AWS stands for Amazon Web Services. It is a cloud computing platform provided by Amazon, that offers a wide range of on-demand computational services that help businesses and individuals in building and managing applications, store data, and scale their IT infrastructure efficiently. AWS allows its user to choose products from its vast variety of services and use it on-demand with no upfront payment for most of the services. AWS offers around 200 featured Services. 
Most of the services in AWS do not require an upfront payment. You have to pay only for what you use and how long you use it. The pay-as-you-go pricing model is one of the most significant features of AWS. It says the same price for the services you are using.
For example, you want to do a computational task of '5x' capacity. You can either use an 'x' capacity machine to do your work in 5 units of time or run five 'x' capacity machines to work for one unit of time. Your expense is the same. This billing model allows users to adapt their application architecture to best suit their business needs and budget.
Why Organizations Use AWS
Organizations use AWS for several important reasons that make it a top choice for many businesses:
Cost Effective: AWS uses a pay-as-you-go system, which means businesses only pay for the services they use. This helps them save money by not having to buy expensive hardware or worry about maintenance costs.
Scalable: AWS allows businesses to easily adjust their services based on their needs. If they needs more resources, AWS can quickly provide them.
Flexible and Innovative: AWS provides a wide range of services, allowing businesses to create custom solutions. This flexibility helps them try new ideas and build different types of applications without worrying about limits.
Global Availability: AWS has data centers around the world. This means that businesses can serve their customers faster by hosting their service which is nearby to them, which improves performance.
Security: AWS offers strong security features, keeping data safe. They follow strict rules and regulations to make sure information is protected, which is important for businesses that handles sensitive data.
Easy to Manage: AWS has tools that makes cloud services easier to manage. For example, Businesses can monitor their systems, manage access, and set up automatic backups, all through simple tools.
Reliable: AWS is known for being reliable, with services that are designed to work smoothly even if something goes wrong. This means businesses can count on AWS to keep their applications running without interruptions.
History of AWS
AWS was launched back in 2002 where it provided simple cloud services and tools. Later that year AWS released its vision for AWS as a fully automated computational resource providing service. In the year 2004, AWS launched SQS (Simple queue service) one of the first of its services which were closely followed by the release of AWS-Compute (EC-2) in the year 2006. This marked the beginning of the AWS cloud computing era.
As of now AWS spans across over 30 geographical regions and over 90 Availability zones. As of Q-4 2019, AWS held the largest market share (33 percent) of the worldwide cloud services beat the second (Microsoft Azure) by 15 percent. By the beginning of 2020 AWS comprised of over 212 different services.
How Does AWS Work?
- Rent Computer Power:
- EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud): Think of this as renting virtual computers. You can use these computers to run your apps and websites.
- Store Data:
- S3 (Simple Storage Service): This is like a giant online hard drive where you can store all your files, photos, and videos.
- Run Applications Easily:
- Elastic Beanstalk: A tool that makes it super easy to deploy and manage your apps without worrying about the details of the servers.
- Scale Up or Down:
- Auto Scaling: Automatically adds more computers when your app gets busy and removes them when it’s quiet, so you only pay for what you need.
- Global Reach:
- Regions and Availability Zones: AWS has data centers all over the world. You can store your data close to where your users are, which makes your app faster and more reliable.
- Keep Your Data Safe:
- Manage Easily:
- CloudWatch: Lets you monitor your apps and get alerts when things go wrong.
- CloudFormation: Helps you set up your services with simple templates, like building with Lego blocks.
- Pay Only for What You Use:
- Pay-as-you-go: You only pay for the computer power, storage, and services you actually use. No need to buy expensive hardware.
Also Read: Introduction to AWS
AWS Service Categories
AWS Offers a wide range of services that are categorized into different groups based on their functionalities. Understanding these categories helps you to choose the right service for your needs.
- Compute:
- This category provides services to run applications on virtual machines (like computers in the cloud).
- Knowing about compute services helps you pick the right power for your apps, such as EC2 for virtual computers or Lambda for running code without managing servers..
- Storage:
- This is a set of different kind of storage services. Each consisting its own sets of features like Simple Storage Service.
- Understanding storage services helps you choose the best way to store your data, whether it's for everyday use or long-term backups.
- Database:
- These services provide different kinds of amazon managed databases like RDS for traditional databases and DynamoDB for fast NoSQL databases.
- Databases helps you store, manage, and access your data efficiently..
- Networking and Content Delivery:
- AWS helps you set up and manage your networks and deliver content quickly around the world using services like VPC and CloudFront.
- Understanding the concept of these services will help you to set up a secure and fast network for your app
- Developer Tools:
- AWS has tools like CodeCommit and CodePipeline to help developers write, test, and deploy applications easily.
- If you're a developer, learning about these tools will make it easier to work on your code and get app live faster.
- Cloud Enablement:
- These are the on-demand expert help on AWS solutions and services.
- Robotics:
- Allows users to develop, simulate and deploy intelligent robotics applications.
- Blockchain:
- Provides an AWS-managed blockchain service for blockchain based applications.
- Satellite:
- It comprises of only one service as of now: AWS Ground Station. AWS Ground station is a single hub for satellite communications, data-processing and analytics.
- Management and Governance:
- These services manage other services and can run analysis on data generated by services on AWS.
- Media Services:
- These services augment video production, analysis and delivery.
- Machine Learning:
- AWS provides services like SageMaker and Rekognition to build and use machine learning models (AI).
- If you're working with AI or analyzing data, these services can help you create smart systems that make decisions automatically.
- Analytics:
- AWS offers tools to analyze large amounts of data, like Athena and Redshift.
- If you have a lot of data and want to find useful insights, learning about analytics services will help you do that.
- Security, Identity, & Compliance:
- Services like IAM help you control who can access your data and protect your apps from security threats.
- Security is important for keeping your data safe, and understanding these tools will help you protect your apps and data from unauthorized access.
- AWS Cost Management:
- Shows current cost of service and predicts costs based on current usage.
- Business Applications:
- AWS offers tools like WorkMail and Alexa for Business to help businesses with email, meetings, and communication.
- If you need tools to improve your business's productivity, this category has services that can help.
- End User Computing:
- Assist workforce management for security sensitive companies.
- Internet of Things:
- AWS helps you build applications that connect and manage smart devices.
- If you work with connected devices (like smart home products or sensors), these services help you manage and control them.
AWS Terminology
Following are some AWS-related terms that you should know:
- Regions: These are geographical locations spread all across the world that hold one or more data-centers.
- Availability Zones: Each AWS data-center is called an Availability Zone.
- Local Zones: These are extensions of AWS regions closer to the users. This is a fairly new service and is not yet available in all of the Regions.
- Vertical Scaling: Increasing/Decreasing the instance features like RAM, processing power to scale up/down the application is known as vertical scaling.
- Horizontal Scaling: Increasing/Decreasing the number of instances to scale up/down the application is known as vertical scaling.
Features of AWS
- Geographical Locations: Despite starting late and slow in the cloud journey, AWS has grown to be the worldwide leader. The Platform offers unparalleled availability in 24 geographical regions.
- Multi region backups: AWS offers various backup methods which are implemented in a decentralized nature and global reach of AWS makes it easy and affordable to store critical information in multiple geographic locations.
- Streamlined Disaster Recovery: Downtime and data loss can be extremely critical for some businesses and may be tolerable for some. Or you may want some of your data to be highly secure and some of your data to be in a cheaper less secure storage. Whatever your needs be AWS has a right plan for cheap and efficient storage of data.
- Scalability: AWS allows dynamic scaling of databases and servers. This means that applications do not have to run on 100% capacity and use lots of resources during off-hours.
- Pay-As-You-Go Pricing: One of the most lucrative features of AWS is its pricing model. The prices are not only reasonable but you only pay for what you use and for however long you use the said resource.
- Security: AWS offers the same level of world-class security to all of its client spectra that ranges from humongous banks and enterprises to small websites. The company’s data centers maintain the highest security standards and keep updating the security features with the latest security patches.
Advantages of AWS
- Users do not have to buy expensive equipment like servers and storage drives. AWS Provides infrastructure for all these use cases.
- Users do not have to worry about maintaining the physical and software security of their infrastructure. All these overheads are taken care of by AWS. Security of cloud is the responsibility of AWS but Security in cloud is the responsibility of customers.
- Dynamic Scalability (ability to increase server capacity during high work hours) provides a cheap and efficient means to host durable and robust applications.
- AWS operates in multiple regions around the world, allowing businesses to deploy their applications closer to their customers, reducing latency and improving performance.
- AWS offers easy signup and a simple console UI to its users.
- AWS has a highly skilled support team that can help you with your issues on AWS.
- AWS offers a range of automation tools, such as AWS CloudFormation and AWS Lambda, which can help automate common infrastructure tasks, reducing manual effort and improving efficiency.
- AWS continuously adds more services, features and security updates to their infrastructure.
- Stop guessing the capacity. As many AWS storage services (S3 and Glacier) offer a virtually unlimited storage capacity.
- AWS is constantly innovating and introducing new services and features, enabling businesses to stay up to date with the latest technology trends and innovations.
Limitations of AWS
- AWS offers over 200 services. The architecture of applications can get really complicated really fast.
- It is sometimes difficult to choose the best service out of many options. This may cause some wastage of money.
- AWS solutions architects are highly paid individuals and as a business owner you may need to employ one or more of such individuals.
- AWS is continuously growing according to the needs of their customers. There may be some use case you want that AWS doesn't yet offer. Raising feature requests for such use cases is possible, but you may have to wait until that feature is officially released.
- While AWS offers a pay-as-you-go model, the costs can add up quickly, and it can be challenging to estimate expenses accurately.
- Like any other cloud computing platform, AWS can experience service disruptions, which can impact businesses that rely on it.
- Although AWS provides a robust security infrastructure, it is the user's responsibility to ensure that their applications are secure.
- AWS may not integrate seamlessly with all existing systems and may require additional configuration or custom development work.
- AWS provides support services, but users may find it challenging to get timely and helpful assistance in some cases.
AWS pricing models, competition and customers
AWS Pricing Models:
- Pay-as-You-Go: Pay only for the resources you use without upfront commitments.
- Reserved Instances: Commit to using specific services for a one- or three-year term to receive a discount.
- Spot Instances: Bid on unused AWS capacity at reduced prices, suitable for flexible, interruption-tolerant workloads.
- Savings Plans: Commit to a consistent amount of usage over one or three years for lower costs.
- Free Tier: Access a limited amount of AWS services for free, useful for testing and learning.
Competition:
Customers:
- Netflix: Uses AWS for scalable streaming services and content delivery.
- Airbnb: Relies on AWS for hosting and scaling its online marketplace.
- Spotify: Employs AWS for music streaming and data analysis.
- Unilever: Utilizes AWS for global IT infrastructure and innovation.
- NASA: Leverages AWS for processing and storing large volumes of space data.
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