Amazon Web Services: The Elephant in the Cloud
What is Amazon Web Services?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud service offered by technology giant Amazon (you may have heard of them). Specifically, AWS offers computing power, database storage, content delivery and a suite of other offerings that can support a range of organisational functions.
According to Amazon:
“Amazon Web Services (AWS) 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.”
What is a Cloud Platform?
A Cloud Platform, or Cloud Computing, offers everything a standard server would, but via the internet. Think of it as a utility. Only you are renting computing power.
Why Use a Cloud Platform?
Traditionally, digital infrastructure would be hosted on-site or some other off-site premise. In this paradigm, the organisation physically owned and maintained the entire infrastructure end-to-end. The key difference with the Cloud is that a host (typically a third-party) leases the infrastructure on which services are run.
The Benefits of Cloud Computing
Efficiency Savings: By hosting data centres and computing in the Cloud, organisations can make significant cost savings. This is the cost of physical space, disaster recovery, utility power e.t.c. Once on the cloud platform, services are pay-as-you-go, meaning you only pay for the features and storage capacity used.
Security: There is a common misconception that cloud computing is less secure. The reality is that since a cloud provider’s primary concern is to monitor and keep data secure, it means that they can–and do–often employ the brightest minds. This is more efficient than bespoke in-house systems, where an organisation might divide its resources between different aspects of its technological architecture.
Agility & Flexibility: Change is the only constant. With this in mind, whenever an organisation's needs change, a cloud-based offering can scale accordingly and more promptly than an organisation having to implement the changes itself.
How is Cloud Computing Changing Data?
When you think about it, information or intelligence has always held value throughout history. Census information has been collected for centuries for taxation, farm yields for feeding populations, army troop counts, movements & equipment for waging war. Its potential is only now beginning to be realised, as each piece of minute detail is logged. What has changed this is the volume of data that can now be gathered and stored.
Technological Products of AWS
A handful of component technologies are:
Amazon RDS – Managed Relational Database Service for MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server and MariaDB
Amazon Redshift – Fast, Simple, Cost-effective Data Warehousing
Amazon ElastiCache – In-memory Caching System
Amazon EMR – Hosted Hadoop Framework
Amazon Kinesis – Work with Real-time Streaming Data
AWS Glue – Prepare and load data
Amazon Quicksight – Fast Business Analytics Service
Amazon SageMaker – Build, train, and deploy Machine Learning at Scale
Amazon Comprehend – discover insights and relationships in a text
Amazon Lex – Build voice and Text chatbot