What Is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Some web solutions require high IT security. Using high-end infrastructures ensures this security and is protected from cyber threats. In the web domain, cloud computing and AWS are two increasingly popular terms. Cloud computing is a model for accessing necessary computing resources such as applications, databases, servers, etc. It is now essential in the professional landscape, particularly in the Machine Learning and Data Science sectors. Amazon Web Services is the official Cloud Computing platform of the very famous company Amazon. It is a platform that offers a wide range of valuable solutions and services.

Table of Contents

Amazon Web Services Or AWS: What Is It?

A subsidiary of e-commerce giant Amazon and a world leader in Cloud Computing, AWS is a leading Cloud service provider. Amazon Web Services has a wide range of services, all accessible via the Internet. With AWS services, users can harness the power of Amazon’s data centers without having to invest in expensive hardware or software. When it comes to Cloud Computing, Amazon Web Services is ahead of its main competitors, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. A few years ago (in 2021 precisely), AWS generated revenue of more than $14.7 billion. At that time, this represented about 13% of Amazon’s net sales.

A Brief History Of AWS

The history of AWS actually begins in the early 2000s. Amazon was then just a simple e-commerce company. The company of the wealthy Jeff Bezos needed help to make a name for itself and find a path to growth. It is in this context that the company created reusable modules for internal development teams. This initiative helped accelerate the creation of new features.

The reusable modules implemented by Amazon are interior services that have quickly grown. Amazon, therefore, deemed it appropriate to develop a new business around these collections of services. Thus, in 2004, the Amazon Web Services Cloud Computing platform was created. Two years later, in 2006, AWS was officially launched and offered three public, pay-as-you-go services. It was from this moment that the foundations of Cloud Computing were laid.

In the years that followed, Amazon Web Services took advantage of almost non-existent competition to win the market. This is a step ahead that allows it to be the undisputed leader in Cloud Computing today. Other companies are coming to compete with Amazon with their services. Microsoft and Google, for example, offer Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, respectively. But Amazon Web Services remains visibly unbeatable.

Some Characteristics Of Amazon Web Services

AWS is a Cloud service provider that stands out from its peers because of its very advantageous features. Here are a few critical points of the characteristics of Amazon Web Services:

A wide range of services
Amazon Web Administrations, as of now, offers in excess of 200 Cloud administrations. These cover a large number of regions.
calculation;
networking;
storage ;
databases;
data analysis;
application development.

AWS even offers services for artificial intelligence.

Flexibility And Scalability

Amazon Web Services services are all designed to be flexible and scalable. This flexibility and scalability allow businesses to meet their specific IT resource needs efficiently. Thanks to AWS, for example, companies can create software and update it several years later, even if resource needs change.

Safety And Reliability

The Amazon Web Services Cloud Computing platform is one of the most reliable and secure on the market. It has a global infrastructure and several top-notch security certifications. So, no matter what website or software you host on AWS, you can rest assured that all data is secure.

Excellent Value

The services offered by Amazon Web Services are at prices that are relatively accessible to everyone. In fact, the pricing models are in use. In other words, companies only pay for the resources they use. In summary, AWS is a powerful and flexible cloud computing solution that can help businesses improve agility and drive innovation. It is also a solution that makes it possible to reduce the costs of specific operations that are usually expensive in business.

Who Uses Amazon Web Services And Why?

Statistically, one in three websites in the world uses AWS. The Amazon Web Services platform now has more than one million active users. The more significant part of them are small and medium-sized organizations. Most of them are small and medium-sized businesses. But Amazon Web Services has also already attracted large companies such as:

Twitch;
Netflix;
Reddit;
Hulu;
Slack, etc.

Big tech names make up about 10% of its AWS user base. Furthermore, AWS customers include technology giants, banks, audiovisual networks, food producers, etc. There are even governments there. Netflix spends an average of $20 million per month on AWS services. Facebook, LinkedIn, and the Twitch platform each invest more than $10 million per month in AWS services. Businesses typically use AWS to:

host their websites;
develop software in SaaS mode;
develop new software;
distribute content;
Share multimedia content;
store data;
analyze data;
use machine learning.

In summary, Amazon Web Services is a platform that adapts to the needs of all types of businesses, small or large. Its numerous services, combined with its excellent scalability, make it an essential choice for any company wishing to move to the cloud.

Description Of Some Different Services Offered By Amazon Web Services

The AWS Cloud Computing platform offers its users a very varied range of services for sophisticated applications. Grouped into several categories, these services make it possible to create applications that are as complex as they are efficient while benefiting from great flexibility and increased reliability. Below are some examples of service categories available on Amazon Web Services.

Storage

With Amazon Web Services, you can store objects, which are self-contained containers that contain information and procedures that can be manipulated and executed by programs, which means that the Amazon Web Services platform is ideal for object-oriented programming. In addition, AWS is also used to save databases, backup and restoration solutions, etc.

Computing, Networking, And Data Analysis

AWS guarantees computing power on demand. It is also a platform that offers container services, network management, etc. Additionally, Amazon Web Services offers business intelligence and data warehousing tools. These allow the data to be analyzed. AWS also provides machine learning services. Artificial intelligence is, therefore, one of the areas where the Amazon Web Services platform excels.

Development And DevOps

Professional developers usually look for optimal solutions to create quality apps and websites quickly. In web agencies, in particular, professionals often need simple solutions to collaborate efficiently. AWS can be helpful in this regard. Indeed, the platform offers collaboration tools that are relatively easy to use. AWS is also excellent for versioning and automated deployment of software solutions.

Security And Compliance With Standards

Amazon engineers are well aware of the importance of security on the Internet. They have, therefore, developed authentication and authorization services that guarantee excellent security. In addition to this, Amazon Web Services offers specific data protection, monitoring, and threat analysis services. In summary, on AWS, there is a whole arsenal of highly effective security services.

Entertainment And Media

Many companies in the media and entertainment industry now use AWS. Netflix, for example, is one of the companies that have adopted this Cloud Computing platform. Amazon Web Services also provides on-demand computing services to media companies. These services allow them to perform 3D graphics rendering, production (or post-production) tasks, as well as special effects.

Database Storage And Management With Amazon Web Services

To store your data, AWS explicitly offers its Amazon Simple Storage (S3) service. When it comes to data storage, this service is a solution of choice. It allows you to store and retrieve any amount of data from any website. Here are some essential benefits of the S3 service:

Scalability;
Sustainability ;
Storage class system.

The durability and continuous availability of the Amazon Simple Storage (S3) service ensures data security. Scalability increases storage resources as needed. The storage class system proposed by AWS aims to optimize costs based on the frequency of access to information. Beyond data storage, Amazon Simple Storage also allows you to backup and restore data. The service facilitates software delivery, archiving, website hosting, and more.

Big Data And Artificial Intelligence With AWS

Amazon Web Services is also an ideal Cloud Computing platform for Big Data and artificial intelligence. Many experts mainly trust AWS to harness the power of AI and Big Data. Amazon Web Services offers its users access to powerful servers to process large volumes of data. These servers are powerful enough to perform complex machine-learning tasks.

Additionally, users have a wide range of services dedicated to each stage of the Big Data and AI lifecycle. These services will also be available during the data processing and analysis phases. To go further, AWS also leverages Big Data and AI to create and deploy machine learning models. There are several examples of Amazon Web Services for AI and Big Data. Among these, we can cite

Elastic MapReduce (EMR) (a Hadoop framework for large-scale data processing);
Amazon Lex (a service for creating text chatbots and voice recognition);
Kinesis (a suite of software used to process and analyze streaming data);
Amazon Athena (an SQL query service for data backed up to Amazon S3);
Amazon AI (suite of software and services for developing and deploying artificial intelligence applications); etc.

AWS And Virtual Machines

The Amazon Web Services platform offers experts the ability to create virtual machines via the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. This AWS service allows you to quickly launch as many virtual servers as you want without necessarily having to invest in computer hardware. With Elastic Compute Cloud, a business no longer needs to have multiple physical servers. This service also allows you to configure a security and networking infrastructure for virtual machines in just a few clicks.

Additionally, AWS’s EC2 service offers a wide range of instances (virtual machines) with varying CPU, capacity, and storage memory configurations. So, you can choose the instance that suits you best. The Elastic Compute Cloud EC2 service also provides developers with various preconfigured templates commonly called Machine Images. AMIs (Machine Images) are packages that contain all the essential elements for quickly and easily launching a virtual server. You can create virtual private networks (VPCs) on Amazon Web Services.

You can use these isolated networks to create a secure environment for your applications and data. In summary, Elastic Compute Cloud is a flexible and robust solution that you can use to create and manage virtual machines in the cloud. EC2 is an ideal solution for any company wishing to develop and deploy applications quickly and efficiently.

Amazon Web Services And Software Development

The AWS platform offers developers a number of tools intended to simplify software development in the cloud. They can be grouped into three main categories:

Command line interfaces;
Development and testing tools;
API and media management tools.

In the first category (command line interfaces), two significant services particularly stand out. These are AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) and AWS Tools for PowerShell. The first (AWS CLI) is Amazon’s proprietary code interface. It allows you to interact with other AWS services from a simple terminal.

AWS Tools for PowerShell will enable you to manage AWS services from a Windows environment. Among the development and testing tools that Amazon Web Services offers, there are, for example, the AWS Serverless Application Model and the AWS SDK. The AWS SDK makes it easy to integrate Amazon cloud services into your applications. Finally, to manage APIs and media, Amazon Web Services provides API Gateway, Elastic Transcoder, and other valuable services.