AWS Technical Essentials
Introduction to Amazon Web Services
WHat is AWS?
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the internet with primarily pay-as-you-go pricing. With cloud computing, companies do not have to manage and maintain their own hardware and data centers. Instead, companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS) own and maintain data centers and provide virtual data center technologies and services to companies and users over the internet.
Using cloud computing saves time during setup and removes redundant and unnecessary tasks. If you look at any application, you will see that some of its aspects are very important to your business, like the code. However, other aspects are no different than any other application that you might make—for example, the compute that the code runs on. Some repetitive common tasks don’t differentiate your business, like installing virtual machines (VMs) or storing backups. By removing these tasks, you can focus on what is strategically unique to your business and let AWS handle the time-consuming tasks that don’t separate you from your competitors, we refer to this as removing “undifferentiated heavy lifting”. That’s where AWS fits into all of this.
Advantages of Cloud Computing
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Pay-as-you-go
The cloud computing model is based on paying only for the resources that you use. This is in contrast to on-premises models of investing in data centers and hardware that might not be fully used.
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Benefit from massive economies of scale
By using cloud computing, you can achieve a lower cost than you can get on your own. Because usage from hundreds of thousands of customers is aggregated in the cloud, AWS can achieve higher economies of scale, which translates into lower pay-as-you-go prices.
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Stop guessing capacity
Stop guessing on your infrastructure capacity needs. When you make a capacity decision before deploying an application, you often end up either sitting on expensive idle resources or dealing with limited capacity. With cloud computing, these problems go away. You can access as much or as little capacity as you need, and scale up and down as required with only a few minutes notice.
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Increase speed and agility
IT resources are only a click away, which means that you reduce the time to make resources available to developers from weeks to minutes. This results in a dramatic increase in agility for the organization, because the cost and time it takes to experiment and develop is significantly lower.
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Realize cost savings
Companies can focus on projects that differentiate their business and remove the “undifferentiated heavy lifting”, instead of maintaining data centers. With cloud computing, you can focus on your customers, rather than racking, stacking, and powering physical infrastructure.
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Go global in minutes
Applications can be deployed in multiple Regions around the world with a few clicks. This means that you can provide lower latency and a better experience for your customers at a minimal cost.
Resources
AWS website: What Is Cloud Computing?
AWS whitepaper: Types of Cloud Computing
AWS website: Cloud Computing with AWS
AWS whitepaper: Overview of Amazon Web Services