Overview of Amazon Web Services - Overview of Amazon Web Services
IntroductionAre you Well-Architected?

Overview of Amazon Web Services

Publication date: June 3, 2022 (Document history)

Amazon Web Services offers a broad set of global cloud-based products including compute, storage, databases, analytics, networking, mobile, developer tools, management tools, IoT, security, and enterprise applications: on-demand, available in seconds, with pay-as-you-go pricing. From data warehousing to deployment tools, directories to content delivery, over 200 AWS services are available. New services can be provisioned quickly, without the upfront fixed expense. This allows enterprises, start-ups, small and medium-sized businesses, and customers in the public sector to access the building blocks they need to respond quickly to changing business requirements. This whitepaper provides you with an overview of the benefits of the AWS Cloud and introduces you to the services that make up the platform.

Introduction

In 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) began offering IT infrastructure services to businesses as web services—now commonly known as cloud computing. One of the key benefits of cloud computing is the opportunity to replace upfront capital infrastructure expenses with low variable costs that scale with your business. With the cloud, businesses no longer need to plan for and procure servers and other IT infrastructure weeks or months in advance. Instead, they can instantly spin up hundreds or thousands of servers in minutes and deliver results faster.

Today, AWS provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of businesses in 190 countries around the world.

The following video explores how millions of customers use AWS to take advantage of the efficiencies of cloud computing.

Are you Well-Architected?

The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps you understand the pros and cons of the decisions you make when building systems in the cloud. The six pillars of the Framework allow you to learn architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable systems. Using the AWS Well-Architected Tool, available at no charge in the AWS Management Console, you can review your workloads against these best practices by answering a set of questions for each pillar.

  • In the Serverless Application Lens, we focus on best practices for architecting your serverless applications on AWS.

  • In the Container Build Lens, we provide cloud-agnostic best practices for building and managing containers and container images. In addition, implementation guidance and examples are provided specific to the AWS Cloud.

  • In the Machine Learning Lens, we focus on how to design, deploy, and architect your machine learning workloads in the AWS Cloud.

  • In the Data Analytics Lens, we describe a collection of customer-proven best practices for designing well-architected analytics workloads.

  • In the Hybrid Networking Lens, we focus on how to design, deploy, and architect hybrid networking for workloads in the AWS Cloud.

  • In the IoT Lens and IoT Lens Checklist, we focus on best practices for architecting your IoT applications on AWS.

  • In the SAP Lens, we describe a collection of customer-proven design principles and best practices for ensuring SAP workloads on AWS are well-architected.

  • In the Games Industry Lens, we focus on designing, architecting, and deploying your games workloads on AWS.

  • In the Streaming Media Lens, we focus on the best practices for architecting and improving your streaming media workloads on AWS.

  • In the Healthcare Industry Lens, we focus on how to design, deploy, and manage your healthcare workloads.

  • In the Financial Services Industry Lens, we focus on best practices for architecting your Financial Services Industry workloads on AWS.

  • In the HPC Lens, we focus on best practices for architecting your High Performance Computing (HPC) workloads on AWS.

  • In the SaaS Lens, we focus on best practices for architecting your software as a service (SaaS) workloads on AWS.

For more expert guidance and best practices for your cloud architecture—reference architecture deployments, diagrams, and whitepapers—refer to the AWS Architecture Center.