What is AWS? (Cloud Service?)

In the early 2000s, companies had to buy, house, and maintain their own physical servers to run a website or app. If they suddenly became popular, they had to wait weeks for new hardware to arrive. If they failed, they were left with expensive, dusty equipment. Amazon Web Services (AWS) changed all of that.

Today, it is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully-featured services from data centers globally.

Cloud computing is on-demand delivery of IT resources over internet with pay-as-you-go pricing.

Instead of owning a physical data center, you rent power from a provider. It is like a utility like electricity: use what you need, and pay only for what you consumed.

Component

AWS isn’t just one product; it’s a massive ecosystem of building blocks. Most businesses start with these four foundational categories:

1. Compute

This is where your applications actually run.

• Amazon EC2: Virtual servers that you can spin up in minutes. You choose the RAM, CPU, and operating system.
• AWS Lambda: A serverless service that runs your code only when triggered by an event, meaning you don’t manage any servers at all.

2. Storage

Where your files, photos, and backups live.

• Amazon S3: Highly durable storage for files. It’s like an infinite hard drive in the sky.
• Amazon EBS: A high-performance block storage designed to act like a local hard drive for your EC2 servers.

3. Databases 

AWS offers managed databases so you don’t have to worry about backups or patching.

• Amazon RDS: For traditional relational data (like SQL).
• Amazon DynamoDB: A lightning-fast NoSQL database for apps that need to scale to millions of users instantly.

4. Networking 

• Amazon VPC: Lets you create a private, isolated section of the AWS cloud where you can launch resources in a virtual network that you define.

Benefits

1. Scalability & Elasticity: If your app goes viral, AWS can automatically add more servers to handle the traffic (Scaling Up). When the rush ends, it removes them to save you money (Scaling Down).
2. Cost Savings: You trade Capital Expense (buying hardware) for Variable Expense (paying for what you use).
3. Security: AWS uses a Shared Responsibility Model. They secure the Cloud (the physical buildings and hardware), while you secure what’s “in Cloud” (your data and access rules).
4. Global Reach: With data centers in dozens of geographic regions worldwide, you can deploy your app to customers in Tokyo, London, or New York with just a few clicks.

Who Uses AWS?

Because of its flexibility, AWS is used by everyone:

• Startups: Like Airbnb and Slack, who need to grow fast without huge upfront costs.

• Enterprises: Like Netflix, which runs almost its entire streaming empire on AWS.

• Governments: Agencies like NASA use it for complex data processing and security.

How to Get Started

If you’re curious about trying it out, AWS offers a Free Tier. This allows you to experiment with many of their most popular services for free for 12 months (within certain usage limits), making it the perfect for learning.