Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive and continuously evolving cloud computing platform provided by Amazon, encompassing a combination of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings. AWS services can equip organisations with tools such as computing power, database storage, and content delivery services.
Initially launched in 2006, AWS was built upon the internal infrastructure that Amazon established to manage its online retail operations. As one of the first companies to introduce a pay-as-you-go cloud computing model, AWS allows users to access compute, storage, or throughput capacity on demand.
AWS provides numerous tools and solutions that can be utilised by enterprises and software developers in data centres located in up to 190 countries. Government agencies, educational institutions, non-profit organisations, and private companies are among the groups that can benefit from using AWS services.
AWS includes over 200 products and services, including computing, storage, networking, database, analytics, application services, deployment, management, machine learning, mobile, developer tools, RobOps, and Internet of Things tools.
Most services are not directly exposed to end-users but provide functionality through APIs that developers can use in their applications. Amazon Web Services offerings are accessible via HTTP, REST architectural style, SOAP protocol for older APIs, and JSON for newer APIs.
A selection of services offered by AWS:
EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) - EC2 is a virtual machine in the cloud on which you have OS-level control. You can run this cloud server whenever you want.
LightSail - This cloud computing tool automatically deploys and manages the computing, storage, and networking capabilities needed to run applications.
Elastic Beanstalk - This tool provides automated deployment and provisioning of resources, such as a highly scalable production website.
EKS (Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes) - With this tool, you can use Kubernetes on the Amazon cloud environment without installation.
AWS Lambda - This allows you to run functions in the cloud. The tool is a big cost saver because you only pay when functions are executed.
DMS (Database Migration Service) - DMS service can be used to migrate on-site databases to AWS. It helps to migrate from one type of database to another - for example, from Oracle to MySQL.
SMS (Server Migration Service) - You can easily and quickly migrate on-site servers to AWS with SMS migration services.
Snowball - Snowball is a small application that allows you to transfer terabytes of data within and outside the AWS environment.
The following services fall under Storage:
Amazon Glacier - A cost-effective, secure, fast storage service.
Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) - Provides block-level storage for use with Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon Elastic Block Store volumes are network-bound and remain independent of the lifespan.
AWS Storage Gateway - This AWS service connects on-premises software applications with cloud-based storage. It provides a secure integration between the company's on-premises and AWS storage infrastructure.
Security The following services fall under Security:
IAM (Identity and Access Management) - IAM is a secure cloud security service that helps manage users, assign policies, and form groups to manage multiple users.
Inspector - It is a kind of agent that you can install on your virtual machines, which reports any security vulnerabilities.
Certificate Manager - This service provides free SSL certificates for domains managed by Route53.
WAF (Web Application Firewall) - The WAF security service provides application-level protection, allows blocking SQL injection and helps to block cross-site scripting attacks.
Cloud Directory - This service allows you to create flexible, cloud-native directories for managing data hierarchies in multiple dimensions.
KMS (Key Management Service) - This is a managed service. This security service helps create and manage encryption keys that you can use to encrypt data.
Organisations - It is possible to create groups of AWS accounts with this service to manage security and automation settings.
Shield - Shield is a managed DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) security service. It protects web applications running on AWS.
Macie - Provides a data visibility security service that helps classify and protect sensitive data.
GuardDuty - Provides threat detection to protect your AWS accounts and workloads.
Database The following services fall under Database:
Amazon RDS - This Database AWS service is easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud.
Amazon DynamoDB - This is a fast and fully managed NoSQL database service. It is a simple service that enables cost-effective storage and retrieval of data.
Amazon ElastiCache is a web service that makes it easy to deploy, operate, and scale an in-memory cache in the cloud.
Neptune - A fast, reliable, and scalable graph database service.
Amazon RedShift - This is Amazon's solution for data warehousing, allowing you to perform complex OLAP queries.
Analytics The following services fall under Analytics:
Athena - With this analytics service, you can run SQL queries on your S3 bucket to find files.
CloudSearch - This allows you to create a fully managed search engine for your website.
ElasticSearch - It is similar to CloudSearch. It only offers more features like application monitoring.
Kinesis - This AWS analytics service helps stream and analyse real-time data on a large scale.
QuickSight - Is a business analytics tool. It helps to create visualizations in a dashboard for data in Amazon Web Services. For example, S3, DynamoDB, etc.
EMR (Elastic Map Reduce) - This AWS analytics service is primarily used for big data processing such as Spark, Splunk, Hadoop, etc.
Data Pipeline - This allows you to move data from one place to another. For example, from DynamoDB to S3.
The following services fall under Management:
CloudWatch - CloudWatch helps monitor AWS environments such as EC2, RDS instances, and CPU usage. It also triggers alarms based on various metrics.
CloudFormation - It is a way to deploy infrastructure in the cloud. You can use templates to set up a complete production environment in just minutes.
CloudTrail - It provides an easy method to audit AWS resources. It helps log all changes made.
OpsWorks - This service enables automated Chef/Puppet deployments in AWS environments.
Config - This AWS service monitors the environment and sends alerts about changes when certain defined configurations are broken.
Service Catalog - This service helps large enterprises authorize which services will and will not be used.
AWS Auto Scaling - This service automatically scales your resources up and down based on certain CloudWatch metrics.
Systems Manager - With this AWS service, you can group your resources and identify and respond to issues.
Managed Services - This service provides management of your AWS infrastructure so you can focus on your applications.
The following services fall under the Internet of Things:
IoT Core - This is a managed cloud AWS service. It allows connected devices such as cars, light bulbs, and sensor networks to communicate with cloud applications and other devices securely.
IoT Device Management - This allows you to manage your IoT devices at any scale.
IoT Analytics - This AWS IoT service is useful for performing analytics on data collected by your IoT devices.
Amazon FreeRTOS - This real-time operating system for microcontrollers helps connect IoT devices to the local server or the cloud.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud-based platform that provides a range of cloud computing services, including computing power, storage, and databases, for businesses and individuals.
AWS offers a range of benefits, including scalability, flexibility, cost savings, security, reliability, and global reach. Businesses can use AWS to easily scale up or down their computing resources as needed, pay only for what they use, and take advantage of a range of security and compliance features.
AWS pricing is based on a pay-as-you-go model, meaning customers only pay for the services they use. AWS offers different pricing options, including on-demand, reserved instances, and spot instances, depending on the level of flexibility and cost savings required.
AWS offers a wide range of cloud computing services, including compute, storage, databases, analytics, machine learning, security, networking, mobile development, and Internet of Things (IoT) services.
AWS offers a range of security and compliance features, including encryption, identity and access management, network security, compliance certifications, and auditing and logging tools, to ensure data security.
Yes, AWS offers IoT services, including IoT device management, IoT analytics, and IoT application services, to help businesses build and deploy IoT applications.
