Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud computing web services provide a variety of basic abstract technical infrastructure and distributed computing building blocks and tools. One of these services is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which allows users to have at their disposal a virtual cluster of computers, available all the time, through the Internet. 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/SSD storage; a choice of operating systems; networking; and pre-loaded application software such as web servers, databases, and customer relationship management (CRM).
History
AWS was launched in 2006 with a basic set of computing, storage, and networking services. Since then, AWS has expanded its offerings to include a wide range of services, including databases, analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. AWS has become the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, with over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster.
Benefits of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing offers a number of benefits over traditional on-premises IT infrastructure, including:
- Cost savings: Cloud computing can help businesses save money by eliminating the need to purchase and maintain hardware and software.
- Scalability: Cloud computing platforms can be easily scaled up or down to meet the changing needs of a business.
- Agility: Cloud computing can help businesses be more agile by allowing them to quickly provision and deploy new IT resources.
- Innovation: Cloud computing can help businesses innovate faster by providing them with access to a wide range of new technologies and services.
AWS Services
AWS offers a wide range of services, including:
- Compute: EC2, Amazon Lightsail, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
- Storage: Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon Glacier
- Databases: Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Aurora
- Networking: Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53
- Analytics: Amazon Redshift, Amazon QuickSight
- Machine learning: Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Polly
- Artificial intelligence: Amazon Lex, Amazon Polly, Amazon Comprehend
How to Use AWS
To use AWS, you will need to create an AWS account. Once you have an account, you can access AWS services through the AWS Management Console or the AWS API. You can also use a variety of third-party tools and software to manage your AWS resources.
AWS Pricing
AWS pricing is based on a pay-as-you-go model. This means that you only pay for the resources that you use. AWS offers a variety of pricing options to fit the needs of different businesses.
Conclusion
AWS is a powerful and versatile cloud computing platform that can help businesses of all sizes save money, become more agile, and innovate faster. If you are looking for a way to improve your IT infrastructure, AWS is a great option to consider.