Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Computing

Amazon Web Services (AWS) rose as the go-to cloud computing platform, offering a wide variety of services.

In fact, many leading companies worldwide harness it, including Netflix, Expedia, and Airbnb. But what exactly is AWS? Let’s find out! 

What is a Cloud Computing Platform?

A Cloud Computing platform allows users access to resources like servers, basic storage, databases, software, networking tools, and building blocks for developing web applications. 

Instead of purchasing and maintaining software and hardware, Cloud Computing allows you to access resources on the cloud, allowing both co-existence and scale. 

Examples of Cloud Computing platforms include AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Azure, and IBM Bluemix.

What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is, indeed, a cloud computing platform that offers computing storage space, virtual machines, content delivery operations, and database management.

With over 200 infrastructure solutions, the portfolio of AWS Cloud Computing services includes security-focused, stable, and high-performance Linux-based operating systems.

When launching in March 2006, AWS offered Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) at launch, with Simple Queue Service (SQS) following soon after.

How does Amazon Web Services work?

AWS delivers worldwide customer services via data center networks (physical servers) that correspond to geographic regions to provide high availability and redundancy.

Likewise, AWS Cloud Computing services offer companies a wide variety of cloud solutions for building, running, and maintaining software applications. 

Regarding pricing plans, AWS operates on a pay-as-you-go model, where you pay only for the services you use. Once you stop, there are no extra costs or termination feed. 

Additionally, with AWS, you can get volume-based discounts as your usage increases. Yet, it also offers flexible pricing models with saving plans for a one or three-year period. 

Amazon Web Services Popular Solutions

1. Simple Storage Service (S3): Amazon Simple Storage Service delivers object storage in cloud infrastructures to store and retrieve data with versioning, encryption, and lifecycle management.‍

2. Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): With Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, you can launch and manage virtual servers, aka instances, in the cloud with load balancing and auto-scaling to improve your performance.

3. Relational Database Service (RDS): AWS Relational Database Service serves cloud Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) to use database storage like MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle. Consider also the backups, encryption, and multi-AZ deployment features that ensure your data's availability and durability.

4. Sagemaker: Sagemaker is AWS’ wholly managed Machine Learning (ML) platform to build, train, and deploy ML models to simplify workflows at any scale with notebooks, algorithms, and frameworks.

5. Lambda: AWS Lambda allows the running of supported programming languages like Python, Node, or Java code without provisioning or managing servers. You only pay for consumed computing time, and you can trigger code from HTTP Requests, S3 Events, or DynamoDB Streams.

Ultimately, with its wide variety of solutions, AWS provides a scalable, cost-effective cloud-computing platform that helps businesses build and run applications and allows them to make infrastructure more agile with lower costs.

What’s more, AWS has played a significant role in the growth of Cloud Computing, becoming a dominant player in a multibillion-dollar industry with 99 availability zones (AZs) spanning 245 countries.

Yet, AWS is not the only option for cloud Computing, with several other products offering similar or even better products depending on specific use cases. What are Amazon Web Services competitors?

Cloud Computing: AWS vs Azure vs GPC

Two main players are rising as key Amazon Web Services competitors: Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GPC). 

First is Microsoft Azure, the innovative platform developed by the tech giant Microsoft that offers SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS models to build, test, and manage applications. In fact, as it hits $23.4 billion in Q1, Azure is growing faster than AWS! 

Likewise, with an 11% market share in the cloud computing industry, Google Cloud Platform is Google's cloud service provider. Focused on flexible services and intelligent insights, the leading tech company also offers SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS models for users and businesses. 

What are the differences between Microsoft, Amazon, and Google's Cloud Computing services? 

Conclusion

Amazon Cloud Applications is constantly evolving and exploring a wide variety of tech solutions to improve business operations. 

At the time of writing this post, solutions include AI Software, Blockchain, Microservices, and the Internet of Things. Yet, the giant also seems to be taking steps toward Mobile Development and AR/VR (Augmented and Virtual Reality).

We can only expect exciting developments from AWS as it continues to shape the Cloud Computing landscape. What features will Amazon launch next?