AWS: Benefits & Applications in Real World [Why Should You Use It Too?]

Amazon Web Services or AWS is the cloud infrastructure and web services division of Amazon.com, the biggest retail player in the world. It is designed to bring immense benefits to organizations. Some organizations, in their excitement to benefit from Amazon, move their applications to AWS without even considering or adopting the lift and shift approach.

Despite the miss, these organizations are accorded the advantages that come with using a cost-efficient and secure infrastructure. But it is very easy for these organizations to forget that it is not that easy to enjoy the twin benefits of agility and flexibility without adopting the recommended changes. 

Yes, it is true. Most IT engineers, developers, and programmers do not realize the need to evolve their organization’s architectures to experience the advantages that come with AWS. New applications, scalability, and efficiency are achievable by using cloud-related IT architecture patterns.

The evolved architectures, modified to work with AWS, are capable of supporting applications, that experience irregular traffic from hundreds or thousands of mobile devices or IoT devices connected to each other as well as real-time Internet-based data analytics. 

While creating modified architectures for existing applications that currently use on-premise hardware or building cloud-native applications from scratch, awareness of the differences that exist between cloud computing and traditional environments is important.

The points of difference include automation, scalability, databases, resource types, and flexible components, amongst others. It goes without saying that developing a thorough understanding of the concept before deciding in favor of migrating to AWS is critical to enjoying the short-term and long-term benefits.

But, the most important question is, how did AWS come into being? 

Well, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention -nothing can describe AWS’s inception better than this old cliché. Two decades ago, Amazon encountered a few issues concerning its e-commerce infrastructure’s scalability. It was this necessity of finding a solution for these technological issues that ended up in the development of AWS.

Isn’t it amazing that by the end of 2019, it held one-third of the industry’s revenue share? What began as a necessity is now the biggest provider of cloud infrastructure services in the entire world! 

But, before rushing out to shift to AWS, it is important to understand why and where the services are used. 

Read: Amazon AWS VPC Tutorial

Why use AWS?

“What is Amazon web services used for” is a frequent question people are curious about. The flexibility and power of AWS enable businesses that are technology-based to reach the marketplaces with the limited initial investment.

It also allows them to use a subscription model to scale their IT infrastructure. But, the advantages that the software offers extend to small, medium and large companies, and some of these are shared below to answer your question ‘Why use AWS’.

1. Global Availability

AWS has 20 global data centers, with each one of these operating at multiple availability zones. It is now possible for a US-based company that wants to improve its presence in the Indian Subcontinent, they could do that with Amazon. 

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2. Scalability and Flexibility

Unlike traditional data centers, AWS offers unlimited flexibility and scalability. AWS’s cloud automation is one such tool that provides on-demand scaling. With this benefit, organizations are saved from planning their own infrastructure roadmap and seeing their potential failure. Furthermore, users of AWS applications also benefit from the low-cost migration services provided by Amazon, which ensures that the existing infrastructure can be moved seamlessly to AWS. 

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3. Little or No Investment

With AWS cloud-related services, organizations are saved from excess expenditures on software and hardware. A physical data center is not required, which results in savings of operating costs. 

4. Security

There is a misconception that has been doing rounds ever since AWS came into being – that data is not secure in a public cloud. On the contrary, AWS offers security tools that are usually not available in other cheaper alternatives available in the market. Organizations can directly implement these tools into individual IT environments. After implementing these tools, the data is secure. 

Locating data in an easily accessible location, where hundreds of people can get easy access, can be a huge challenge for any company. However, that does not hold true with AWS, since they have successfully managed to keep all their data centers as hidden as possible and allow access to the same, only on an essential basis. To answer the popular question of what is Amazon web services used for, it ensures that all the data centers and the data are safe from any kind of intrusion or attacks. Even if there is any, the same can be identified and remedied quickly, with the help of Amazon’s experience in cloud services.

AWS currently has dozens of data centers distributed worldwide, that are under constant monitoring, so that if there is any disaster striking a particular location, it would not result in permanent data loss worldwide. 

5. Easy To Use

AWS is specifically designed for application providers, vendors, and ISVs to host their applications in a quick and secure manner. It can be either an already existing application or a SaaS-based application. Furthermore, users can also get access to AWS’s application hosting platform, with the help of AWS Management Console, or well-documented web services.

6. Global Footprint

AWS currently is the largest global infrastructure footprint of any provider and is constantly expanding at a significant rate. It provides its users with various benefits, one of which is AWS Ground Station, which has satellite antennas that are in close proximity to the AWS Infrastructure Regions.

AWS Use Cases

As mentioned above, AWS gives businesses of any scale and belonging to any industry to build sophisticated applications. The applications built using AWS range from hyper-scale web apps to big data analytical apps. Let us look at some common AWS use cases:

1. Storage and Backup

Amazon’s cloud storage is a very useful service for businesses and is quite easily accessible as well. AWS can be used to store critical data. It offers multiple types of storage to choose from, allowing businesses to make their own decisions based on their needs. It can be used for file indexing and storage, archiving for a longer time, high-performance writing or reading, and running critical business applications. 

2. Enterprise IT

Enterprise IT, on occasions, could operate at a very slow pace. Server implementation, time-consuming procurement, and other such factors contribute significantly to the slow running of an operation. Amazon cloud services offer the ideal solution.

AWS allows businesses to develop, test, and run secondary operations in the cloud, making them launch projects at a much faster pace.  Project speed is an important parameter for developing a competitive edge. The flexibility of AWS provides the ability to launch quickly. 

Learn more: What is AWS Migration and How to Conduct it?

3. Mobile, Web, and Social Applications

AWS does what no other cloud service is capable of doing, which is to facilitate the launch and scaling of applications, especially mobile applications, e-commerce applications, and SaaS applications. Not so long ago, Amazon Servers were used for developing and setting-up applications.

However, things have drastically changed over the years and that too for the better. Now, new applications are developed on server-less platforms – platforms that can do this job without requiring any OS and other systems. API driven code can now be used on AWS to build uncompromisingly scalable applications. 

4. Big Data

AWS has scalable storage that can be used to run analytics at higher frequencies. AWS storage doesn’t require much and effort to be indexed too. The perfect recipe for building data lakes or warehouses. AWS and Big Data work together to provide the infrastructure and power required to cater to the requirements of high-end intelligent software. 

5. Websites

Similar to other web applications, organizations can host their websites on the AWS cloud. It is also great for hosting CDNs, DNS, and domains. 

6. Gaming

A lot of internet and computing power goes into running gaming applications. AWS makes it readily available to the global gaming network for providing gamers across the globe the best online gaming experience possible.

7. Infrastructure Software

With the help of AWS and AWS Marketplace Independent Software Vendor, users can now seamlessly extend their existing infrastructures, thereby enhancing security and scale for growth. Furthermore, AWS also helps its users to cut down on IT costs and protect their data from physical or logical errors.

8. Health Care and Life Sciences

AWS Marketplace is the perfect platform to truly unlock the potential of healthcare data. It is the one-stop destination for managing cloud technology and data management solutions. It enables its users to modernize care, improve patient outcomes and comply with the existing regulations.

9. E-Commerce

With the help of AWS, companies are now able to add a new compelling experience to attract new customers and drive sales. Furthermore, AWS also provides business owners with alternate communication channels, which they can use to connect with the target audience and enhance their buying experience.

10. Remote Work

Why use AWS for remote work?

AWS provides Remote Work solutions so that users can effectively adapt to the changing business needs, instead of over-investing in resources up front, to keep up with the future peak levels of business activity. Instead, users can now provision the number of resources that they actually need and then scale the usage accordingly, to meet the normal business cycle or any other unplanned events. 

Conclusion

It is a testament to the amazing features offers that businesses are no longer asking the question, ‘why use AWS?”. AWS gives them the freedom of using AWS capabilities to great effect. They do so by letting parts of their IT infrastructure or network host, develop, and deploy the applications.

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