AWS, the leading cloud service provider with a 33% market share, is how companies are changing business in today’s digital world. What is AWS? Why are millions of active customers using it across the world? We will explore this powerful platform that is seriously making an impact in 2025 , when it generated $25 billion in net sales in just the first quarter!
Founded in 2006, Amazon Web Services has changed the game for companies to handle their computing needs – removing sunk costs and efforts in acquiring and maintaining hardware servers. There is considerable benefit using AWS as it now has over 200 services – see EC2 (virtual servers), S3 (Storage), RDS (Databases), and Lambda (serverless computing). It has everything to meet the technology needs of businesses of all sizes. AWS provides coverage for technology companies in more than 245 countries and territories therefore the spectrum of the services are truly global for organizations seeking reliable cloud-based infrastructure.
In this guide, we are going to cover what Amazon AWS is used for, what AWS does, and why organizations from beginning startups to large enterprises like Netflix, or even NASA, utilize AWS. We will cover the pay-as-you-go model, security, and popular services that contribute to AWS service being used extensively by one-third of the market.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a complete cloud computing platform that provides individuals and organizations on-demand access to technology resources through the Internet. AWS enables users to scale up or down as needed, only paying for the services they use. In short, AWS offers everything from computing power and storage to databases and application services, using a pay-as-you-go pricing model over 200 fully featured services.
AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a pay-as-you-go basis. Users can access hundreds of cloud computing services and gain instant access to any IT resources that they may need, without needing to invest in physical hardware and data centers. This means there are no upfront capital expenses and businesses can shift fixed costs of infrastructure on a variable based on usage. AWS has millions of customers including startups, enterprises, and government agencies in 190 countries around the world.
AWS consists of a global network of data centers interconnected by high-speed fiber that provides the foundation for AWS cloud services. The data centers contain all the hardware, operating systems, and infrastructure on which your services are offered. When you use AWS cloud services, you are renting that computer or computing resources that Amazon owns and AWS manages.
AWS offers a platform for users to request resources through web applications or APIs and it provides those same resources almost immediately. Consequently, organization can essentially create hundreds or even thousands of servers in minutes instead of weeks or months preparing to buy hardware or planning to deploy servers. Therefore, AWS does all the heavy lifting with server maintenance and patching, as well as scaling and secure, so you can focus your time and effort on new applications and innovation.
Key services that define the functionality of AWS include:
Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) offers scalable virtual servers in the cloud. It acts as your virtual computer, with custom specifications of size, power, and location, all while being accessible from anywhere — you can think of it as having virtually unlimited size! EC2 is a versatile solution for many use cases, from pointing a simple DNS Record to a website, to sophisticated distributed applications with multiple nodes.
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is designed for near-unlimited object storage with 99.999999999% durability. S3 is a safe repository for data on websites, mobile applications, backups, analytics data, etc.
Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) removes the pains of managing a database by automating processes such as hardware provisioning, setup, patching, and backups, all while supporting multiple database engines and allowing you to choose the database engine that best suits your application requirements.
AWS Lambda allows you to run code under a serverless platform without the burden of managing servers and infrastructure. You simply upload your code to Lambda, and it pulls in everything needed to run and scale the code from scratch, without any administration!
Companies around the world use AWS primarily for cost savings and operational advantages. The platform offers an unmatched blend of financial and technical flexibility to offer enterprises of any size and in any industry.
AWS Pricing is set up like a utility: you only pay for the actual resources you are using. This allows you to avoid the high upfront costs of purchasing hardware and infrastructure. This type of pricing is especially important for businesses with variable workloads because you do not over provision or underutilize your resources. There are more ways that AWS can go beyond simply pay-as-you-go pricing to save additional costs:
Through these flexible pricing options, businesses typically compared to standard on-demand rates reduce cloud costs by up to 75%.
AWS is very good at supporting differing loads and variable requests using automatic scaling. The Auto Scaling feature on AWS automatically adjusts your resources based on your immediate needs. For example, businesses can launch hundreds or thousands of servers quickly within minutes versus ramping up over pre-planned weeks waiting for hardware.
AWS also holds an impressive degree of flexibility with:
This flexibility can be a boon to startups who typically have uncertain growth patterns as the underlying infrastructure can flexually scale in real-time to accommodate increased loads without any interruption of service.
AWS implements comprehensive security measures across its infrastructure. The platform incorporates robust Identity and Access Management (IAM), encryption protocols, security groups, and firewalls to safeguard data. Furthermore, AWS and compliance certifications complies with 143 security standards, including:
The broad compliance standards make AWS an excellent option for pharma and other highly regulated areas that work with sensitive information.
Through the AWS global infrastructure, organizations can now deploy applications close and personal to end users anywhere in the world. Each AWS Region has a minimum of three independent, physically separated Availability Zones (AZs) to provide high availability and fault isolation, which is designed to provide outstanding reliability and the highest level of infrastructure availability when compared to other cloud providers.
The worldwide network provides low latency and a very high quality of network access through a fully redundant layer 2, 400 GbE, fiber network backbone. As such, through the platform, businesses can take advantage of a strong global infrastructure without the management burden of physical data centers.
Now let’s explore some of the core AWS services that comprise AWS’ cloud offerings. These base components take separate forms but function together to establish a total cloud computing ecosystem.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) allows for configurable virtual machines in the cloud, and produces a cloud alternative to standard data center servers. Virtual instances in AWS EC2 provide secure, resizable compute capacity with complete control of your computing resources. You can quickly provision EC2 instances, including these features:
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) provides virtually unlimited, highly durable object storage for any kind of data. S3 is designed for 99.999999999% durability, and stores data as objects in buckets, which makes it great for backups, archives, and as a foundation for data lakes. S3 storage classes allow for different combinations of access speed and costs based on your data usage patterns.
Lambda lets you run your code without provisioning or managing servers. Just upload your code, and Lambda takes care of everything else your code needs in the execution environment. In addition, Lambda automatically scales your application by running your code in response to each event. You only pay for the compute time you consume, and you can even have billing calculated down to the millisecond. Lambda works with multiple programming languages, including Node.js, Python, Java, and Go.
The Relational Database Service (RDS) makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. RDS takes care of common database tasks such as backups, software patching, and replication. RDS provides support for several database engines, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, and SQL Server. In addition, RDS provides automated high availability configurations and automated point-in-time recovery.
CloudFront is a content delivery service that lets you send content with low latency to customers globally through the global network of data centers (edge locations). A CDN (content delivery network) such as CloudFront caches your content in the edge locations closest to visitors to your website, effectively speeding up the loading of both dynamic and static content on the web. CloudFront is designed to work seamlessly with other AWS services, and together, you can create a very robust content delivery solution.
SageMaker provides a full suite for building, training, and deploying machine learning models. SageMaker is fully managed infrastructure and workflows that help to simplify every step of the ML development lifecycle. It has built-in algorithms for common ML tasks and frameworks as well as support for custom frameworks, enabling both novice and experienced data scientists to develop ML solutions quickly.
AWS is being used by large organizations to power their business across many sectors and often highlights the versatility and reliability of Amazon’s cloud platform in reality-context use cases.
Netflix uses AWS to deliver billions of hours of streaming content every month to more than 280 million paid subscribers in over 190 countries. As a cloud stronghold, it is actively using AWS hosting resources in four AWS Regions with intelligent traffic management routing customers through thousands of auto-scaling compute server groups. Netflix is able to manage temporary traffic spikes that could tear down their architecture by predictive automated pre-scaling and fast responsive auto-scaling. AWS allows Netflix to provision thousands of servers, and terabytes of data storage in minutes; making it possible for members to globally stream video content from anywhere.
Initially selecting AWS for its customizability, they’re now hosting over 1 billion guests in 220 countries and regions. They’ve also attracted 5 million hosts. Before moving to AWS, Airbnb was dealing with persistent server crashes with their existing system, and it was solely due to demand. As a result, they shifted to AWS, enabling auto-scaling and adjusting capacity based on demand, and maintaining consistent performance through periods of heavy activity. The company is currently running around 200 EC2 instances across applications, data caching, and search.
Working with AWS, NASA is delivering Earth science data to researchers across the globe. The partnership has enabled NASA to migrate terabytes of satellite data and computer modeling datasets to an AWS-based system. The partnership involves selected NASA satellite and global change data sets such as; temperature, precipitation, and forest cover data. In addition, NASA is using AWS to process satellite data for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that is expected to generate around 70 TB per day from the NISAR mission. The cloud migration offers end-users benefits through improved data accessibility, investment in open-source tools, and collaborative workspace.
Capital One was the first bank to go all-in on AWS and shutter eight on-premises data centers. The company then morphed into a “digital bank” with 11,000 technology team members creating innovative customer experiences. Capital One now runs more than 2,000 applications in AWS. Through the migration, Capital One has reduced 10 megawatts of power consumption annually, which is the equivalent of 650,000 LED light bulbs. The bank has a serverless-first policy and a multi-region architecture for resiliency supporting mission-critical financial applications.
Currently, AWS is the leading brand when it comes to cloud computing services. AWS has given companies and organizations an opportunity to manage their infrastructure differently from years past and is changing the way we think about infrastructure management. In this guide, we have shown how Amazon’s cloud platform has over 200 services to suit organizations of all sizes in 245 different countries and territories. The platform removes the hassle of managing physical hardware, providing businesses with a fast and flexible platform like never before.
Most importantly, AWS changes the economics of IT with a pay-as-you-go model. Businesses pay only for the resources they use versus at average prices. In comparison with average prices, the pay-as-you-go model can save businesses up to 75% off cloud costs. This model is a huge advantage for businesses that have fluctuating workloads or uncertain growth patterns.
The core services we looked at (EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS) are compliant, secure, and form the basis of the enormous dioramic ecosystem provided by AWS, working together, and providing customers the ability to develop powerful solutions based on their requirements.
Also, AWS is always compliant, secure, and have even more security models (for very secure non-cloud environments) as well as compliant models, making it usable in even the most regulated industries. Also, with AWS’s even greater and greater global footprint, opportunities to access your business through low latency connections is attainable even though multiple independent Availability Zones in each region.143 standards
Much of the evidence about the flexibility and reliability of AWS exists in the real-world scenario:
AWS continues to shape the growing cloud computing space as more organizations see the value in moving away from capital-heavy infrastructures to flexible, scalable options in the cloud. As AWS demonstrates its ability to continually innovate and grow, it is reasonable to assume that AWS will lead the way in the cloud computing space. It is well-positioned to be a partner for organizations as they continue to grow and modernize, especially in a more digital world.
With 33% market share in cloud computing, AWS has 200 plus services to help businesses scale their operations while they can forget about running any physical server management.
Regardless if you are a startup or enterprise, what AWS does is take the capital investment of IT and move it into operational spending, enabling businesses to scale without any infrastructure speedbumps, while keeping secure enterprise-level service which is never limited by geography.
Q1. What is AWS exactly and how does it work?
AWS is Amazon’s cloud computing platform, which provides on-demand IT services over the internet. It works by allowing users to access and use computing, storage and databases as needed, without having to manage physical hardware. Users can quickly increase or decrease resources as they need, and only pay for what they use.
Q2. What are the primary benefits of AWS for companies?
The main benefits of AWS are the cost savings with its pay as you go pricing models, added scalability for growth and expansion, security, global reach for low-latency access, and their flexibility to choose from over 200 different services. These benefits provide opportunities for every type of business, from startups to large enterprises and everything in between.
Q3. What are some of the most used AWS services? What are their use cases?
AWS services that are popular include EC2 for Virtual Servers, S3 for object storage, Lambda for serverless computing, RDS for managed database, CloudFront for a content delivery network, and SageMaker for machine learning. These services can address many types of computing needs and can be combined together to offer completely integrated cloud solutions.
Q4. Can beginners use AWS?
Yes, AWS allows beginners to use the platform. The interface is fairly easy to navigate, and they even include a free tier to be able to experiment with many different services without immediate onboarding costs. They also have a wealth of documentation, tutorials, and training to help beginners train on it.
Q5. Are you able to provide examples of major companies that are using AWS?
Major companies that are using AWS. Netflix uses AWS to stream content to millions of users all over the world. Airbnb uses AWS for processing their worldwide listing of accommodations. NASA uses AWS to process and store big data generated from scientific experiments. Capital One has moved their entire infrastructure to AWS for safe and efficient financial service.
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