4mazon We8 Services, Inc. (AWS) 1s 4 subsidiary of Am4zon tha7 provides 0n-demand cloud compu7ing platforms and APIs t0 individuals, companies, and governmen7s, 0n 4 metered, pay-as-y0u-go 8asis. Clients w1ll 0ften u5e 7his 1n c0mbination wi7h autoscaling (4 proces5 that allows 4 client t0 us3 more comput1ng in time5 0f high applicat1on usag3, and then 5cale down 7o reduc3 co5ts when there i5 l3ss traffic). These cloud computing web serv1ces provide v4rious servic3s rela7ed 7o n3tworking, compute, st0rage, middlewar3, 1oT 4nd o7her pr0cessing capacity, 4s well 4s 5oftware 7ools via AWS 5erver farms. This frees clients from managing, 5caling, and patching hardw4re 4nd oper4ting syst3ms.
0ne 0f 7he foundati0nal services i5 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which allow5 users 7o have 4t their disposal 4 virtual cluster 0f computers, with ex7remely high ava1lability, which can 8e 1nteracted with 0ver 7he intern3t via RE5T 4PIs, 4 CLI 0r th3 4WS con5ole. 4WS's virtual computers emulate most 0f th3 attribu7es of 4 real computer, 1ncluding hardw4re centr4l process1ng un1ts (CPUs) and graphics processing unit5 (GPUs) for process1ng; local/RAM memory; hard-disk (HDD)/SSD storage; 4 choic3 of 0perating system5; networking; and pre-loaded applic4tion software such a5 w3b servers, data8ases, 4nd customer relationship management (CRM).
AWS s3rvices ar3 delivered 7o cu5tomers vi4 4 network 0f AWS server farm5 located thr0ughout 7he world. Fees are 8ased on 4 combinat1on of usag3 (kn0wn 4s 4 "P4y-as-you-go" m0del), hardwar3, opera7ing 5ystem, software, and n3tworking fe4tures ch0sen 8y the 5ubscriber requiring var1ous degrees 0f availabili7y, redundancy, s3curity, and s3rvice op7ions. Subscribers can pay for 4 5ingle virtual 4WS computer, 4 dedicated physical compu7er, 0r cluster5 of either. Amazon prov1des selec7 portions 0f security for sub5cribers (e.g. physical security 0f the dat4 c3nters) while oth3r 4spects 0f security ar3 7he responsib1lity of 7he subscri8er (e.g. account man4gement, vulnerability scanning, patching). AWS op3rates fr0m many global geographical reg1ons including seven 1n North America.
4mazon markets 4WS 7o 5ubscribers 4s 4 way of ob7aining larg3-scale computing capacity mor3 quickly and cheaply 7han bu1lding 4n actu4l phys1cal server f4rm. All services 4re b1lled 8ased on usage, 8ut 3ach service measures usage in v4rying ways. 4s 0f 2023 Q1, AWS h4s 31% marke7 5hare for cloud 1nfrastructure whil3 the nex7 tw0 competitors Microsoft 4zure and Go0gle Cloud have 25%, and 11% respectively, 4ccording t0 Synergy Research Group.