Cloud Computing With AWS – Part 1

In 2006, Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) and started offering online services in the form of web services to other companies, commonly known as cloud computing. These cloud-based services included storage, compute, and human intelligence, allowing companies to rent virtual computers to run their own programs and applications.

The following article is an introduction to cloud computing with AWS – Part 1, more parts will be added sooner.

Introduction to cloud computing

What is Cloud?
What is cloud computing?
6 advantages of cloud computing.
Types of cloud computing.
Cloud providers.
Cloud computing with AWS.
AWS Customers.
The Big Spenders.
Some AWS Case Studies.

What is cloud?

« Cloud » refers to a network of servers accessed over the Internet, located in data centers around the world as well as the software and databases running on those servers.

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of computing resources on a pay-as-you-go basis over the Internet through a cloud service platform. So you don’t need to make a big initial investment in hardware and spend a lot of time managing it. Instead, whether you’re running small or large web and mobile applications, you can instantly provision the type and size of computing resources you need to deliver results faster.

Cloud computing provides an easy way to access various application services (servers, storage, databases, etc.) over the Internet, and cloud service platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) own and maintain the network-connected hardware required for these application services. As a cloud customer, all you should do is select and use the service that suits your needs.

6 advantages of cloud computing

Here are 6 key reasons to use cloud computing:

Trade fixed expense for variable expense – This allows you to trade capital expenditures (CAPEX) for operational OPEX (OPEX). So instead of investing heavily in building hardware and managing data centers, you only pay for what you use and how much you use. The cloud allows individuals and businesses to focus on producing and delivering results rather than maintaining and building their own infrastructure.
Benefit from massive economies of scale – When it comes to the cloud, imagine hundreds of thousands of customers seeking the same services. This allows providers like AWS to achieve higher economies of scale and by consequence lower pay-as-you-go prices, which are difficult or even impossible for companies to achieve such low variable costs in their own data centers.
Stop guessing capacity – One of the biggest challenges companies face when building their own infrastructure is estimating the capacity they will need over time, often sitting on expensive idle resources or struggling with limited capacity. For e-commerce websites, traffic may increase during certain periods —Black Friday— companies with on-premises data centers have two scenarios, either over-provisioning resources or limiting capacity, both of which suffer losses. Cloud computing makes the services you provide flexible, allowing you to scale up and down as needed.
Increase speed and agility – With cloud computing, new IT resources are just a click away, companies no longer need to waste time and money making new resources available for developers, and can instead focus on product development and delivery.
Stop spending money running and maintaining data centers – Instead of wasting time managing and maintaining costly and complex on-premises data centers, cloud computing lets you focus on projects that differentiate your business.
Go global in minutes – Cloud computing allows you to deploy solutions on a global scale across multiple regions with low latency and low cost in just a few clicks and less time.

Types of cloud computing

With the popularity of cloud computing, different models and deployment strategies have appeared to meet the specific users’ needs and each one offers a specific level of control over the cloud. Thus, understanding the different types of cloud computing can help you decide which service is best suited to your needs and use cases.

Cloud computing models

Cloud computing comes in three different service models Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), each serving a unique set of business needs.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – With this model, a company rents fundamental resources such as networking features, computers (virtual or dedicated hardware), and data storage space from a cloud provider and builds applications using that cloud infrastructure. IaaS offers the highest level of flexibility and management control over IT resources.

Example: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Platform as a Service (PaaS) – With this model, everything you need to build applications over the Internet, including development tools, infrastructure, and operating systems is provided. This allows developers to work more efficiently by focusing on building and deploying instead of managing applications and dealing with infrastructure. PaaS services include application design, development, and hosting.

Example: AWS Lambda

Software as a Service (SaaS) – With this model, customers do not have to install and run software applications on their computers. Target applications are run and managed by service providers and are available over the Internet. Clients can access anytime from any device as long as they have an internet connection.

Example: Slack

Cloud computing deployment models

Cloud computing deployment models describe how the cloud services are made available to users. In other words, define where the infrastructure for the deployment is located and who controls that infrastructure.

Deciding which deployment model to use is one of the most important cloud deployment decisions. This is because each cloud deployment model has a different value proposition and associated costs to meet different organizational requirements. Therefore, in order to make an informed decision, you need to be aware of the characteristics of each deployment model.

The 3 main deployment models associated with cloud computing are:

Public Cloud – Known as « cloud », is a model in which cloud providers enable organizations and individuals to consume on-demand computing services over the public Internet, allowing individual servers to be shared between different companies. This is a situation called « multi-tenancy » because multiple tenant servers rent storage space within the same server, making security and privacy a big concern. Applications in the public cloud were either built from scratch or migrated from existing infrastructure.
Private Cloud – Known as « on-premises », is a server, data center, or distributed network that is entirely dedicated to an organization and provides access to systems, services and users within the organization. It’s more secure and safer than the public cloud, as it only serves only a certain number of trusted users within an organization.
Hybrid Cloud – A hybrid deployment is a way to connect infrastructure and applications between public cloud resources and existing resources that are not located in the cloud (on-premises legacy servers). The most commonly used method of hybrid deployment is the composition of public and private infrastructure. In general, organizations use their private cloud for critical activities, while their public cloud for non-critical activities.

Cloud providers

When it comes to providing cloud services, giant providers are:

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Google Cloud
Microsoft Azure
IBM Cloud
Alibaba Cloud
Salesforce
Oracle Cloud
Tencent Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has established and maintained its position as a leader in the cloud infrastructure market at an early stage. According to estimates from Synergy Research Group, Amazon’s market share in the worldwide cloud infrastructure market amounted to 34% in the second quarter of 2022, still exceeding its two biggest competitors, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.