No matter what cloud strategy you are considering, there is an exorbitant amount of information out there, but sometimes it makes sense to start with a quick “101.” Amazon’s latest earnings report underscored the footprint AWS has in the public cloud market. So, it is time to understand the basics: What is AWS, how does it work, who’s using it?
1. What Is Amazon Web Services?
Amazon.com explains it best: Amazon Web Services provides on-demand computing resources and services in the cloud, with pay-as-you-go pricing. For example, you can run a server on AWS that you can log on to, configure, secure, and run just as you would a server that’s sitting in front of you.
" Using AWS resources instead of your own is like purchasing electricity from a power company instead of running your own generator, and it provides many of the same benefits: capacity exactly matches your need, you pay only for what you use, economies of scale result in lower costs, and the service is provided by a vendor experienced in running large-scale networks. "
2. What you should consider when it comes to the public cloud strategy?
- Do you want to rent or do you want to buy?
- Do you want to manage the plumbing that supports your workloads and applications, or do you want someone else to?
- Are you comfortable with the idea of someone else being responsible for the security of your infrastructure and applications, or would you prefer to handle it internally?
3. Differences between AWS and Microsoft Azure
AWS and Azure both offer similar functionality to customers in terms of computing, storage, and networking, but where do they differ? Both providers are both supporting Docker containers but Microsoft has also been creating its own Hyper-V container technology. AWS’s main offering is its EC2 instances which can be customized to a large degree, while Azure’s compute offering is focused on Virtual Machines. AWS bills by the hour, Azure bills by the minute. Perhaps one of the most important things to consider is that although comparable, AWS can often be seen as the cheaper option according to Gartner reports.
These are some of the questions you may want to ask before deciding if AWS and the Public Cloud make sense for you and your organization.
4. EC2 – AWS’s backbone and how it works
AWS provides a number of core services including Amazon VPC, Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, Amazon Route 53, AWS Lambda, Amazon ECS, and the backbone of all it, Amazon Elastic Compute or Amazon EC2.
EC2 is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity that you use to build and host your software systems. It’s primarily designed to make web-scale cloud computing easier for developers and allows customers to obtain and configure capacity easily. One of the primary benefits of EC2 is the ability to capitalize on the autoscaling capabilities the cloud presents to us. Applications can be scaled up or down based on demand by taking advantage of Amazon’s to compute and storage resources when and where you need them.
Envision a scenario where traffic increases substantially during particular hours throughout the day, or activity peaks on certain days of the month. The computing resources required during these times is higher and as a result, organizations will either dedicate machines to be reserved for it or simply over architect the environment. Neither of these is particularly efficient strategies. With AWS, EC2 can automatically scale the number of VMs you have running during these peak times to handle resource demands as the increase or decrease. Of course, this is just one of many benefits associated with EC2, but having the ability to increase and decrease capacity with minutes rather than hours or days provides enterprises a massive competitive advantage.
5. Adoption
With high profile customers like Netflix, Nokia, Yelp, Expedia, Samsung, Comcast and others all leveraging AWS in some form or fashion it’s clear that Amazon is a top if not THE top contender in the public cloud space. With a worldwide market share of over 31% in Q4 of 2015, the phrase “moving to the cloud” is becoming less of a long-term strategy and more of a right now reality. For those organizations already invested heavily in Microsoft, Azure may be the more logical step but in general, the AWS appears to offer the widest range of cloud offerings and maturity in their corner.
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