Cloud computing is fueling digital transformation for businesses across the world, as indicated by the rapid growth in cloud investments worldwide. Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google’s Cloud Platform are at the forefront of this digital change, each providing a wide range of services to businesses all over the world via their massive global infrastructure.
AWS, which was launched in 2004, is one of Amazon.com Inc’s most profitable business segments, with revenues exceeding $10 billion in the first quarter of 2020, accounting for about 13.5 % of the company’s total revenue. AWS is also Amazon’s fastest-growing business, with growth rates of around 30% in recent quarters. AWS has emerged as the world’s premier cloud services provider, with over 100,000 global users and a flexible product suite that includes a wide range of products. It operates servers and data centers in 76 availability zones across the world, supporting businesses and customers in more than 240 countries and territories. AWS is the most popular cloud service provider in the world, with Fortune 500 firms and new-age start-ups alike using it. But what exactly is AWS, and what makes it so popular?
What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
AWS is a cloud – based platform with three primary products: storage, servers, remote computing, security, networking, mobile development, and emails.
- EC2 – Virtual Machine Service
- Glacier – low-cost cloud storage service.
- S3 – Amazon’s Storage System
AWS was designed to provide services to businesses and consumers by leveraging Amazon’s experience in managing, developing, and maintaining digital infrastructure. It is now the world’s biggest cloud services provider, with Reddit, Dropbox, Adobe, PBS, and a slew of other worldwide companies using it. Amazon’s servers are spread over 76 availability zones, and the service is available in over 240 countries and territories.
The Advantages of AWS
1. User-friendly : AWS is designed to make accessing services and hosting applications straightforward for new customers. Amazon provides training and education to make moving on-premise goods to the cloud as painless as possible.
2. Budget-friendly : AWS’s low cost makes it a more enticing solution than on-premises cloud options, and it auto-scales and balances the load to provide the same excellent performance regardless of usage.
3. Adaptable : The most crucial advantage of AWS for enterprises new to the cloud or switching cloud services providers is its adaptability. It enables businesses to easily scale up or down assets in response to changing needs and volumes.
4. Security : AWS is regarded as one of the world’s most secure and dependable cloud service providers. Amazon’s data centres are strategically positioned across the world and are regularly monitored and maintained. AWS also maintains a high degree of compliance and adheres to international data security laws.
5. Scalability and Effectiveness : Amazon’s unrivalled global infrastructure allows it to provide scalable, reliable, and secure cloud storage and computing services that can be easily scaled as needed. AWS scalability solutions include Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing.
The Top Companies Using AWS
AWS is unquestionably the cloud computing platform of choice for companies in a variety of industries. Let’s check who are the biggest players across industries availing AWS for their scalability and services?
1. Netflix
According to Amazon, Netflix uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) for “almost all of its compute and storage needs. “This comprises databases, analytics and insights, recommendation algorithms, and video transcoding.
2.Unilever
Unilever conducted a detailed review of the various cloud-based options before deciding to move to AWS, where it would handle 1,700 digital marketing web properties throughout the globe using a full range of AWS services.
3.GE Oil & Gas
GE also relies on AWS’ capacity to handle large amounts of data. The oil and gas industry must be able to manage huge volumes of data from mission-critical automated pipeline inspections. It entails storing, transmitting, analyzing, and processing data using Amazon Web Services (AWS) technology, which saves time and enhances data quality.
4.Kellogg’s
The Kellogg Company, or Kellogg’s, a well-known breakfast cereal brand, chose SAP promotion planning and simulation. All at the same, they picked AWS over on-premises hosting for the SAP application. A variety of reasons influenced the choice to switch to AWS, including speed and total capacity. AWS also provided high availability, low cost, and IT planning freedom. Kellogg’s has gained a major competitive advantage in a highly competitive field by combining SAP and AWS (which supports SAP software).
5.Shell
Shell needed the capacity to do extensive analysis of patterns over time and continuously discover vulnerabilities throughout a cyberthreat hunting function in order to stay ahead of cyber – criminals. The organization has created a considerably more robust cyber security system for evaluating real-time and historical data using about 100 EC2 instances and Splunk Enterprise Security applications. Shell can now defend itself against current and emerging cyber attacks with the help of AWS
6.Expedia
Expedia states that through implementing a variety of AWS technologies, it has become more resilient, has the flexibility to develop new apps faster, and has saved millions of dollars. “I’m not restricted by throughput limits or CPU capacity because I’m utilizing AWS,” Magesh Chandramouli, Principal Architect, explained. When I think of AWS, the first thing that comes to mind is freedom.”
7.Airbnb
As the company has grown tremendously in recent years, it has continuously invested in AWS solutions, servicing millions of clients around the world. It currently uses 200 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances to oversee its core applications, memcache, and search server, as well as Elastic Load Balancing to handle incoming traffic in between servers, Amazon Elastic MapReduce to process and disseminate data, Amazon Simple Storage Service for backups and static files, and Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring.
8.Apple
Apple is notably secretive when it refers to any area of their operations. However, according to a CNBC report from 2019, it is one of the largest users of AWS services. According to sources familiar with the issue, the Cupertino-based firm spends over $30 million every month on Amazon cloud computing services.
9.SAP
The international corporation creates enterprise software to help companies manage their operations and customer relationships. It began using AWS in 2008, and it was the first cloud platform to run SAP‘s workload. It was formerly known as System analyse and Programmentwicklung until being renamed SAP AG in 2005. The Times of India dubbed it “the world’s third-largest software corporation” in 2001.
10.Walt Disney
To support its the rapid expansion of Disney+, which reached 100 million users only 16 months after its launch in November 2019, the Walt Disney Company relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its major public cloud infrastructure provider The Walt Disney Company has been able to swiftly extend Disney+ to 59 countries spanning North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America because of AWS’ fault-tolerant, high-performance infrastructure.
AWS is clearly being used by a wide range of organizations. It’s not just fascinating to see organizations from many industries use Amazon’s cloud services.
They’re also employing it for a variety of purposes, like preventing cyber-attacks and constructing quicker websites. This is a massive opportunity. What amazing things will you be able to complete using Amazon Web Services?
