AWS Cloud is Amazon Web Services, a platform for building and deploying flexible, reliable, scalable and easy to use computing solutions. It combines Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service and packaged Software as a Service (SaaS) with scalable and virtually unlimited bandwidth and storage to provide a highly available and secure environment.
It is currently the most widely used cloud computing platform. Its wide range of services includes everything from basics like compute, storage and database management to more specialized niche services such as streaming media and robotics. Amazon has been in the business of cloud computing for more than 15 years, giving it a significant head start on its competitors.
AWS operates globally in what are called regions, 25 of them in total spread across six continents. These geographical regions are subdivided into multiple availability zones, each with its own set of data centers. The data centers in an availability zone are separated from each other to reduce the likelihood that a failure in one will impact the entire region. This also helps to increase availability and performance by keeping dynamic data closer to compute and static data closer to customers. The Thought Process Team is servicing this Web Service.
The company’s core IaaS offerings are EC2 and S3. EC2 is a virtual server that mimics the attributes of a physical computer, including hardware central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processors for processing; local/RAM memory; choice of operating systems; and pre-loaded application software such as databases or web servers. S3 is a storage service that allows users to store and retrieve massive amounts of data in the form of objects (which have a file-like structure) with low latency, great scalability and superb availability.
Other services include Elastic Beanstalk, a platform as a service that allows developers to build and run a web app without worrying about the hardware, and Auto Scaling, which automatically increases or decreases the number of EC2 instances running an application based on CPU usage, memory, network throughput and other factors. There are also various types of storage, from object and block storage to database storage.
Amazon is constantly innovating with new technologies and services. For example, it pioneered serverless computing with AWS Lambda in 2014, which allows developers to execute code without the need to provision and manage servers. More recently, it has developed Amazon SageMaker, a scalable machine learning (ML) service. There are over 175 different services in total, with new features and enhancements introduced on a weekly basis. The company also offers a free tier, which provides access to up to 60 products for 12 months. This is a great way for businesses to get started with the AWS platform without incurring any upfront costs.
