What Is AWS (Amazon Web Services): All You Need To Know

The most popular cloud service provider in the industry is Amazon Web Services, which provides over 170 AWS services to developers worldwide so they can use them whenever they need to from any location. This post will dive deep into the definition, pros, and cons, as well as the usage of AWS.

Before studying AWS, let us walk you through the definition of cloud computing first. In short, cloud computing is when you store and access data over the internet. It includes many online services such as servers, databases, and user software. With cloud computing, no hard disk is required, and all the data can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

What Is AWS?

AWS stands for Amazon Web Service, which is a comprehensive and cost-effective cloud computing platform provided by Amazon. It provides a combination of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS for organizations and enterprises to implement in up to 190 countries worldwide. AWS services can also provide easy-to-use tools such as compute power, database storage, and content delivery services.

History of AWS

AWS cloud products were launched in 2006 to handle online retail operations for Amazon.com. AWS was one of the pioneers in inventing a pay-as-you-go cloud computing model that allows users to store and proceed with payments when needed.

Some milestones of this awesome platform are: 

• 2002 – Amazon.com launched AWS services 
• 2006 – AWS cloud products were introduced to the world
• 2012 – First customer event of AWS
• 2015 – Achieved $4.6 billion in revenue 
• 2016 – Revenue exceeded the $10 billion target
• 2016 – Introduced AWS snowball and AWS Snowmobile 
• 2019 – Released about 100 cloud services in total

Top Companies That Use AWS

Numerous businesses use AWS to create, distribute, and host applications, including tech behemoths, startups, governments, food producers, and retail businesses. There are more than one million active AWS users, according to Amazon. Some businesses that utilize AWS are Airbnb, Netflix, Johnson & Johnson, Adobe, Hitachi, etc. 

Applications of AWS Services

Website storage and backup and social media applications are some of the most important usages of AWS. The top applications of AWS are listed below:

1. Storage and Backup

Storage ability is the top reason why businesses choose AWS for their website. It provides multiple easy-to-use storage options and allows users to index files and run vital business functions.

2. Websites

Similar to web applications, businesses can host their website on AWS.

3. Gaming

AWS can provide a huge amount of computing power to run gaming applications, which helps users to have a smooth gaming experience.

4. Mobile, Web, and Social Applications

The top feature that makes AWS stand out from cloud services is its ability to operate and scale mobile applications, e-commerce, and SaaS application. API-driven code on AWS allows businesses to build and scale applications without any OS and other systems.

5. Big Data Management and Analytics (Application)

• Elastic Map from Amazon reduced the use of the Hadoop framework to process big volumes of data.
• To examine and analyze the streaming data, use Amazon Kinesis.
• To manage, extract, transform, and load jobs, use AWS Glue.
• With the free utility Elastic-search, Amazon Elastic-search Service enables a team to perform log analysis and tool monitoring.
• Data querying via Amazon Athena.
• To visualize data, use Amazon QuickSight.

6. Artificial Intelligence

• Voice and text chatbot technology is available from Amazon Lex.
• Text-to-speech applications like Alexa Voice Services and Echo devices can be translated using Amazon Polly.
• Utilizing Amazon Rekognition to examine the face and picture

7. Messages and Notifications

• Using Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) for core or business communications is beneficial.
• IT specialists and marketers can use Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) to receive or send emails.
• To enable organizations to subscribe to or publish messages to end users, developers can use Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS).

8. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

Amazon Sumerien’s service allows users to apply AR and VR applications to 3D web applications, Marketing, E-commerce, Online education, and so on.

9. Game Development

Gaming companies that offer back-end development services, analytics, and other development tools prefer to use AWS as it provides a comprehensive and strong cloud computing service. It also lets developers store game data and analyze game performance to develop games accordingly.

10. Internet of Things

• In addition to providing a back-end platform for managing IoT devices, the AWS IoT service also allows for data ingestion to database services and AWS storage.
• Limited IoT functionality is provided to hardware by the AWS IoT Button.
• For the installation of IoT devices, AWS Greengrass provides AWS computing.

Advantages and Disadvantages of AWS

The 7 Main AWS Services

For cloud applications, Amazon offers a wide range of services. Here are the top AWS ecosystem services, along with a quick explanation of how developers use them.

1. Compute Service

This service aims to assist developers in building, testing, and deploying applications within the cloud platform.

AWS EC2: This service lets users find and rent virtual machines and scale when required.

Developers can choose from various instance types, allowing them to choose the CPU, memory, storage, and networking capabilities necessary for their applications.

AWS Lambda: Among the serverless computing, the option is AWS Lambda. It is also in charge of running application code.

It enables you to run an application without having to deal with managing servers.

2. Storage

To archive data, WS offers a web data storage service. Additionally, disaster data recovery with excellent durability is a major benefit.

Amazon S3: Amazon S3 is an open cloud-based storage service created for online data storage.

It also provides storage on a web-based services interface and focuses on simple developers’ computing tasks.

Amazon EBS: Amazon offers a huge storage capacity for persistent data. EBS is usually used for primary data storage such as database, block-level, and file storage.

3. Database

AWS database service allows business users a secure, scalable, and cost-saving database instance in the cloud.

DynamoDB: offers quick and effective performance, and it causes no issues with scalability.

Its instant built-in security, backup, and restore features can be accessed from anywhere.

RDS: It is a managed distributed relational database cloud service that aids programmers in easily managing and scalability a database.

We created it to make it easier for developers to access relational databases when setting it up, running it, and scaling it.

4. Networking and Delivery of Content

AWS’s highly secure cloud infrastructure keeps your business data safe and connects your physical network with your private VN at a high-speed transfer.

VPC

• It allows you to upload AWS resources to a private virtual cloud.
• With AWS, you can control your cloud network environment completely, including your IP address range, root table configuration, network gateway, and subnets.
• You can use both IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously for your website in a highly secure environment.

Route 53

• This web service, which has a highly available DNS, allows you to route software by converting a text into an IP address.
• Developers use it as a cost-saving option to route end users to cloud applications.

5. Developer Tools

Application source code can be deployed and run automatically by AWS. The server and instances are also uploaded to the workload.

CodeStar is a service that allows users to manage application development in a single place. With the assistance of this service, developers can easily build and deploy applications on AWS.

Code Build: As a result, controlling physical servers is no longer a chore, and continuous scaling makes it easier for developers to write and test code.

Simply put, it compiles your code, runs unit tests, and produces deployable output artifacts.

6. Security, Identity & Compliance

By granting a limited amount of access to a select group of users, it aids in maintaining a secure environment for your AWS resources.

IAM: IAM stands for Identity Access Management and is a framework that aids in maintaining access to AWS services in a secure way. The service grants you Secure access to AWS services powered by the AWS EC2 application and shared access to your AWS account.

KMS: It allows users to generate and control the encryption keys that are employed to encrypt data. The service offers a key generation technique that simplifies using digital signatures in your apps.

7. Management Tools

Businesses can minimize costs, reduce risks, and automate all the resources that run efficiently on the AWS infrastructure.

Cloud Watch: It is a monitoring tool for both customer applications and AWS platform resources. Thanks to the service, you may access all of your operational data in the form of logs from a single interface.

Cloud Formation: Using this service, you can monitor all of your AWS resources in one location, allowing you to spend more time developing apps and administering them less. Developers can use a text file or a template to control their cloud architecture.

Conclusion

In this introductory tutorial on “what is AWS,” we covered the definition of cloud computing, the background of AWS, and a thorough overview of all of its services. If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to let us know.