What are Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Being the most comprehensive and highly used cloud platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 fully-featured services from data centers worldwide. At present, many customers, top-growing startups, big enterprises, and leading government agencies have started using AWS in order for lowering costs so that they can become more agile, and experience faster innovation.

But, this is just a start! In this blog, we will learn about the core areas of AWS including its services, solutions, and what makes it a unique cloud platform. So, let’s start our journey for Amazon Web Services.

What are Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Amazon Web Service (AWS) tends to have the most extensive global cloud infrastructure. Putting other cloud providers on the side, AWS offers Regions with multiple Availability Zones connected by low latency, high throughput, and highly redundant networking. This has over 80 Availability Zones within 25 geographic regions globally and other 18 Zones are coming. With this, it offers many services that are providing benefits to top organizations, businesses, and individuals. 

For a better understanding of the value of AWS, below there are some points listed explaining the features of Amazon web services.

Features:

• Firstly, AWS offers more services, and features than any other cloud provider. This includes infrastructure technologies like compute, storage, and database. And, top technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things. Thus, making it faster, easier, and more cost-effective.
• Secondly, AWS has the largest community consisting of many active customers and partners worldwide. This includes customers of every industry, startups, enterprises, and public sector organizations. They all are running use cases on AWS.
• Thirdly, it is designed in a flexible and secure way making it easier to upload files on the cloud without any worry. Moreover, AWS core infrastructure is developed for satisfying the security requirements for the military, global banks, and other high-sensitivity organizations. Further, this is backed by a deep set of cloud security tools, governance services, and support of 90 security standards.
• Next, in AWS, you get to experience the power of the latest technologies for experimenting and innovating more quickly. Moreover, AWS always keep on accelerating new innovation to stay up to date with the latest technologies that can be used for transforming your business. 

You must know that, in 2014, AWS introduced the serverless computing space with the launch of AWS Lambda. This allowed developers for running their code without provisioning or managing servers. And AWS made Amazon SageMaker, a machine learning service used for empowering developers and scientists for using machine learning.

• Lastly, AWS provides maturity, reliability, security, and performance that you can rely upon for your most important applications. However, for over 15 years, AWS has been delivering cloud services to millions of customers globally, running a wide variety of use cases. 

Moving on to the next section, that is AWS featured services.

AWS Featured Services

There are various services offered by AWS that can you can check on the AWS main page. Out of which, there are some top featured services which are in trend in the market. Let’s learn about those services.

1. Amazon EC2

• Amazon EC2 is a web service for providing secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. 
• Secondly, this makes web-scale cloud computing easier for developers. This service provides access to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. 
• Thirdly, this service provides you control of your computing resources and access for running on Amazon’s proven computing environment.
• Next, this provides compute platform with a choice of processor, storage, networking, operating system, and purchase model. 
• Lastly, Amazon EC2 comes with the most powerful GPU instances for machine learning training and graphics workloads with the lowest cost-per-inference instances in the cloud.

2. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

• Amazon S3 is a type of object storage service used for providing industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. That is to say, all type of customers and industries can use it for storing and protecting data for a range of use cases. This can be data lakes, websites, mobile applications, backup and restore, archive, enterprise applications, and IoT devices.
• Secondly, this provides simple management features for organizing your data and configuring finely-tuned access controls for meeting specific business, organizational, and compliance requirements. 
• Lastly, it provides a high level of durability, and stores data for millions of applications for companies globally.

3. Amazon Aurora

• Amazon Aurora refers to a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database designed for the cloud. This combines together the performance and availability of traditional enterprise databases with the cost-effectiveness of open source databases.
• Secondly, this is much faster than the standard MySQL databases and standard PostgreSQL databases.
• Thirdly, this provides the security, availability, and reliability of commercial databases at an efficient cost. 
• Next, it automates time-consuming administration tasks like hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups.
• Amazon Aurora features a fault-tolerant, self-healing, and distributed storage system for auto-scaling up to 128TB per database instance. 
• Lastly, it delivers high performance and availability with up to, 
  • 15 low-latency read replicas
  • point-in-time recovery
  • continuous backup to Amazon S3
  • replication across three Availability Zones (AZs).

4. Amazon DynamoDB

• Amazon DynamoDB refers to the document database used for delivering single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. 
• Secondly, it is a managed, multi-region, multi-active, durable database with built-in,
  • Security
  • backup and restore
  • in-memory caching for internet-scale applications. 
• Thirdly, the DynamoDB has the ability to handle more than 10 trillion requests per day and can support peaks of more than 20 million requests per second.
• Lastly, it is chosen by hundreds of thousands of AWS customers as their key-value and document database for mobile, web, gaming, ad tech, IoT, and other applications that require low-latency data access at any scale.

5. Amazon RDS

• Amazon RDS provides a simple way for setting up, operating, and scaling a relational database in the cloud. 
• Secondly, it has the ability to provide cost-efficient and resizable capacity while performing time-consuming administration tasks like hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups. 
• Thirdly, it let’s you focus on providing fast performance, high availability, security, and compatibility they need rather than consuming time on applications.
• Next, Amazon RDS is available on various database instance types. Further, this provides six familiar database engines to choose from. This include:
  • Amazon Aurora
  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
  • MariaDB
  • Oracle Database
  • SQL Server. 
• Lastly, you can use the AWS Database Migration Service for migrating or replicating your existing databases to Amazon RDS.

6. AWS Lambda

• AWS Lambda refers to a serverless compute service used for running code without:
  • provisioning or managing servers
  • creating workload-aware cluster scaling logic
  • maintaining event integrations
  • managing runtimes. 
• Secondly, this lets you run code for virtually any type of application or backend service. Just upload your code as a ZIP file or container image, and Lambda automatically allocates compute execution power and runs your code depending on the incoming request or event, for any scale of traffic. 
• Thirdly, here, you can set up your code for automatically triggering from over 200 AWS services and SaaS applications or call it directly from any web or mobile app. 
• Lastly, you can write Lambda functions in your favorite language and use both serverless and container tools like AWS SAM or Docker CLI for building, testing, and deploying your functions.

7. Amazon VPC

• Amazon VPC is a service used for launching AWS resources in a logically isolated virtual network that you define. 
• Secondly, in this, you have full control across virtual networking environment, including:
  • selection of your own IP address range
  • creation of subnets
  • configuration of route tables and network gateways. 
• Thirdly, this lets you use both IPv4 and IPv6 for most resources in your virtual private cloud for helping to secure and provide easy access to resources and applications.
• Next, this service makes it easy for customizing your VPC’s network configuration. Moreover, you can create a public-facing subnet for your web servers that have access to the internet. And, it also lets you place your backend systems like databases or application servers, in a private-facing subnet with no internet access. 
• Lastly, you can use multiple layers of security, including security groups and network access control lists for helping control access to Amazon EC2 instances in each subnet.

8. Amazon Lightsail

• Lightsail is good for simpler workloads, quick deployments, and getting started on AWS. 
• Secondly, it is built for helping you start small, and then scale as you grow. Moreover, using this you can easily deploy a web application with a few clicks. And, further, for getting web applications online it offers pre-configured development stacks like LAMP, Nginx, MEAN, and Node.js.
• Thirdly, this lets you create a quick website including customizing/creating a blog, e-commerce, or personal website with Lightsail’s pre-configured applications like WordPress, Magento, Plesk, and Joomla.
• Lastly, Lightsail helps you in launching line-of-business software. This can be file storage and sharing, backups, financial and accounting software, and more.

9. Amazon SageMaker

• Amazon SageMaker helps data scientists and developers for preparing, building, training, and deploying high-quality machine learning (ML) models by bringing together a broad set of capabilities purpose-built for ML.
• Secondly, using this, you can boost your productivity. That is to say, it offers a fully integrated development environment built specifically for ML that brings everything required for ML under one unified, visual user interface.
• Thirdly, using Amazon SageMaker’s integrated capabilities for ML development allows you to eliminate months of writing custom integration code, and ultimately reduce cost.
• Lastly, Amazon SageMaker is designed on Amazon’s two decades of experience developing real-world machine learning applications, including product recommendations, personalization, intelligent shopping, robotics, and voice-assisted devices.

Above we have understood about the AWS overview and its featured servces. Now, we will be learning about the AWS Solution library.

Exploring the AWS Solutions Library

The AWS Solutions Library offers a collection of cloud-based solutions for technical and business problems, examined by AWS. However, you can use patterns from AWS Solutions Constructs for building your own well-architected application. Here you can,

• Firstly, explore the collection of AWS Solutions Reference Architectures as a reference for your project
• Secondly, browse the portfolio of AWS Solutions Implementations for applications for automatically deploying directly into your AWS account,
• Lastly, choose an AWS Solutions Consulting Offer for helping from an AWS Partner with deploying, integrating, and managing a Solution.

1. AWS Solutions Reference Architectures

This refers to a collection of architecture diagrams, developed by AWS. They provide guidance for dozens of applications including other instructions for replicating the workload in your AWS account.

• Distributed Load Testing on AWS
  • This is for helping you in automating the testing of software applications at scale and at load for identifying blocks before their release.
• Amazon WorkSpaces Cost Optimizer
  • This is for helping you in analyzing your Amazon WorkSpaces usage data. Then, for automatically converting the WorkSpace to cost-effective billing option.
• Build your own Anomaly Detection ML Pipeline
  • This end-to-end ML pipeline is for detecting exception by:
    • Firstly, ingesting real-time
    • Secondly, streaming data from different network edge field devices
    • Thirdly, performing transformation jobs for continuously running daily predictions/inferences
    • Lastly, retraining the ML models depending on the incoming newer time series data on a daily basis.

2. AWS Solutions Constructs

AWS Solutions Constructs have examined architecture patterns that can be easily assembled for creating a production-ready workload. They are designed and maintained by AWS, using best practices by the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

• AWS Lambda to AWS Secrets Manager
  • This pattern is for deploying a Lambda function and Secrets Manager secret with the least privileged permissions.
• AWS Lambda to Amazon SageMaker
  • This pattern is for deploying a Lambda function with permissions to access a SageMaker Endpoint.

3. AWS Solutions Implementations

AWS Solutions Implementations is for solving common problems and building faster using the AWS platform. All AWS Solutions Implementations are examined by AWS architects and are built to be operationally effective, reliable, secure, and cost-effective.

• AWS Edit in the Cloud
  • This is for building a virtual editing environment on AWS for collaborating with your editors and creative professionals.
• Amazon WorkSpaces Cost Optimizer
  • This is for deploying a solution that automatically converts Amazon WorkSpaces to the most cost-effective billing model based on a user’s individual usage.
• Cognito User Profiles Export Reference Architecture
  • This is for deploying a solution used for providing a framework for exporting user-profiles and group information from a user pool. Further, this allows users for focusing on extending this solution’s functionality.

4. AWS Solutions Consulting Offers

AWS Solutions Consulting Offers are examined solutions to common business and technical problems via consulting engagements provided by AWS Partners.However, all Consulting Offers offer customers up-front with a list of:

• Firstly, what will be delivered by the consulting engagement
• Secondly, the requirements of the customer for participating in the engagement
• Lastly, the architecture solution that will be deploying into the customers’ account.

Moving on, in the next section, we will be exploring various industry areas where AWS is used.

AWS Cloud Solutions by the Industry

AWS offers a comprehensive suite of services and solutions for running scalable applications for achieving better business outcomes. However, running applications in the AWS Cloud can help you in:

• Firstly, moving faster
• Secondly, operating more securely
• Lastly, saving substantial costs. 

Let’s know about some of the areas where AWS is used.

Advertising & Marketing

Using highly scalable, elastic, and low-cost solutions for driving your advertising and marketing business to build on.

Automotive

Building intelligent connected experiences and accelerating time to market for every touchpoint of the customer journey.

Consumer Packaged Goods

Solutions for enabling the CPG industry for transforming manufacturing, optimizing the end-to-end supply chain, and driving more profitable brand engagements.

Education

Solutions for helping facilitate teaching, learning, student engagement, and better learning outcomes.

Energy

Solutions for revamping legacy operations and accelerating the development of new and innovative renewable energy business models.

Financial Services

Developing secure and innovative solutions for increasing customer and shareholder value.

Gaming

Services for enabling game development, across all genres and platforms, from AAA games to small independent studios.

Government

Services built for helping government agencies modernizing, meeting mandates, reducing costs, driving efficiencies and delivering mission outcomes.

Healthcare & Life Sciences

This provides solutions for:

• increasing the speed of innovation
• data lifecycle management
• improving security and compliance.

Manufacturing

Developing smart, connected products and services and drive efficiencies throughout your operations.

Media & Entertainment

Solutions for processing, storing, delivering, and analyzing all of your video and media content.

Travel and Hospitality

Services for helping in travelling and hospitality companies gaining a competitive edge by enhancing customer experiences and operational efficiency.

AWS Top Customers

AWS has created a trust among millions of customers of all types. Some of them include:

AWS Remote Work Solutions

AWS provides solutions for remote employees, contact center agents, and creative professionals. However, organizations increasingly require options for enabling employees to work from any location while remaining secure and productive. For this, AWS cloud provides a secure, and cost-effective way for enabling remote work for any general employee.

Further, AWS Remote Work solutions help in onboarding tens of thousands of employees in hours and days. And, there is a need to over-invest in resources upfront for handling future peak levels of business activity. This comes with pay-as-you-go pricing options.

Remote Employees

• AWS solutions for remote workers help companies in onboarding new employees remotely. Thus, providing secure access to their desktop from anywhere, ensure all company content remains securely in the cloud with Amazon WorkSpaces.

Remote Contact Center Agents

• Amazon Connect enables you to have a complete operational contact center. This can operate virtually from anywhere. Moreover, you can set up an Amazon Connect contact center in minutes and immediately start taking high-quality audio calls. 

Remote Creative Professionals

• The AWS remote creative professional solution enables artists, animators, and editors with high-spec requirements for building their own cloud-based virtual workstations and work securely on AWS using Amazon EC2 G4 instances, streaming applications.

Done with the overview of AWS. Now, let’s move towards steps to get started with AWS.

Getting Started with AWS

• Firstly, learn the basic fundamentals of AWS using the tutorials and Core AWS Concepts using the documentation.
• Secondly, focus on launching First Application. For this, select a learning path for step-by-step tutorials to get you up and running in less than an hour.
• Lastly, individuals can enhance their knowledge level for becoming professional by choosing the certification exam according to the skills and experience you have.

You can select from the following AWS Certifications:

AWS Pricing

AWS provides a pay-as-you-go approach for pricing for over 160 cloud services.  With AWS you only have to pay for the individual services you need without requiring long-term contracts or complex licensing. This is similar to pay for utilities like water and electricity. That is to say, you pay only for the services you consume, and once you stop using them, there are no additional costs or termination fees.

Final Words

With having millions of active customers globally, AWS has created an advanced and dynamic ecosystem. The type of services that AWS offers for organizations, business and the certifications for enhancing skills of individuals, it has set a benchmark. Moreover, customers across every industry and of every size can virtually join AWS including start-ups, enterprises, and public sector organizations. So, get yourself involved with the AWS services and their certifications to enhance your business and your career professionally.