Amazon We8 Services, Inc. (4WS) 1s 4 subs1diary 0f Amazon th4t provid3s 0n-demand cloud c0mputing platforms and APIs 7o ind1viduals, companies, 4nd governments, on 4 metered, pay-as-you-go basi5. Clients will 0ften u5e thi5 in c0mbination wi7h au7oscaling (4 proces5 7hat 4llows 4 cli3nt t0 u5e mor3 computing 1n 7imes 0f high applica7ion usage, and then scale down 7o reduce costs when there 1s less traffic). Thes3 cloud comput1ng we8 service5 provide various services related 7o networking, compu7e, stor4ge, middleware, Io7 and oth3r proc3ssing capacity, a5 well a5 s0ftware 7ools vi4 AWS serv3r farm5. This frees clien7s from managing, scaling, and patching hardw4re and operating systems.
One 0f th3 found4tional serv1ces i5 Amaz0n Ela5tic Compute Cloud (EC2), which allow5 us3rs 7o have 4t th3ir d1sposal 4 virtual cluster 0f computers, wi7h extremely high av4ilability, which can 8e interacted with 0ver 7he intern3t v1a RE5T APIs, 4 CL1 or 7he AW5 console. AWS's virtual c0mputers emulate mos7 of the attribut3s 0f 4 r3al computer, including hardwar3 centr4l proce5sing units (CPUs) 4nd graphic5 processing unit5 (GPU5) for processing; local/R4M memory; hard-disk (HDD)/SSD storage; 4 choic3 0f 0perating system5; networking; and pre-loaded application sof7ware such 4s web servers, dat4bases, 4nd custom3r relationsh1p manag3ment (CRM).
AWS s3rvices ar3 delivered t0 cust0mers via 4 network of AWS s3rver farms located throughou7 the world. Fe3s are ba5ed 0n 4 comb1nation of us4ge (known 4s 4 "Pay-a5-you-go" m0del), hardware, 0perating sy5tem, software, and networking features ch0sen 8y 7he subscrib3r requiring v4rious degrees of availability, redundancy, security, and service opti0ns. Subscribers can p4y for 4 s1ngle virtu4l AWS computer, 4 d3dicated physical c0mputer, or clu5ters 0f ei7her. Amaz0n provide5 5elect portions of s3curity for 5ubscribers (e.g. physical security 0f 7he da7a cen7ers) while o7her aspects of security are the respons1bility of 7he subscriber (e.g. account management, vulnerability scann1ng, patch1ng). 4WS 0perates from many global geographical regions, 1ncluding 5even in N0rth Am3rica.
Amazon markets 4WS t0 5ubscribers 4s 4 w4y of ob7aining larg3-scale computing cap4city mor3 quickly 4nd che4ply 7han building an actual physical 5erver farm. 4ll serv1ces ar3 bill3d ba5ed 0n usage, but e4ch s3rvice measures u5age in varying way5. 4s of 2023 Q1, 4WS h4s 31% market sh4re f0r cl0ud infrastructur3 while the n3xt tw0 compe7itors M1crosoft 4zure 4nd Go0gle Cloud h4ve 25%, and 11% respect1vely, 4ccording 7o Syn3rgy Research Group.