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In today’s digital-business world, there’s just no place for any tech vendor that can’t aggressively and effectively tie together the cloud and the vast estates of on-premises technology that continue to run the processes and operations of huge sectors of the global economy.
Cloud services have revolutionized computing, not least through IaaS, PaaS, and especially SaaS, which have allowed businesses to develop virtualized IT infrastructure and deliver software through the cloud, independent of a user’s operating system.
Businesses can also mix and match cloud services from different providers through cloud brokers in order to ensure these services work to maximum efficiency and cost effectiveness, but also to reduce the chances of vendor lock-in while also improving duplication. This may require additional cloud management software, but for larger businesses the economic effect can be essential.
Why going to the cloud is trendy?
Everything is run through software platforms and virtualized networks, it means that it’s easy to access and analyse data for the companies. It also makes it easier to simplify all aspects of monitoring through cloud orchestration and the easy processing of log files through cloud logging services. As the result, IT infrastructure allows better maintenance and patching.
Cloud computing services also offer the advantage of being scalable, which means not only can you access additional resources exactly as you need them, but you are also charged only for the services you use so there’s no need to buy in supplementary hardware for additional duplication.
Online cloud storage can be treated as effectively limitless when storing data. Even though you might be using cloud databases for your structured data, you can also archive everything else into massive data lakes for additional processing using AI and machine learning for greater insights.
The cloud-computing companies are willing to make their services affordable and essential for both big companies and independent software developers. As long as the customers benefit from using the cloud services, the more and more users want to join.
Amazon got its own approach called “virtuous cycle”, that helps to drive the industry. How it works: the more customers sign up, the more servers Amazon can afford to add. The more servers are available, the better service they provide and the lower prices can be proposed to the clients. The lower the prices, the more customers are attracted to and the more and better products they get as a result. Very simple but yet working scheme.
Public Cloud usage statistics
Cloud services are taking the business world by storm and cloud adoption statistics tell the same story. 94% of enterprises use cloud. According to this report annual State of the Cloud Report for 2019, 91% of businesses used public cloud and 72% used a private one. Most enterprises actually utilize both options – with 69% of them opting for a hybrid cloud solution.
Here comes the question why Amazon Web Services is the most popular public cloud infrastructure platform?
What is Amazon AWS?
Amazon Web Services – stands for the company and technology at the same time. Amazon provides both individuals and companies with on-demand cloud computing platforms.
The technology allows users to get their own virtual cluster of computers with all the hardware needed, hard disk, memory, operating system and such applications as web servers, databases, CRMs, etc. How it works: user logs in and opens the browser window, which acts like a real physical computer. All data is located on the server farms throughout the world.
AWS runs on a subscription basis, the fee depends on combination of usage, chosen features, required security, service options, etc. This pay-as-you-go pricing model tends to be the most convenient. There is also free-tier option available for 12 months.
Why choose Amazon Web services?
Amazon Web Services is the most trusted and rated cloud service that possesses the industry-leading reputation and powerful computing capabilities. Large and small businesses, governmental agencies and independent software developers are migrating their IT infrastructures to the AWS cloud. We will explain why they choose Amazon Web Services instead of other any other clouds.
Benefits of Amazon Web Services:
Flexibility. AWS proposes plenty of different services and user can choose exactly what he requires and the amount he needs. By the way, if your needs grow or decrease, the system automatically recalculates the rates so you don’t have to bother of choosing another plan.
Security. Be sure your data will be stored and transferred absolutely secured and privately.
- AWS data centers are guarded both physically 24/7 and over the internet.
- Data centers are relocated all over the world that can save your data even during the natural disasters.
- You configure the access to your data and can make it totally private or totally public.
- You can track the activity of the users across your AWS infrastructure.
Amazon AWS pricing is one of its distinctive features. The system is very simple – you pay only for that services that you actually use. To experience all the advantages of the cloud, Amazon Web Services provides all users with 12 months Free Tier. This is enough to convince the majority of users.
What Amazon Web Services we use?
Amazon Web Services offers a bunch of services with the possibility to chose only needed ones. For example, we use such products for our projects:
Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) is made for easy setup, operating and scaling a cloud relational database. It provides worthwhile output and automates laborious administration tasks so the user can focus on his application. Amazon RDS is compatible with such common database engines like Amazon Aurora, MySQL, Oracle etc, so if you have an application that is already operating with existing databases, it will also work with Amazon RDS. Moreover, you can always migrate to Amazon RDS using AWS Database Migration Service.
Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) allows the user to run application programs in the AWS public cloud. The service spins up the virtual machine which works like a real computer, to provide corresponding capacities for any IT project. The service is rather flexible and allows you to choose any type of operating systems or software packages.
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) provides developers and IT teams with safe and secure object storage. It gives the user the flexibility to control who can access your data, securely upload and download it. Amazon S3 helps you to get most of your data by making sure it stored safely, available when needed and scalable as you need growth. Amazon cloud has enough storage and power to store and analyze big data.
Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) is a fully managed and scalable message queuing system made to decouple serverless application components. It allows transferring the secure data confidentially between application and cloud storage. SQS guarantees the exact order, of messages being processed.
Amazon Elastic Transcoder allows you to convert media files between different digital media formats in the cloud. You can easily transform the media that is stored in the Amazon cloud into the needed format for pc, smartphones, and tablets. The service advises you what kind of format is better for the particular device so you don’t need to guess what format to choose.
Elastic Load Balancing automatically distributes incoming web traffic across multiple Amazon EC2 instances. If the instance fails, it redirects traffic to the running one automatically and restored the traffic to the failed instance as soon as it is restored. Practically Elastic Load Balancing is a traffic manager within Amazon cloud.
Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service) is a simple and flexible messaging service. It works with Amazon SQS and other services to provide messaging solution for cloud applications. With the help of SNS, you can send messages to a large number of subscribers at once. The second capacity of SNS is sending push notifications to any type of device: iOS, Android, Fire OS, Windows, Baidu. It can even work with macOS desktops and Voice over IP (VoIP) apps on iOS devices. SNS is a perfect solution for sending updates, promos, news to individual users, a subset of users, or all of your users, using a single message.
Amazon CloudFront serves for content delivery. It transfers data, videos, applications and APIs to the viewers with the high speed and quick response time. It is integrated with the most with popular AWS services.
Amazon Auto Scaling is a tool, maintaining the capacity of the EC2 instances in accordance with the limits you define. It can automatically expand the power of instances you’ve chosen during the peak of activity on the server and decrease the output during the standstill. Using Amazon Auto Scaling reduces costs and prevents from manual control of the instances.
How to move your project to Amazon cloud?
Being so convenient, flexible and reliable at the same time, AWS remains the perfect solution for businesses. The majority of our clients prefers to host their projects on AWS or ask us to migrate them to this cloud service. Before shifting to the cloud you should weigh the pros and cons and be ready to face challenges like:
- your staff and processes that must change and adapt to the new technologies;
- don’t try to put everything at once. Plan what data and services will be shifted to the cloud at first;
- legacy systems won’t work with cloud applications.
Successful digital transformation requires investments in technologies, people and processes that drive business value. These investments include funding for critical initiatives that support the digital enterprise, such as cloud, cybersecurity and customer experience. You have to be clear at every step of the transition.