The Ultimate Business Guide to the Amazon Web Services Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has become the go-to cloud solution for businesses around the world. Companies don't have to plan IT infrastructure or even a server as cloud computing technology enables them to access multiple servers virtually and quickly.

AWS eliminates costs on capital infrastructure and helps scale business growth. Thousands of businesses rely on this incredible service which leads the cloud technology market with a 33% market share according Synergy Research Group. Let’s dive into the top benefits of AWS to help you learn more about the leading cloud platform.

Amazon continues to lead the worldwide IaaS market with an estimated $20 billion revenue in 2019 and 45% of the total market. Amazon leveraged its No.1 spot in 2018 to build out its capabilities beyond the IaaS layer in the cloud stack and maintain its top position.

-Gartner

1. Top Security And Compliance

The cloud service provider you choose has the responsibility to provide and maintain security. AWS is a top-notch secure cloud platform. Its robust framework has several layers of physical and operational security to ensure data safety.

AWS has end-to-end privacy to strengthen the entire infrastructure and provide enhanced protection. AWS holds well-recognized certifications such as SAS 70 Type II, PCI DSS Level 1, HIPAA, FISMA Moderate, and ISO 27001. Here are some of the AWS security measures: 

• Amazon EC2 works along Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) to keep users’ computing resources secure and strengthens networking functionality.
• AWS allows users to choose the IP range for VPC within which instances can be placed and ensure the privacy of instances on the internet. 
• It also enables users to run instances on dedicated hardware for enhanced privacy. These instances run on the resources availed through EC2.
• AWs provides 24x7 access to data experts along with trained security guards to prevent any unauthorized access.
• AWS has a built-in firewall system that can restrict the public and control access.
• Identity and Access Management (IAM) services and CloudTrail track activities of users.
• AWS is available in multiple regions and helps recover from system failures and natural disasters.
• AWS provides multi-factor authentication and encryption of data storage.
• The platform conducts regular infrastructural security audits.
• Uses industry-standard encrypted IPsec VPN connections for connecting resources in VPC with an existing IT infrastructure.
• AWS Identity and Access Management allow admins to define and manage user access for the existing resources.
• AWS tools such as Amazon Inspector can automatically assess potential security risk by analyzing environment vulnerabilities.
• Amazon Macie uses Machine Learning (ML) to secure sensitive data stored in the cloud. 

2. Flexible, Scalable, and Adaptable

Flexible cloud services are always good as they can help you achieve a balance according to your requirements. AWS is an incredible cloud platform with some excellent features that makes it more flexible and scalable. 

• Amazon services are accessible from any location as AWS is available in 66 zones within 21 geographic regions globally, and it has clients across 190 countries.
• It allows you to manage resources on a highly-detailed level and lets you choose the operating systems, database, and other services your business requires.
• AWS does not limit computing resources, storage or bandwidth  for its users. Users can add and remove resources according to their requirements and budget.
• It provides a virtual environment to load your service and software applications.
• It makes the migration process easy for existing applications and for creating new ones.
• AWS auto-scaling helps formulate a business framework and adjusts it according to business's traffic.
• Amazon EC2 lets users choose a boot partition size for operating system and applications along with instance storage.
• Users can perform CPU and memory configuration using AWS EC2.
• AMI enables users to discover clones in different regions for several situations which eliminates the need to repeat the set up process.

3. Cost Effective Solutions

With the emergence of the cloud technology, businesses can choose how they want to upgrade their data centers. The AWS cloud platform is cost-effective, and there can be a significant savings on physical facilities, hardware, and other utilities. You only need to pay for the storage, computing power, or other resources you may use.  

AWS pricing is similar to how you pay for utilities like water and electricity. You only pay for the services you consume, and once you stop using them, there are no additional costs or termination fees

                                                            – Amazon AWS

• AWS offers affordable pricing compared to on-premise service cost. 
• It decreases the need to manage an on-site server, eventually reducing your staff requirements.
• Along with big companies, small and mid-sized companies prefer AWS as it is 40% more cost-effective compared to managing on-site servers.
• The “Pay Per Use” policy of AWS lets you pay to depend on your actual usage.
• A variety of AWS pricing models are available to choose according to what suits your performance and cost-saving requirements.
• Reduces bills by offering cost optimization strategies.
• AWS can also optimize cost with pricing and resource recommendations.

4. Amazon API Features

AWS offers robust application programming interfaces. Amazon APIs are available in different programming languages, which helps manage your infrastructure. Using APIs, you can launch new instances, take backups, and much more. Here are some of the APIs by AWS that might interest you.

AWS Activate Packages

If you have a start-up business, you can look for AWS Activate Packages, where free credits are available. You can also get training before getting started with AWS to understand the cloud service.

AWS Free Tier

Many AWS services offer a free tier to start integrating your business with the cloud. If you like the service, you can always choose the AWS model that suits your needs and continue with the cloud service.

AWS Jumpstart

AWS Jumpstart is a flexible and user-friendly cloud solution that is available 24x7. If you are a start-up with limited employees or your staff lack expertise, AWS support will help you migrate your application to the cloud.

5. AWS Storage Solutions

Storage is the most crucial aspect of cloud service platforms. AWS provides high storage for its customers; whether you have a large enterprise or small to mid-sized business, amazon takes care of your storage needs. Here are the main storage solutions provided by Amazon.

Amazon Glacier

• Amazon Glacier is a storage service primarily used for long-term storage. The data stored here is not used frequently, and it is an excellent storage service for data backup and archives.

Amazon Simple Storage Services (S3)

• Amazon S3 is a powerful storage service that provides robust storage via a web-based interface.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

• AWS provides high storage EC2 instances, which can help users or customers use heavy and high input/output applications such as data warehousing, Hadoop, etc. 

Amazon Elastic Book Store (EBS)

• AWS offers Amazon Elastic Book Store (EBS), which is block-level storage used with Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances to keep data consistent.

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)

• Amazon EFS is upright storage suitable for applications as well as workloads in the AWS public cloud.

Amazon Storage Transport Devices

• Snowball mainly assists in transferring data in and out of the AWS cloud. The transferring cost is 1/5th the cost of sharing via the internet. 
  
  
• Snowmobile transfers a considerable amount of data by trucks. These trucks have several hard disk drives and stores data in petabytes. 

6. AWS Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

AWS is the most significant worldwide IaaS provider out of all the top names. Amazon IaaS offers infrastructure services based on cloud computing. Amazon IaaS service replaces physical resources such as servers with virtual resources that Amazon itself manages. Users can run any application or operating system on these virtual servers without paying extra maintenance or operation fees. Amazon EC2 is an example of Amazon as IaaS. Let’s see some of the benefits of AWS as IaaS.

• AWS as IaaS can help businesses digitize quickly and allow data integration on a single platform.
• It will enable companies to scale up or down as needed.
• You can select and use hardware and Operating Systems for the service directly from the network.
• It expands server resources for enhancing quality and functionality.
• No extra cost or errors arise during the system upgrade.

7. AWS Platform as a Service (PaaS)

AWS also offers PaaS services, which provides a robust base for developers to design applications. PaaS means a third-party vendor will provide software and hardware tools over the internet and the users are only required to manage the application design and development process.

Amazon PaaS plays a vital role in simplifying application development processes on the internet and allowing developers to access the platform data from any location with the help of cloud technology, facilitating project development on a global level. Amazon RDS is an example of AWS PaaS. Here are some benefits of AWS PaaS.

• Provides a robust application development environment, saving users’ time and money.
• Manages platform maintenance and backup services itself.
• Infrastructure is stored over the internet, and users can access it anytime from any location.
• Its cross-platform environments save time during application development.
• Allows multiple users to access the same development application.
• Provides integration with databases and web services.
• AWS offers services for the development, testing, and deployment of applications.

8. AWS Software as a Service (SaaS)

Amazon SaaS is an ideal software distribution model with its applications hosted and made accessible for customers through the internet. Amazon SaaS offers access to the application and high-security of data, and the vendor manages the performance. AWS SaaS has many benefits, such as

• Users can access AWS SaaS over the internet without having to install any application. 
• All data is stored on the cloud, and any device and location can access it.
• Allows multiple users to access the same data warehouse.
• Enables a quick setup and operation of advanced applications available in AWS SaaS.

9. AWS Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

Amazon WorkSpaces DaaS is a subscription service that enables you to use Windows or Linux desktops. It provides reliable, secure, and cost-effective capabilities for desktop delivery. It allows the users to deploy and administer desktops using Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), allowing a storage directory to each desktop, making desktop user authentication easy. Benefits of AWS DaaS:

• Amazon DaaS eliminates complex issues while managing OS versions, hardware inventory, etc. 
• Provides users responsive and fast desktops according to their requirements, allows access to a virtual desktop from anywhere, anytime.
• It’s managed services reduces IT team workloads, enabling them to focus on more critical tasks.
• AWS DaaS services are easy to initiate and modified dynamically according to company requirements.
• AWS DaaS is cost-effective with hourly and monthly billing options, depending on the use and frequency. Users can choose different resource packages to ensure users only pay for the services they use. 
• It has built-in storage and is compatible with Amazon Virtual Private Network (VPN). 
• It enables users to manage permissions using IAM to ensure that authorized users can access the approved data but not transport it. 
• Offers flexible deployments and supports most devices. Users can deploy desktops to Firefox and Chrome browsers, including both persistent and temporary desktops, enabling the use of various desktops. 
• It offers enterprise-level security to protect client and company data against breaching, cyberattacks, or data loss. 
• It offers a Bring Your Own License (BYOL) option for Windows allowing users to leverage previous investments.

10. AWS Big Data Analytics

Businesses have plenty of data stored in petabytes on the clouds. Data requires regular analysis and management to reduce redundancy and search time of data. With AWS big data management and analytics, users can analyze data efficiently. AWS has several big data analytics application services, which allows the platform to identify, sort, and manage data. Some of the benefits are:

• Amazon Kinesis provides a wide range of tools for processing and analyzing large data.
• Amazon Elastic MapReduce offers a robust Hadoop framework for processing a massive amount of data.
• Amazon Elasticsearch Service is another impeccable service that allows a team to monitor applications, log analysis, etc., using an open-source tool Elasticsearch.
• AWS Glue extracts, transforms and loads jobs.
• Amazon Athena for S3 enables analysts to query the data.
• Amazon QuickSight helps analysts to visualize data.

11. AWS for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

AWS builds intelligent applications using technologies such as AI and ML. Developers can build intelligent applications using ML and other complex algorithms. AWS provides a variety of AI model development platforms and AI-based applications, which allows users to create AI-infused applications with the help of Amazon AI suite tools.

• Amazon Lex is a robust tool for voice commands that enable text chatbot technology.
• Amazon Polly is another tool for text-to-speech translation.
• Amazon Recognition is a tool used for image and facial analysis.
• Using Amazon Machine Images (AMI) and AWS deep learning, developers can build and train customized AI models with graphic processing units (GPUs). 
• Alexa Skills Kit, allows developers to build voice-based applications for echo devices, whereas customers use Alexa Voice Services for general instructions and commands.

Conclusion

With plenty of built-in applications and services and several benefits, Amazon Web Services is dominating the cloud computing market. If you are planning to set up a cloud-based infrastructure for your business, consider using AWS for it's many benefits and tools.