AWS (Amazon Web Services)

AWS is the market-leading cloud infrastructure provider, powering everything from startups to Fortune 500 companies with on-demand computing resources.

Why it matters

• Eliminates upfront capital expenditure for hardware and data centers.
• Provides global infrastructure with 30+ geographic regions for low-latency access.
• Offers pay-as-you-go pricing that scales with your actual usage.
• Enables rapid experimentation and deployment without procurement delays.

Core service categories

• Compute: EC2 virtual servers, Lambda serverless functions, ECS/EKS container orchestration.
• Storage: S3 object storage, EBS block storage, Glacier archival.
• Database: RDS managed databases, DynamoDB NoSQL, Aurora high-performance relational.
• Networking: VPC private networks, CloudFront CDN, Route 53 DNS.
• Security: IAM access management, KMS encryption, GuardDuty threat detection.

When to use AWS

• You need enterprise-grade infrastructure without managing hardware.
• Your workloads require global availability and disaster recovery.
• You want to leverage managed services to reduce operational overhead.
• Compliance requirements demand industry-recognized certifications (SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS).

Common pitfalls

• Leaving default IAM permissions too permissive.
• Forgetting to enable encryption at rest and in transit.
• Not implementing proper cost monitoring and budget alerts.
• Overlooking the shared responsibility model for security.