWS offers augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) development tools through the Amazon Sumerian service. Amazon Sumerian allows users to create AR and VR applications without needing to know programming or create 3D graphics. The service also enables users to test and publish applications in-browser. Amazon Sumerian can be used in:

AWS can also be used for game development. Large game developing companies, such as Ubisoft, will use AWS services for their games, like For Honor. AWS can provide services for each part of a game’s lifecycle.

For example, AWS will provide a developer back-end services, analytics and developer tools. Developer tools should help aid developers in making their game, while back-end services might be able to help with building, deploying or scaling a developer’s platform. Analytics might help developers better know their customers and how they play the game. Developers can also store data, or host game data on AWS servers.

AWS also has a variety of services that enable the internet of things (IoT) deployments. The AWS IoT service provides a back-end platform to manage IoT devices and data ingestion to other AWS storage and database services. The AWS IoT Button provides hardware for limited IoT functionality and AWS Greengrass brings AWS compute capabilities to IoT devices.

Amazon Web Services has a range of business productivity SaaS options, including:

Desktop and streaming application services include Amazon WorkSpaces, a remote desktop-as-a-service platform (DaaS), and Amazon AppStream, a service that lets a developer stream a desktop application from AWS to an end user’s web browser.

AWS offers a pay-as-you-go model for its cloud services, either on a per-hour or per-second basis. There is also an option to reserve a set amount of compute capacity at a discounted price for customers who prepay in whole, or who sign up for one- or three-year usage commitments.

If potential customers can’t afford the costs, then AWS Free Tier is another possible avenue for using AWS services. AWS Free Tier allows users to gain first-hand experience with AWS services for free; they can access up to 60 products and start building on the AWS platform. Free Tier is offered in three different options: always free, 12 months free and trials.

AWS competes primarily with Microsoft Azure, Google and IBM in the public IaaS market.

Over time, AWS has added plenty of services that helped make it a low-cost infrastructure platform that is highly available and scalable. AWS now has a focus on the cloud, with data centers placed around the world, in places such as the United States, Australia, Europe, Japan and Brazil.

Over time, AWS has acquired multiple organizations, increasing its focus on technologies it wants to further incorporate. Recently AWS’ acquisitions haven’t concentrated on larger well-established companies, but instead on organizations that could bolster and overall improve the cloud vendor’s existing offerings. These acquisitions don’t add to AWS, but rather enhance its core services. For example, AWS has acquired TSO Logic, Sqrrl and CloudEndure.

TSO Logic was a cloud migration company that provides analytics, enabling customers to view the state of their current data center and model a migration to the cloud.

Sqrrl was a security startup that collects data from points such as gateways, servers and routers, and then puts those findings inside a security dashboard.

Cloud Endure is a company that focuses on workload migrations to the public cloud, disaster recovery and backup.

These acquisitions shouldn’t majorly change AWS; they will position it better. For example, the acquisition of CloudEndure should accelerate movement of on-premises workloads to the AWS cloud.

Before deploying Amazon Web Services, read this in-depth overview of the many features AWS public cloud storage has to offer.

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What is Amazon EC2?

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) provides scalable computing capacity in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. Using Amazon EC2 eliminates your need to invest in hardware up front, so you can develop and deploy applications faster. You can use Amazon EC2 to launch as many or as few virtual servers as you need, configure security and networking, and manage storage. Amazon EC2 enables you to scale up or down to handle changes in requirements or spikes in popularity, reducing your need to forecast traffic.

For more information about cloud computing, see What is cloud computing?

Features of Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 provides the following features:

Virtual computing environments, known as instances

Preconfigured templates for your instances, known as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), that package the bits you need for your server (including the operating system and additional software)

Various configurations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity for your instances, known as instance types

Secure login information for your instances using key pairs (AWS stores the public key, and you store the private key in a secure place)

Storage volumes for temporary data that’s deleted when you stop, hibernate, or terminate your instance, known as instance store volumes

Persistent storage volumes for your data using Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), known as Amazon EBS volumes

Multiple physical locations for your resources, such as instances and Amazon EBS volumes, known as Regions and Availability Zones

A firewall that enables you to specify the protocols, ports, and source IP ranges that can reach your instances using security groups

Static IPv4 addresses for dynamic cloud computing, known as Elastic IP addresses

Metadata, known as tags, that you can create and assign to your Amazon EC2 resources

Virtual networks you can create that are logically isolated from the rest of the AWS Cloud, and that you can optionally connect to your own network, known as virtual private clouds (VPCs)

How to get started with Amazon EC2

First, you need to get set up to use Amazon EC2. After you are set up, you are ready to complete the Get Started tutorial for Amazon EC2. Whenever you need more information about an Amazon EC2 feature, you can read the technical documentation.

Get up and running

Networking and security

Working with Windows instances

AWS Systems Manager Run Command in the AWS Systems Manager User Guide

Related services

You can provision Amazon EC2 resources, such as instances and volumes, directly using Amazon EC2. You can also provision Amazon EC2 resources using other services in AWS. For more information, see the following documentation:

To automatically distribute incoming application traffic across multiple instances, use Elastic Load Balancing. For more information, see the Elastic Load Balancing User Guide.

To get a managed relational database in the cloud, use Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) to launch a database instance. Although you can set up a database on an EC2 instance, Amazon RDS offers the advantage of handling your database management tasks, such as patching the software, backing up, and storing the backups. For more information, see the Amazon Relational Database Service Developer Guide.

To make it easier to manage Docker containers on a cluster of EC2 instances, use Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS). For more information, see the Amazon Elastic Container Service Developer Guide or the Amazon Elastic Container Service User Guide for AWS Fargate.

To monitor basic statistics for your instances and Amazon EBS volumes, use Amazon CloudWatch. For more information, see the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.

To detect potentially unauthorized or malicious use of your EC2 instances, use Amazon GuardDuty. For more information see the Amazon GuardDuty User Guide.

Access Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 provides a web-based user interface, the Amazon EC2 console. If you’ve signed up for an AWS account, you can access the Amazon EC2 console by signing into the AWS Management Console and selecting EC2 from the console home page.

If you prefer to use a command line interface, you have the following options:

Provides commands for a broad set of AWS products, and is supported on Windows, Mac, and Linux. To get started, see AWS Command Line Interface User Guide. For more information about the commands for Amazon EC2, see ec2 in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell

Provides commands for a broad set of AWS products for those who script in the PowerShell environment. To get started, see the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell User Guide. For more information about the cmdlets for Amazon EC2, see the AWS Tools for PowerShell Cmdlet Reference.

Amazon EC2 supports creating resources using AWS CloudFormation. You create a template, in JSON or YAML, that describes your AWS resources, and AWS CloudFormation provisions and configures those resources for you. You can reuse your CloudFormation templates to provision the same resources multiple times, whether in the same Region and account or in multiple Regions and accounts. For more information about the resource types and properties for Amazon EC2, see EC2 resource type reference in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide.

Pricing for Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 provides the following purchasing options for instances:

Pay for the instances that you use by the second, with a minimum of 60 seconds, with no long-term commitments or upfront payments.

You can reduce your Amazon EC2 costs by making a commitment to a consistent amount of usage, in USD per hour, for a term of 1 or 3 years.

You can reduce your Amazon EC2 costs by making a commitment to a specific instance configuration, including instance type and Region, for a term of 1 or 3 years.

Request unused EC2 instances, which can reduce your Amazon EC2 costs significantly.

PCI DSS compliance

What Is Amazon Web Services and Why Is It So Successful?

So what is AWS and why is it so lucrative and successful for Amazon?

Key Takeaways

What Is AWS Exactly?

AWS is made up of many different cloud computing products and services. The highly profitable division of Amazon provides servers, storage, networking, remote computing, email, mobile development, and security. AWS can be broken into three main products: EC2, Amazon’s virtual machine service, Glacier, a low-cost cloud storage service, and S3, Amazon’s storage system.

AWS is so large and present in the computing world that it’s far outpaced its competitors. As of the first quarter of 2021, one independent analyst reports AWS has over a third of the market at 32.4%, with Azure following behind at 20%, and Google Cloud at 9%.

AWS has 81 availability zones in which its servers are located. These serviced regions are divided in order to allow users to set geographical limits on their services (if they so choose), but also to provide security by diversifying the physical locations in which data is held. Overall, AWS spans 245 countries and territories.

Cost Savings

Jeff Bezos has likened Amazon Web Services to the utility companies of the early 1900s. One hundred years ago, a factory needing electricity would build its own power plant but, once the factories were able to buy electricity from a public utility, the need for pricey private electric plants subsided. AWS is trying to move companies away from physical computing technology and onto the cloud.

Traditionally, companies looking for large amounts of storage would need to physically build a storage space and maintain it. Storing on a cloud could mean signing a pricey contract for a large amount of storage space that the company could «grow into». Building or buying too little storage could be disastrous if the business took off and expensive if it didn’t.

The same applies to computing power. Companies that experience surge traffic would traditionally end up buying loads of power to sustain their business during peak times. On off-peak times—May for tax accountants for example—computing power lays unused, but still costing the firm money.

With AWS, companies pay for what they use. There’s no upfront cost to build a storage system and no need to estimate usage. AWS customers use what they need and their costs are scaled automatically and accordingly.

Scalable and Adaptable

Since AWS’s cost is modified based on the customers’ usage, start-ups and small businesses can see the obvious benefits of using Amazon for their computing needs. In fact, AWS is great for building a business from the bottom as it provides all the tools necessary for companies to start up with the cloud. For existing companies, Amazon provides low-cost migration services so that your existing infrastructure can be seamlessly moved over to AWS.

As a company grows, AWS provides resources to aid in expansion. As the business model allows for flexible usage, customers will never need to spend time thinking about whether or not they need to reexamine their computing usage. In fact, aside from budgetary reasons, companies could realistically “set and forget” all their computing needs.

Security and Reliability

Arguably, Amazon Web Services is much more secure than a company hosting its own website or storage. AWS currently has dozens of data centers across the globe that are continuously monitored and strictly maintained. The diversification of the data centers ensures that a disaster striking one region doesn’t cause permanent data loss worldwide. Imagine if Netflix were to have all of its personnel files, content, and backed-up data centralized on-site on the eve of a hurricane. Chaos would ensue.

In fact, localizing data in an easily identifiable location and where hundreds of people can realistically obtain access is unwise. AWS has tried to keep its data centers as hidden as possible, locating them in out-of-the-way locations and allowing access only on an essential basis.

The data centers and all the data contained therein are safe from intrusions, and, with Amazon’s experience in cloud services, outages and potential attacks can be quickly identified and easily remedied, 24 hours a day. The same can’t be said for a small company whose computing is handled by a single IT specialist working out of a large office.

Criticism of AWS

While the success of AWS is unquestionable, critics of the service say Amazon is abusing its control of the market share by engaging in anticompetitive behavior. This criticism has come from open-source database makers who claim Amazon is copying and integrating software that was originally created by other tech companies.

One such company, Elastic, filed a lawsuit against Amazon for allegedly violating trademark laws. A statement released by the company claims «Amazon’s behavior is inconsistent with the norms and values that are especially important in the open-source ecosystem.» As of August 2021, the results of this lawsuit are pending.

The Bottom Line

Amazon Web Services is a cash cow for Amazon. The services are shaking up the computing world in the same way that Amazon is changing America’s retail space. By pricing its cloud products extremely cheaply, Amazon can provide affordable and scalable services to everyone from the newest start-up to a Fortune 500 company.