Author: Apoorva N

I’m sure, you would have come across a lot of people with varying degrees of ambiguity when defining AWS. AWS is the top contender in the cloud computing domain. Let’s first understand, that Cloud computing is nothing but the use of someone else’s computers over the internet, for our personal/business needs.

If you are interested to learn AWS in detail and get an in-depth knowledge, I suggest you check out this video.

This tutorial is going to give you the right information that you need to know about AWS.

Let’s now begin by understanding what AWS is?

I would define AWS as a cloud computing platform that provides customers with a wide array of cloud services. AWS with its enormous features and services is now the leading cloud provider.

You might be wondering why AWS is the leading cloud provider right? and what makes it different from the other cloud providers?

AWS offers a wide range of services, and that's what makes it unique. Here are a few:

• Compute and Networking Services
• Storage and Content Delivery Services
• Security and Identity Services
• Database Services
• Analytics Services
• Application Services
• Management Tools

With at least 100+ services and certainly more to come, AWS seems like it’s not going to stop growing any time soon.

In the public cloud market share, AWS covers about 40%, Azure covers 30%, Google Cloud covers 10% while others take 20% of the market share respectively.

AWS provides many advantages over other cloud providers like Google, Microsoft, IBM etc and that is why this platform has become such a massive hit in the market. Let me walk you through a few benefits and show you why AWS is such a hit:

1. Pay per use - Now, let's take a small example. When you travel on a bus, You don’t have to buy, maintain or operate the vehicle right? You just pay for your travel. That’s exactly how AWS works. You don’t have to maintain or buy servers. You just pay for running your website. The customer can access unlimited resources and pay for only what he uses.
2. No Capacity limits - Comparing AWS cloud service with the traditional storage devices, AWS can provide you unlimited capacity with minimum cost.
3. Security - One thing you are probably worried about storing your data is its confidentiality right? Don’t worry, AWS cloud service makes sure that the data you have stored would be much secure and safe than in any domestic system.
4. Backup and Recovery - The data, if lost can be easily restored if it's backed up. So, the user would not have to be worried if the data is lost.
5. Speed and agility - In the old world, if an enterprise or a company had to hire a server it would at least take a week. But, AWS provides us within minutes. All you have to do is select your requirement and you can proceed without talking to anyone as it is easy and flexible.
6. Elastic – Quickly add and work out resources to applications to satisfy client demand and manage prices.

Ever wondered who are the major AWS users? and what kind of workloads are they using AWS for? According to Amazon, the number of active AWS users exceeds 1 million!

Here are some of the most popular clients of AWS, that you might have heard of:

1. Netflix

We all are well aware of Netflix right. Netflix was the most prominent early user of AWS, adopting it in 2009. AWS enables Netflix to quickly deploy thousands of servers and terabytes of storage within minutes. Users can stream Netflix shows and movies from anywhere in the world in their phones, laptops or tablets.

2. Unilever

Unilever North America, the U.S. branch of the venerable global-scale manufacturer of food, household, and other consumer products. Unilever conducted an exhaustive review of the available cloud-based options and finally chose to migrate to AWS, using a full range of AWS services to support 1,700 digital marketing web properties on a worldwide basis.

3. Kellogg’s

A familiar breakfast-table name. The Kellogg’s company had been relying on an on-premises database for modeling marketing campaigns and analyzing promotion and sales data, but the system, which could run no more than a single simulation per day, was no longer able to keep up with the company's needs. As a replacement, Kellogg’s chose an SAP promotion planning and simulation application. At the same time, they chose to run the SAP application on AWS, rather than on-premises.

AND WHO ELSE?

Companies like, Adobe, todesk, Bitdefender, BMW, British Gas, Canon, Capital One, Channel 4, Chef, Citrix, Coinbase, Comcast, Coursera, Docker, Dow Jones, European Space Agency, Financial Times, FINRA, General Electric, GoSquared, Guardian News & Media, Harvard Medical School, Hitachi, HTC, IMDb, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, International Civil Aviation Organization, Johnson & Johnson, JustGiving, JWT, Kaplan, Lamborghini, Lonely Planet, Lyft, McDonalds, NASA, National Rail Enquiries, National Trust, News International, News UK, Nokia, Philips, Pinterest, Quantas, Sage, Samsung, SAP, Vodafone Italy, Xiaomi and the list goes on.

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