AWS

AWS (Amazon Web Services) is Amazon's cloud platform, and it comes down to this: you buy compute, storage, networking, databases, and security as services. You usually pay for what you use, and everything runs in Amazon's data centers, professionally set up and distributed around the world.

Servers in many locations, so you are always close to the user.
Everything comes from one provider, a full set of services under one roof.
The system scales with your product, whether that means two users or two million.

What is AWS?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a collection of about 200 Glossary · In briefcloudThe cloud is a collective term for computing power, storage, databases and software available over a network, usually from an external provider's data centres.Read more services, and that number grows every year. Those services span AI, machine learning, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service (Glossary · In briefSaaSSaaS stands for Software as a Service: software a provider manages centrally and makes available to users over the internet.Read more), and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), all on the same platform. For organizations there are tools such as Glossary · In briefdatabaseA database is a structured collection of data that software can store, retrieve and modify. A database management system controls access to that data.Read more storage and serious compute capacity for hire.

AWS lets you set up hosting and other cloud services for your software.

When do you use AWS?

AWS initially functions as a cloud version of an on-premises data center, essentially a remote data center you set up for your company. You still choose how much server capacity you keep, how long you use it, and with which specifications. Compared with other cloud providers, AWS stands out through its vast catalog of services that work together and give your software real flexibility and reliability. If your website suddenly gets five times as many visitors, or your software hits a usage spike, AWS spreads the load across servers with Glossary · In briefload balancingLoad balancing distributes network traffic or other tasks across multiple servers so one server does not have to handle all the work.Read more. If a process crashes somewhere, AWS can route traffic to a working server to reduce disruption for users.

A flexible market leader

More than 80% of Fortune 500 companies now use AWS cloud infrastructure. Familiar names such as Reddit, Instagram, Pinterest, and Netflix are among them. Startups do not look away from AWS either. With the flexible pay-per-use principle you only pay for what you actually consume, not for capacity that sits idle. That lets you adjust capacity to what your company needs. That character makes AWS suited to rapid scale-up or scale-down, for hard-to-predict workloads, or when you face peaks and troughs in usage. Worldwide the platform has millions of active customers, and the AWS ecosystem is the largest and most lively of them all.

Migrating to AWS

Anyone who thinks you can simply "set up" AWS, a quick setup and done, will be disappointed. It is a fine-grained infrastructure with rules, options, and enough complexity to lose your way easily. That is why we guide companies through the full migration of their infrastructure to AWS. We start by inventorying: what is going on, what are your requirements, and what do you expect exactly? From there we set everything up so it lines up tightly with what your company needs.

AWS as a management choice

We do not choose AWS only because it offers many services, but mainly because managed services such as Fargate, RDS, S3, and ACM fit software that needs to keep running while teams keep developing. In our operational approach we therefore connect AWS to Terraform, Glossary · In briefCI/CDCI/CD is a way of working in which teams frequently merge software changes, check them automatically and use a defined sequence of steps to prepare or deploy them to production.Read more, and Glossary · In briefmonitoringMonitoring systematically tracks software, infrastructure or processes through measurements and checks. Deviations can trigger alerts so an administrator can investigate.Read more. That keeps infrastructure from turning into a loose collection of manual steps and makes it part of a controlled delivery process.

Public proof in practice

In public cases such as Zetprofiel, Recharge.com, and IVBB, you can see the same pattern return. AWS does not show up there as a generic hosting choice, but as the base under software that needs reliability, clear ownership boundaries, and controlled rollout.

We transfer intellectual property with the greatest care. Every project we do for a client remains entirely that client's. That is arranged for a reason: from day one the infrastructure runs directly under your company's name.

Ewout — Founder 10KB

Advantages

Pay-per-use, and that creates a practical picture, because your bill really only rises with what you consume;
Services are activated in a snap and just as easy to switch off again;
Our technology scales smoothly with whatever you still want.

Disadvantages

Getting the most out of AWS only works if you know exactly what you are doing. There is no way around it: invest in training for your developers, or bring someone with real experience on board.

AWS