What is AWS? Why is there so much talk about AWS these days? Before we go further into AWS let’s see what is cloud computing. Explained in simple terms; it is a service that provides you with all resources required for running your application successfully. They charge you minimally for the usage. The concept is simple. You can manage your application and use the hardware that is required for maintaining it from a third-party vendor. You don’t have to spend money on the hardware installation or resources for maintaining it. This will be handled by the cloud computing services. AWS is one such service provided by Amazon. Hence, AWS is known as Amazon Web Services.
Customers from all industries are switching to cloud, so that they can concentrate on their business rather than on the resources required to use them effectively. AWS has proved to be one of the efficient services of cloud computing. With many organisations taking advantages of the benefits, there are even certifications of AWS for different levels. It has become so popular.
Few benefits we can see here are:
Low cost: It is cost effective as many businesses would be able to “pay as you use” which will help them in investing their funds in other areas.
Agility: With the changing market scenarios, many organisations tend to use as per the needs of the market. Sometimes it might be low compared to other times. AWS can be used instantly and we can modify the usage as and when required as the payment is done as per the usage only.
Variety: There are a lot of different options to choose from based on the needs of the business.
Security: Data privacy has been an important factor for all organisations. One cannot develop anything which does not consider the security aspect. AWS has multiple data centers located at many geographical locations and are considered as very secure and reliable to use.
Ease of use: Signing up for AWS is very easy and this reduces the effort required for analyzing complex solutions. Though cloud computing is a complex process, as a user of the services we need not be worried about the same as it is taken care of by the service provider.
Reliability: AWS has planned to minimize the effect of outage by installing different back up servers in different geographical locations. This leads to minimum or no loss to the users and thus is a very big advantage of using AWS. Imagine how much money you would need to invest in maintaining the servers and backup plans.
There are a lot of solutions that AWS provides which includes websites, hosting enterprise IT applications, variety of databases to choose from and also options for data storage and backup plans.
AWS was initially launched in 2006 and have since evolved. Its popularity has grown more recently with different features added almost every day and with the ease of use for different industries. AWS has taken care about major concerns of security, maintainability, robustness and reliability.
AWS is one of the largest cloud providers and there are number of services that they offer on their website. While there is too much information for any new entrant, you have an option to choose an account for free for few days and check on the available services and how it would benefit your business. This exactly helps all new businesses to check out the potential of the services offered by them and decide on which is best for their industry. As they have monthly payment option and payment is based on the usage it makes it a very desirable option for many businesses.
