How companies are benifited from AWS

Q) What is cloud ?

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services like servers, storages and more over the Internet. The companies that offer these computing services are called cloud providers. They charge for cloud computing services based on usage.

Cloud computing is usually classified on the basis of location, or on the service that the cloud is offering.

Based on a cloud location, we can classify cloud as:

§ Public,

§ Private,

§ Hybrid

§ Community Cloud

Based on a service that the cloud is offering, we classify as:

§ IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service)

§ PaaS(Platform-as-a-Service)

§ SaaS(Software-as-a-Service)

What is the cloud exactly?

The first thing you should understand about the cloud is that it is not a physical thing. The cloud is a network of servers, and each server has a different function. Some servers use computing power to run applications or "deliver a service."

For example, Adobe recently moved its creative services to the cloud. You can no longer buy the Creative Suite (Photoshop, InDesign, etc.) in a box set. Instead, you must pay a monthly subscription fee to use each individual service. That's why it's now called the "Adobe Creative Cloud" instead.

Other servers in the network are responsible for storing data.

For example, when you take a picture on your smartphone, it is stored on your phone's internal memory drive. However, when you upload the photos to Instagram, you are uploading it to the cloud.

What are the benefits to working in the cloud?

The business decision to "move to the cloud" is often financially motivated. Companies used to have to buy their own hardware equipment, the value of which depreciated over time. But now with the cloud, companies only have to pay for what they use. This model makes it easy to quickly scale use up or down.

Working on the cloud allows your company to be nimble, efficient and cost-effective. If your company quickly needs access to more resources, it can scale quickly in the cloud. Conversely, if it needs to downscale or reduce resources, it can do so just as easily. Because of this scalability, the cloud's elasticity is often compared to that of a rubber band.

How big is the cloud?

No one knows exactly how much space can be provided by cloud-based services like Google, Amazon or Facebook; however, according to this Infographics, the cloud can store about 1 Exabyte.

But how big is an Exabyte?

An Exabyte of memory can hold the same amount of data as 4.2 million Macbook Pro hard drives. That's a lot of storage.

How secure is the cloud?

The cloud is great for storing non-sensitive information, like to-do lists on platforms like Evernote. But unsurprisingly, the idea of storing personal information somewhere "up in the cloud" makes many people wary.

Some companies, like Google, are responding to this worry accordingly. Google recently announced it would automatically encrypt data for paid cloud storage service users.

Big Data cloud

The issues of transferring large amounts of data to the cloud as well as data security once the data is in the cloud initially hampered adoption of cloud for big data, but now that much data originates in the cloud and with the advent of bare -metal service , the cloud has become a solution for use cases including business analytics and geospatial analysis.

Which Cloud service we should use ?

We can see that AWS has more percentage.

The real world example of using AWS

• Netflix

The most well-known example of cloud computing on a large scale comes from Netflix. The digital-video service runs its computing needs on Amazon's IaaS platform, with no traditional data centers of its own. This arrangement works despite Netflix and Amazon being direct rivals in the video market.

Netflix runs its web sites and general computing tools on Amazon's EC2/AWS platform. The software-driven nature of EC2 lets Netflix provision new servers, or fire up fresh copies of overloaded ones on the fly. The company has developed a large collection of tools to manage its AWS resources, and often publishes these programs under open-source licenses.

The actual video streams are not served by Amazon. Instead, Netflix has designed its own specialized hardware boxes  that collect and then publish video content on a massive scale. These are installed as close to the consumer as possible, often in the operating centers of internet service providers, or in vital hubs of online connectivity . If the Amazon relationship shows the power of a strong public cloud-computing service, these so-called Open Connect boxes highlight the private cloud model instead.

• Unilever

Unilever North America, the U.S. branch of the venerable global-scale manufacturer of food, household, and other consumer products, found that its time-to-market (crucial in the consumer goods industry) was being held back by the lack of standardised technology among its on-premises IT facilities and websites.

Unilever conducted an exhaustive review of the available cloud-based options, and finally chose to migrate to AWS, using a full range of AWS services to support 1,700 digital marketing web properties on a worldwide basis.

For Unilever, the advantages include increased speed of rollout for a website (now two days, rather than the pre-AWS average of two weeks), and the increased speed at which changes to a site or a marketing campaign can be made. Unilever also uses AWS for comprehensive backup and disaster recovery, and for rapid deployment of standardised infrastructure.

• GE Oil & Gas

The oil and gas division of General Electric has migrated 350+ applications to AWS, cutting the average cost of ownership by over 50%, according to their own estimate. For GE, the migration process is ongoing, with constant review of on-premises applications and services to see which ones are the best candidates for transfer to the cloud.

The ability to monitor the use of cloud-based applications is important to GE's IT team, since it allows them to accurately gauge expenses and savings, to determine when services should be active (and thus billable), and when they should be turned off.

AWS' capacity for handling large amounts of data is important to GE as well. The oil and gas division needs to be able to process enormous volumes of mission-critical automated pipeline inspection data. It is using AWS technology to store and transport the data, and for data analysis and processing, saving time and improving the quality of the results.

• Keyllogg's

The Kellogg Company, or Kellogg’s, a familiar breakfast-table name, is a company with a long history (founded in 1888), with worldwide operations. For Kellogg’s (as is the case throughout the breakfast-cereal industry), product promotions are all-important.

The Kellogg company had been relying on an on-premises database for modelling marketing campaigns and analysing promotion and sales data, but the system, which could run no more than a single simulation per day, was no longer able to keep up with the company's needs.

As a replacement, Kellogg’s chose a SAP promotion planning and simulation application. At the same time, they chose to run the SAP application on AWS, rather than on-premises. The decision to go with AWS was motivated by a number of factors, including speed and overall capacity. (The system handles 16 TB of weekly sales data, with several dozen marketing simulations on a weekly basis.) AWS also offered high availability, reduced cost, and flexibility in IT planning. The combination of SAP and AWS (with its support for SAP software) has given Kellogg’s a significant advantage in a very competitive market.

• Shell

Like many other large businesses operating on a global scale, energy giant Shell has taken steps to protect itself from the rising threat of cyber attacks. In particular, the Netherlands-headquartered firm decided to look at ways it could improve its security information and event management solution.

To stay ahead of cyber criminals, Shell required the ability to run detailed analysis of trends over time and continually spot vulnerabilities through a cyberthreat hunting function. The challenge? Its SIEM solution just didn’t have the capacity to perform these critical functionalities.

Using around 100 EC2 instances and Splunk Enterprise Security applications, the firm has implemented a much more powerful cyber security solution for analysing real-time and historical data. This means Shell can protect itself from current and emerging cyber threats. According to Shell Cyber Defence manager Oskar Brink, the firm is “finding more than twice as many events that could have resulted in security incidents and breaches”.

• Expedia

As cloud and mobile technologies continue to dominate the business landscape, lots of firms are moving away from physical data centres in search for more sustainable and efficient alternatives.

Travel comparison website Expedia is an excellent example, having unveiled plans to move 80% of mission-critical applications to the cloud through AWS. The firm decided to do this after discovering that the main reason for people leaving its website was due to error pages. Expedia wanted customers to get around its websites quickly and without running into any issues.

Using a range of AWS solutions, Expedia claims that it has become more resilient, has the ability to develop new applications faster and can save millions in the process. Magesh Chandramouli, Principal Architect, said: “By using AWS, I’m not bound by throughput limitations or CPU capacity. When I think of AWS, freedom is the first word that comes to mind”.

• Airbnb

It’s not just long established companies using AWS to run their compute estate. Airbnb, a community rental marketplace for property owners and travellers, lists more than 7 million accommodations and is a long-time user of AWS.

Catering for millions of customers globally, the firm has continued to invest in AWS solutions as it has grown rapidly in the past few years. Currently, it has 200 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances to manage its core application, memcache and search servers; Elastic Load Balancing for handling incoming traffic between these servers; Amazon Elastic MapReduce for processing and disseminating data; Amazon Simple Storage Service for backups and static files; and Amazon CloudWatch.

Since implementing these solutions, Airbnb takes the view that it’s better equipped for future growth and can save money across its operations. Tobi Knaup, an engineer at Airbnb, said: “Because of AWS, there has always been an easy answer (in terms of time required and cost) to scale our site.”

There are the name of some more companies which use Amazon Web Services (AWS) :

• Twitch
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Turner Broadcasting
• BBC
• Baidu
• ESPN
• Adobe
• Twitter

Thank you...

- Chirag Nagori