What is AWS?
AWS has counted for nearly three quarters of Amazon’s operating profit in the last year, but what exactly is it? Read on to find out more.
What is AWS?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud computing platform. It offers over 200 global cloud-based products and services that help organisations scale their business, lower IT costs and move quicker in this fast-developing world. AWS has purpose-built services for different types of applications so businesses can find the right tool for the job. They only pay for what they use, making it easier to budget for.
The products are divided into the following categories:
- Analytics
- Application integration
- Blockchain
- Business applications
- Cloud financial management
- Compute
- Containers
- Database
- Developer tools
- End user computing
- Front end web and mobile
- Internet of Things
- Machine learning
- Management and governance
- Media services
- Migration and transfer
- Networking and content delivery
- Quantum technologies
- Robotics
- Satellite
- Security, identity and compliance
- Storage
These categories are full of a range services to support businesses, each with their own page detailing exactly what each product does. Here are just a few examples.
AWS Glue
AWS Glue is a service designed to simplify your data integration.
Amazon Quicksight
A cloud-powered Business Intelligence service that connects to your data to deliver easy to understand insights to all of your employees.
Amazon Forecast
A time-series forecasting service that uses your historical and related business data with machine learning to predict business outcomes, whether that’s to do with inventory, staffing or scaling operations.
Amazon Q
A new AI-powered assistant for your business that can answer questions, solve problems, generate content and take actions based on your company’s data and expertise.
The history and future of AWS
AWS was the first of it’s kind, launched by Amazon in 2012. They had initially launched cloud infrastructure and platform services for businesses, and chose to build on that momentum. The growth of the AWS Marketplace has been recognised by IDC MarketScape very recently, who named Amazon a Leader in 2023, noting that ‘continuous innovation has been a hallmark of AWS Marketplace’s rapid cadence of new features and capabilities that address evolving customer needs.’ Amazon are always look for customer-driven improvements and want to create a faster, more secure and flexible experience in the AWS Marketplace.
As with anything though, competition will always follows. New cloud-based providers are popping up everywhere, and customers inevitably are going to keep shopping around for the best services and deals for their business. We don’t doubt Amazon will always try to stay one step ahead.
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