Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive and widely adopted cloud platform offered by Amazon, providing a vast array of cloud-based products and services. Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered, pay-as-you-go basis.
Clients will often use this in combination with autoscaling (a process that allows a client to use more computing in times of high application usage, and then scale down to reduce costs when there is less traffic). These cloud computing web services provide various services related to networking, compute, storage, middleware, IoT and other processing capacity, as well as software tools via AWS server farms. This frees clients from managing, scaling, and patching hardware and operating systems.
One of the foundational services is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which allows users to have at their disposal a virtual cluster of computers, with extremely high availability, which can be interacted with over the internet via REST APIs, a CLI or the AWS console.
AWS’s virtual computers emulate most of the attributes of a real computer, including hardware central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) for processing; local/RAM memory; hard-disk (HDD)/SSD storage; a choice of operating systems; networking; and pre-loaded application software such as web servers, databases, and customer relationship management (CRM).
Launched in 2006, AWS is known for its scalability, flexibility, and broad ecosystem of tools that help businesses and developers build and manage applications at scale.
Key Aspects of AWS
- Compute Services:
- EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud): Virtual servers to run applications.
- Lambda: Serverless computing to run code in response to events without managing servers.
- Elastic Beanstalk: PaaS (Platform as a Service) for deploying and managing applications.
- Storage Services:
- S3 (Simple Storage Service): Scalable object storage for files, media, and backups.
- EBS (Elastic Block Store): Persistent block storage for EC2.
- Glacier: Long-term cold storage for archival data.
- Database Services:
- RDS (Relational Database Service): Managed SQL databases.
- DynamoDB: Fully managed NoSQL database.
- Redshift: Data warehouse solution for big data analysis.
- Networking:
- Machine Learning and AI:
- SageMaker: Managed service to build, train, and deploy ML models.
- Rekognition: Image and video analysis service.
- Lex: Service for building conversational interfaces (similar to Alexa).
- Developer Tools:
- CodePipeline: CI/CD service for automating release pipelines.
- CodeCommit: Source control for managing code repositories.
- CodeBuild: Fully managed build service.
- Security and Identity:
- IAM (Identity and Access Management): Controls access to AWS resources.
- KMS (Key Management Service): Encryption key management.
- Shield: DDoS protection.
- Management and Monitoring:
- CloudWatch: Monitoring and observability for AWS resources and applications.
- CloudTrail: Auditing and logging for AWS account activity.
- Config: Service to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of AWS resources.
Advantages of AWS
- Scalability: AWS allows resources to scale automatically based on demand.
- Global Infrastructure: AWS operates in multiple geographic regions, ensuring low latency.
- Pay-as-You-Go: Users pay only for the services they use, making it cost-effective.
- Reliability and Security: AWS invests heavily in security and has a suite of compliance certifications.
Use Cases for AWS
AWS is used by startups, enterprises, and government agencies worldwide to support a variety of use cases:
- Web Hosting and Application Deployment
- Big Data and Analytics
- Machine Learning and AI Development
- Backup and Disaster Recovery
- Internet of Things (IoT)
With a constantly growing ecosystem of services, AWS remains a leader in cloud computing, helping businesses innovate faster and scale globally.
Why AWS?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—use AWS to be more agile, lower costs, and innovate faster.
AWS has the largest and most dynamic community, with millions of active customers and tens of thousands of partners globally. Customers across virtually every industry and of every size, including startups, enterprises, and public sector organizations, are running every imaginable use case on AWS. The AWS Partner Network (APN) includes thousands of systems integrators who specialize in AWS services and tens of thousands of independent software vendors (ISVs) who adapt their technology to work on AWS.
AWS has significantly more services, and more features within those services, than any other cloud provider–from infrastructure technologies like compute, storage, and databases–to emerging technologies, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, data lakes and analytics, and Internet of Things. This makes it faster, easier, and more cost effective to move your existing applications to the cloud and build nearly anything you can imagine.
AWS also has the deepest functionality within those services. For example, AWS offers the widest variety of databases that are purpose-built for different types of applications so you can choose the right tool for the job to get the best cost and performance.
AWS is architected to be the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available today. Our core infrastructure is built to satisfy the security requirements for the military, global banks, and other high-sensitivity organizations. This is backed by a deep set of cloud security tools, with over 300 security, compliance, and governance services and features, as well as support for 143 security standards and compliance certifications.
AWS has unmatched experience, maturity, reliability, security, and performance that you can depend upon for your most important applications. For over 17 years, AWS has been delivering cloud services to millions of customers around the world running a wide variety of use cases. AWS has the most operational experience, at greater scale, of any cloud provider.
Global Network of AWS Regions
Website URL: https://aws.amazon.com/