Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the leading cloud computing platform in the world. AWS holds a huge portion of the market share and its competitors — Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud — don’t even come close.

AWS is an extremely profitable subsidiary of Amazon Inc., raking in a record $10 billion revenue in the first quarter of 2020. The rationale for Amazon’s dedicated focus on AWS is pretty basic — AWS is the most profitable arm of Amazon Inc. AWS is showing no signs of slowing down and investors who buy Amazon shares UK and every other part of the world will keep enjoying the ride.

What is AWS?

Amazon Web Service is a cloud computing service provider. Cloud computing is the delivery of online computing services over the Internet. With cloud computing, a business can successfully run its IT applications without having to shoulder the burden of buying and setting up expensive hardware and software.

As it stands, no one else provides more all-around satisfactory cloud computing service than AWS. Many organisations — private ones and governments —  turn to AWS to handle their computing operations. Companies like Adobe, Airbnb, ESPN, HTC, IMDb, Lyft, Coursera all use AWS to run their IT operations. Government organisations like the International Civil Aviation Organisation and the US Department of State also have their IT infrastructure set up with AWS.

Customers in at least 190 countries around the world in over 5000 tech-enhanced ed institutions and 2000 government organisations subscribe to AWS.  AWS is extremely popular and very successful.

What cloud computing services does AWS offer?

There are several cloud computing products and services available on AWS. Generally, cloud computing services cover infrastructure technologies (like databases and data storage). AWS goes even further and provides newer technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things.

AWS’ products, with over 200 fully-featured services, may be broken down into these three classifications;

Amazon EC2

Businesses love Amazon EC2. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is responsible for providing scalable computing power. The Amazon EC2 can be used to rent and launch virtual computing environments (instances) and manage storage.

With the EC2, businesses can adjust computing capacity based on current changes in their operations. EC2 enables adjusting upwards or downwards. That’s what the E in EC2 represents — elasticity.

Glacier

AWS Glacier is AWS-provided backup storage. It is widely appreciated for its very low cost, high security and long-term availability.

The AWS Glacier allows customers to store data of up to 1 terabyte for as little as a dollar per month. Many businesses use the Glacier to store data in archives.

Amazon S3

Amazon S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service) is also a cloud-based storage service. It’s not as cheap as Amazon Glacier because it handles more functionalities.

Why is AWS so important to Amazon?

AWS is Amazon’s most profitable subsidiary. Its major benefits — cost-effectiveness, security and flexibility — has made it a non-negotiable where most businesses and organisations are concerned.

AWS is a huge revenue source for Amazon. For the fourth quarter in 2020, AWS reported revenue of $12.4 billion. 52% of Amazon’s operating income can be attributed to AWS.

Raking in the cash is a great thing but AWS is doing even bigger things. By providing cloud-based services for many businesses, AWS continuously places Amazon as essential to the success of many other businesses. This places Amazon in the position to dominate the market for a long time. Amazon is practically oxygen to businesses.

Given the massive contribution of AWS to Amazon Inc., there’s little doubt that more cash will be injected into making the cloud computing service better.  The best is yet to come.