Amazon AWS

Amazon Web Services: History

Amazon Web Services started its journey in 2002 and offered developers a few services. The platform started to gain interest from numerous developers, which led to the creation of over a hundred applications by 2004. Before that, in 2003, the platform lived to see new standardized solutions and infrastructure elements focusing on databases, computing, and storage.

In 2006, Amazon launched three services: Amazon S3, SQS, and EC2, which became its foundation. The goal was to allow developers to focus on innovative ideas rather than worrying about data storage.

Around 2013, Amazon started offering certifications to developers so that they could begin to hone their skills in using Amazon Web Services. Later, in 2014, Amazon introduced the AWS Partner Network to help companies grow and offer the best possible value to their customers.

From 2016 onwards, Amazon Web Services continued to grow and expand, beating profit forecasts. As of 2024, the company offers over 200 services, helping developers and companies worldwide.

Amazon Web Services offers customers, among others:

• Analytical tools (e.g., Amazon Athena)
• Developer tools (e.g., Amazon Corretto)
• Management tools (e.g., AWS Cost Explorer)
• Security tools and solutions (e.g., AWS Identity and Access Management)
• Database storage
• Computing power
• Hosting
• Virtual machine cluster
• Scalable mobile applications, e-commerce
• APIs

For example:

• Amazon DynamoDB is a NoSQL database management system.
• Amazon EC2 allows you to use virtual servers in the cloud.
• Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) offers cloud storage.
• Amazon SageMaker supports artificial intelligence solutions.

Amazon Web Services is used by individuals, companies, public institutions, and even governments of certain countries.

For many years, Amazon has been the undisputed leader in the market, which largely determines the direction of its development.

It's also constantly innovating, expanding, and developing its package of tools and services. The trust it enjoys mainly stems from the high quality of its offer.

Amazon Web Services is billed in a payment model according to the actual use of the hardware (e.g., AWS Serverless), operating system, software, or a particular feature.

This is one of the pillars on which AWS services has built its market position. The obvious financial benefits of using this cloud platform's offers attract global and local companies—those that provide software services (e.g., with AWS certification or partner status—AWS Partner) and those that use such services.

Types of cloud computing offered by AWS

According to Amazon, there are three types of cloud deployment models.

Cloud

A cloud-based application operates entirely in the cloud. There are two ways to make a cloud-based app. You can either create it from scratch in the cloud environment or migrate an already existing application. Both of these methods allow you to enjoy the advantages of cloud computing.

You can develop applications in the cloud on low-level infrastructure elements or higher-level services that provide abstraction from elements such as management, architecture, and scaling requirements of infrastructure.

Private cloud

A private cloud is the deployment of resources on-premises by means of virtualization and management tools. This deployment type doesn't provide all the benefits of cloud computing but can give the company dedicated resources. Since the organization is fully responsible for the servers and data centers, it can lose its ability to scale efficiently.

Hybrid

The hybrid model involves connecting cloud resources with those outside of it, including infrastructure and applications. Hybrid cloud computing allows you to integrate the cloud environment with the on-premises infrastructure in order to expand it.

Advantages of Amazon Web Services

Its attractive prices are rooted in its popularity, position as a world leader, and the number of companies and AWS customers it serves. But that is not everything.

Amazon also refers to very advanced, useful software that supports businesses. It's synonymous with quality and safety.

The products and services included in Amazon Web Services are:

• Really easy to use
• Economical and cost-effective
• Flexible
• Safe
• Reliable
• Efficient and productive
• Scalable
• Innovative
• Comprehensive
• Globally available.

Many of the available services and products are designed for various users and customers.

AWS offers very extensive content support in the form of guides and tutorials.

The attractive billing model and rates ensure that using Amazon Web Services tools and services makes economic sense.

The necessary software and hardware for business development are much more economically available.

For many companies, this means an opportunity for rapid and dynamic growth.

It also means using advanced technologies without having to invest huge budgets. Thanks to Amazon Web Services, you can forget about physical data centers and servers and enjoy the full benefits of cloud infrastructure.

It's also worth remembering that using AWS cloud solutions reduces the number of specialists employed, expenditures, and resources required to implement, maintain, develop, and secure one's own infrastructure.

Furthermore, due to its huge technological advancement and innovation, it's simply a lot simpler, cheaper, safer, and more useful business-wise.

The AWS cloud lets you choose tools and services, operating systems, programming languages, and databases.

The offered virtual environment allows for easy migration and development of existing applications.

This structure makes the data much more secure and less vulnerable to natural and manufactured threats, especially since Amazon's security policy is indeed very strict.

Amazon Web Services has built its position on attractive prices and on offering many high-tech, highly useful services and products that increase companies' competitiveness.

For instance, AWS offers really fast and efficient solutions. Comprehensive tracking, profiling, and analytical services give customers complete visibility into code performance.

Service maps allow for quick and effective responses when critical problems arise.

Disadvantages of Amazon Web Services

Nothing is perfect, and while Amazon Web Services has drawbacks, in most cases, its benefits outweigh them.

Limitations of EC2 and security

The main issues with EC2 mainly concern the availability of resources that differ from region to region. Companies will have a set amount of resources to use, but they need to keep in mind the established limits. Amazon also offers services like Amazon CloudWatch that enable organizations to monitor and control the use of resources.

Additionally, while AWS offers strict security standards, this also means that there are some limitations regarding what you can do.

Deficiency of AWS experts

Naturally, companies look for AWS specialists to grow and expand continuously. However, this task is much more difficult than it may seem. The market doesn't overflow with professionals with extensive experience in AWS. Therefore, companies need to invest in new employees, which may be a drawback for some.

Varying prices

Amazon Web Services prices also differ depending on the region and the costs related to electricity, fiber, taxes, and other relevant resources.

When it comes to tech support offered, Amazon provides Developer, Business, and Enterprise packages that differ in speed and availability of customer support. The abovementioned Amazon CloudWatch can also help you keep track of your fees.

Cloud computing issues

Some users report that after moving their infrastructure to AWS, they've noticed performance losses or server downtimes. These aren't unique problems to AWS, and hiccups like this rarely happen. When issues do occur, Amazon tries to fix them as soon as possible.

The most notable Amazon Web Services

Amazon's AWS offer includes three major cloud computing options:

• Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
• Platform as a service (PaaS)
• Software as a service (SaaS)

IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS provide different levels and forms of control and allow for very flexible data and process management.

Infrastructure as a service grants access to network functions, virtual hardware, and data spaces.

Platform as a service simplifies the development of existing applications because the AWS cloud provides the hardware and software.

Such solutions are known for their efficiency, convenience, safety, and convincing economic justification.

In contrast, software as a service allows you to use advanced programs without hardware customization.

To use the software, you only need to have access to the Internet and install a browser.

This formula's advantage is the low cost of access to advanced software—payment for this option is billed according to the actual use of the software (pay-as-you-go billing model).

Amazon Web Services with The Story

Our cloud service offer includes all the essential services and tools necessary to develop digital businesses successfully.

We used the following cloud services and tools offered by Amazon Web Services in projects carried out for our clients:

• Amazon Lex
• AppConfig
• Certificate Manager
• CloudFront
• CloudWatch
• CodeBuild
• Cognito
• DynamoDB
• EC2
• ElastiCache
• Elastic Beanstalk
• IAM
• Lambda
• RDS
• Route 53
• S3
• SES
• SNS
• SQS
• X-Ray

For what purposes can you use Amazon Web Services?

Storage and backup

One of AWS's biggest advantages is its storage and backup capabilities. Thanks to services like Amazon Simple Storage Service and AWS Backup, companies can safely and reliably store and create backups of massive amounts of data.

These storage and backups are also easily and readily accessible, thanks to three different availability zones. When one of these zones becomes unavailable for any reason, the other two allow you to still access your data.

Websites

AWS offers various hosting options that enable you to create reliable and scalable websites. These include access to virtual machines, SSD-based storage, data transfers, DNS management, and static IPs. Thanks to these features, users have no problems accessing and managing a website.

Big Data

Amazon Web Services provides great help to companies that struggle with storing and managing big data. AWS gives them the flexibility to store any amount of data regardless of whether it decreases or increases with time. It also allows organizations to retrive data much faster compared to traditional means and offers fast data processing capabilities.

Enterprise IT

AWS is an ideal choice for IT enterprises. It allows them to securely store data, scale, be flexible, and offer them elastic support. The platform enables developers to save money and time and lets them focus on innovative ideas instead of worrying about technical aspects.

Gaming

AWS is also useful for game development studios. Services offered by Amazon provide them with access to back-end services, analytics, and a variety of developer tools. Thanks to Amazon Web Services, game developers can hold and store a considerable amount of data and analyze gamers' performance.

Mobile applications

Amazon offers a comprehensive toolset for building scalable mobile applications. Mobile app developers can use tools such as AWS Mobile SDK, Amazon Cognito, and Amazon Pinpoint to access code samples and libraries, manage user access, and send push notifications to users.

Artificial intelligence

Amazon provides various services for creating voicebots and chatbots and offers access to other features of artificial intelligence. AWS provides the following capabilities: text-to-speech translations, image and facial recognition, extracting data from documents, improved website searches and prediction models, code automation, and more.