What is AWS
AWS is short for Amazon Web Service, the Cloud infrastructure division of the retail giant Amazon.com. In the 2000’s Amazon.com was facing technological issues related to scaling their ecommerce infrastructure. This challenge developed into one of the best opportunities in modern business and the creation of “The Cloud.” Today, AWS is the largest Cloud service provider on earth, maintaining a massive 33% of the revenue share. AWS delivers various cloud services from data centers across the globe - it is estimated that the total annual revenue exceeds $25 Billion.
Businesses have the ability to leverage AWS Cloud services from anywhere in the world by leasing parts of their network as building blocks to develop, deploy and host their critical web applications. It’s power and flexibility have enabled technology focused businesses to enter market places with minimal investment and scale their infrastructure through a subscription model.
How Does AWS Work
Just like Amazon’s eCommerce site, AWS is an online marketplace but for IT related tools and infrastructure. The AWS marketplace integrates with current infrastructure that is housed in-house and works along with many legacy solutions that may be in use already. These tools enable administrators and engineers to build complex systems without any upfront investment.
AWS is special because unlike other cloud providers, there are 90 unique services that engineers can leverage. Since AWS was specifically built for developers, the tools all have open APIs that engineers can use to help power the applications that they are building.
The term Cloud Computing derives from the idea that the seemingly invisible computing resources live in thin air. The truth is, AWS has hyper-scale data centers, filled with servers located all over the globe. They employee teams of hardware architects and automation engineers to power the platform that they sell. Since they have made this heavy investments into cloud infrastructure, users can simply lease it from them as opposed to building their own data centers.
A major advantages of Cloud computing is the ability to simply pay as you go for the computing resources. This is an efficiency that will help with scale and to reduce overall operational costs. Dynamic workloads may only be needed for short periods of time or specific seasons. Cloud subscribers can simply ratchet them up and down depending on the needs dictated by their market. AWS Cloud runs its billing is measured in per second increments.
Advantages of Cloud Computing: AWS Benefits
Businesses that embrace Cloud computing will enjoy many benefits.
Global Reach
AWS Cloud Services are delivered from 20 Global data centers, each with multiple availability zones. If a company in California needed a presence in India tomorrow, they could easily achieve that with Amazon’s on demand resources.
No Investment
The most obvious advantage of Cloud computing is that there is no need to make heavy investments into hardware and software. Not to mention, there’s no need for a physical data center and the high costs associated with operating one. Staff can also be reduced as there’s no need to manage the physical infrastructure (hardware/software).
Pricing Model
The AWS Pricing model helps businesses reduce costs in many ways. The model takes into account economies of scale so costs can be managed as you grow. Plus, software tools help streamline operations so much of the management can be automated. AWS resources are billed “as-you-go” and temporary workloads can easily be turned off when completed.
Flexibility & Scalability
Cloud Automation is one of many tools available within AWS that helps for on-demand scaling. Compared to a traditional Data Center, Cloud services like AWS deliver unrivaled flexibility and unlimited scalability. This value eliminates the unknowns of planning your infrastructure roadmap.
Security
A common misconception is that your data will not be secure in a public Cloud environment like AWS. In fact, there are numerous security tools that can plug directly into your environment that would never be available in your own data center. When implemented correctly, your data will be secure and compliant when hosted in the Cloud.
Disaster Recovery
Cloud storage in AWS, such as S3, can help with Disaster Recovery implementations. Like many other Cloud values, the benefit is you can create a secondary site in the Cloud in minutes without capital investment. Now, images that are backed up from data centers can be migrated and stood up as production on AWS in the event of an emergency. Now, the costs are justified for infrastructure in the event of a complete loss.
Customization
AWS lets customers use tools with open integration to shift resources towards automated operations so small teams can focus exclusively on new innovations. The customizability allows users to architect systems with built-in AWS tools or leverage open source technology to fill in the gaps. It’s a programmer’s paradise.
Examples of AWS Use Cases
AWS enables industries from all walks of life to build sophisticated applications. The core applications can span from analytical software powered by big data to hyperscale web apps. In the middle, there are many ways that any business can take advantage.
Back Up & Storage
Amazon has Cloud storage services that are easily accessible and very useful. Not only can you send critical data and system images to AWS for back-up, you can also leverage multiple types of Storage to power your operation. Performance tiers exits for long term archiving, file storage and indexing, running applications, and high-performance reading/writing.
Big Data
Building data warehouses (or lakes) in AWS is easy to do because they have scalable storage that can be quickly indexed and used at high frequencies to run analytics on. Big Data powers AI and AWS delivers the infrastructure to best serve next generation intelligent software.
Enterprise IT
Enterprise IT can move at a snail’s pace; waiting for procurement, server implementations and cutting through red tape all slow down the process of running an operation. Amazon Cloud can bypass that so that departments can develop, test and run ancillary workloads in the cloud, helping projects get launched much faster. Project velocity is incredibly important, and the flexibility of Cloud services can help launch quicker than the competition.
Gaming
Gaming platforms require tremendous computing and Internet horsepower , all of which has to be readily available. AWS delivers a global network to the gaming industry so that players can get the best online experience imaginable. The global presence and virtual networking cut down on latency and power it with scalable resources on demand.
Web, mobile, & social apps
AWS was developed specifically to help launch and scale web applications such as eCommerce, SaaS and Mobile. Originally, new applications could be set up and developed on Amazon servers. Today they can build them with advanced server-less platforms that do not require operating systems or associated management. Developers can now architect API driven code to deliver infinitely scalable web applications.
Websites
Just like any web applications, AWS is a great place to host your website. AWS is also a great place to host Domains and DNS, not to mention more sophisticated tools like CDN (Content Delivery Networks).
AWS vs. Azure
Since they started the trend, AWS remains the global market share leader in public cloud services and features. Today, AWS maintains 33% of the global revenue followed by Azure at 13% and Google Cloud at 6%. – Synergy Research Group Report
AWS and Azure (Microsoft’s public cloud) have very similar features and functionality. Determining what suits your business depends on what your specific goals are. The biggest differentiator between the two would be the preference of using Microsoft tools or AWS/Open Source tools.
With Azure, you’ll get a lot more Powershell and AWS will have a lot more Linux powered tools. For the average business user, built in features that synch with Active Directory and O365 email services, Azure might make more sense. Same would go for developers that are building with C++ or .NET and MS SQL.
Companies that are developing next generation software with Python, Linux or MySQL/NoSQL might take more of a liking to AWS’s infrastructure for the integration features.
It is important to note, that AWS and Azure both support the same technologies - you can run Windows and Microsoft tools on AWS and you can run Linux on AWS. It just comes down to the preference of the people that will be running the operation.
Summary
AWS changed the IT world when they delivered Cloud computing to us. Now there to countless numbers of tools, platforms and vendors to compliment it. Mindcentric, a San Diego based technology firm has worked with business that leverage Internet based technologies since 1999. Today, we deliver hybrid solutions from our own data centers and public Cloud. Our team is staffed with AWS architects to help you plan and implement sophisticated consulting projects.