Enterprises worldwide are driving their digital transformation through cloud computing, a fact underscored by the rapid growth in investment into the cloud globally. At the forefront of this digital revolution are Amazon's Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft's Azure, and Google's Cloud Platform, each providing a wide range of services to organizations worldwide through their massive global infrastructure.
Introduced in 2004, AWS is one of Amazon.com Inc's most profitable business units, with revenues soaring upwards of $10 billion in Q1 of 2020, constituting nearly 13.5% of Amazon's total business. AWS is also Amazon's fastest-growing business, growing steadily at nearly 30% in the past few quarters. With such towering numbers, over 100,000 global users, and a versatile product suite comprising a wide range of products, AWS has emerged as the world's leading cloud services provider. It serves companies and users in over 240 countries and territories and has servers and data centers in 76 availability zones worldwide. From Fortune 500 companies to new-age start-ups, AWS is the world's most popular cloud service provider. But what is AWS, and what makes it so successful and attractive?
What is AWS?
AWS is a cloud computing platform comprised of a collection of web services such as storage, servers, remote-computing, networking, security, mobile development, and email – with three main products:
EC2 – Virtual Machine Service
Glacier – Low-cost Cloud Storage Service
S3 – Amazon's Storage System
AWS was initially designed to provide services to businesses and consumers by leveraging Amazon's in-house expertise in managing, building, and operating digital infrastructure. Today it is the world's leading cloud services provider and is being used by global businesses including Reddit, Dropbox, Adobe, PBS, and many more. Amazon's servers are located in 76 availability zones, and its service spans over 240 countries and territories. Let's explore the benefits of AWS that makes it the dominant force in the cloud computing industry.
Benefits of AWS
1. Easy to use
AWS is designed to let new customers use services and host applications with ease. Amazon provides training and education that makes moving the on-location stockpile to the cloud easy. Furthermore, AWS provides plenty of information on its website to educate new users via instructional videos, documentation, and information on different services and how to start working on AWS. Being the most prominent cloud services provider, AWS also boasts a vast partner network comprising highly skilled firms that help clients distribute physical workload and applications on AWS.
2. Cost-effective
AWS offers economical and affordable cloud solutions that are designed to benefit a wide range of business needs. It offers its services on an à la carte model, letting users pay only for the compute storage and services they use without committing to long-term contracts. Furthermore, AWS's economical pricing makes it an attractive proposition over on-premises cloud options as it auto-scales and balances the load to offer the same high performance regardless of usage.
3. Adaptive
AWS's most significant advantage is its adaptability for organizations moving to the cloud for the first time or switching cloud services providers. It offers easy auto-scaling up or down assets, enabling businesses to keep up with varying necessities and volumes. Moreover, AWS provides a virtual environment that lets organizations load services and software, needed for their application. With AWS, organizations can choose the programming language, operating system, web application platform, database, and other resources as per their needs.
4. Security
AWS is one of the most secure and reliable cloud service providers in the world. Amazon's globally spread data centers are strategically located and continuously monitored and maintained. Furthermore, AWS follows a high level of compliance affirmations and is following international data security laws.
It uses an end-to-end approach to secure its infrastructure by taking physical, software, and operational measures. AWS keeps its data centers lowkey and allows access to them only on an essential basis. The data centers are protected from disruption, and AWS's experience in the cloud enables it to tackle latent attacks immediately and efficiently. AWS's clientele boasts of organizations such as Dow Jones, HealthCare.Gov, and NASDAQ, a testament to the security and reliability provided on its cloud computing services.
5. Scalability and performance
With its unparalleled global infrastructure, Amazon provides scalable, reliable, and secured cloud services for storage and computing that can be easily scaled as per requirement. AWS's scalability tools – Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing enable organizations to scale their applications up or down as per their requirement.
Amazon's commitment to innovation and its competitive pricing makes AWS the preferred cloud service provider globally. AWS offers cost-effective and customizable solutions for start-ups and small businesses, and it provides all the necessary tools for building businesses from the ground up. Furthermore, its low-cost migration services allow organizations to switch their digital infrastructure to AWS seamlessly. AWS is Amazon's cash cow, bringing in high revenues and growth despite the increased competition from Microsoft's Azure and Google Cloud.
Advantage Extentia
We have helped companies design, maintain, and implement applications on the cloud for a long time. From employing AWS’s Simple Email Service (SES) for sending authenticated emails from a web app server to managing domains and its subdomains using Amazon Route 53 and auto-scaling, enabling the launch or termination of E2C instances – we have done it all and a lot more in the solutions that we create for our customers across the globe. Having worked on several projects in the domain, our team of experts can help you leverage all the AWS benefits and seamlessly transition your IT infrastructure to the cloud. Talk to us!
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