You might have heard AWS being bandied about, it certainly is a very useful and efficient service, but what exactly is it? AWS stands for Amazon Web Services and is a collection of Cloud products ranging from data storage to website hosting to machine learning. It can be utilised in many different ways to improve the efficiency and capabilities of businesses. Need your employees to be globally mobile but still access their work – Amazon WorkSpaces could help. Your in-house server infrastructure reached capacity – get rid of it entirely and move to the pay-as-you-go AWS cloud server.

AWS offers a multitude of products for a multitude of business needs. This handy guide will take you through the categories of AWS products, so you can see what sort of services your business could benefit from as well as some of the most useful products that could be applicable to you.

AWS Product Categories

AWS products are grouped into categories based on their functionality.

Most relevant product categories:

Compute – run workloads on the cloud

Storage – secure your data on the cloud with scalable solutions

Database – secure, reliable cloud databases for software and storage

Security, Identity & Compliance – protect your cloud processes through systems such as access management, encryption, and data security

Management & Governance – control your cloud environment through products with monitoring and management capabilities

Networking and Content Delivery – integrate with AWS using networking services to connect with the cloud

Front-End Web & Mobile – develop, deploy and operate iOS, Android, React Native and JavaScript applications

Analytics – a broad range of products to meet your analytical requirements, including data cataloguing, operational analytics and big data processing and many more

Machine Learning – automate processes and improve accuracy and customer experience through data analysis and artificial intelligence

Other product categories:

Application Integration – facilitate the communication between applications while keeping them decoupled so failure in one does not impact others

Blockchain – set-up and manage blockchain databases in either a centralised or decentralised ownership model

Business Applications – enable your business’ work with products for communication, productivity and for customer service and marketing communications

Cloud Financial Management – track and organise usage data and costs

Containers – manage and run your containers (executable packages of your software’s code, dependencies, and configurations) on the cloud

Developer Tools – create applications with help from tools for building, testing, deploying, and hosting code

End User Computing – connect workers with the necessary applications and desktops for work

Games – develop games with products to help you build, run, and grow your creations

Internet of Things – link and manage devices and process the data

Media Services – produce, process, store and deliver video and digital content

Migration & Transfer – move your current workloads to the AWS cloud

Quantum Technologies – access quantum computing power though the cloud

Robotics – simulate robotics with the ability to run, scale and automate your work

Satellite – control satellite communications without the need for your own ground station

AWS Products

The following are some examples of AWS products and their uses:

Amazon EC2 – EC2 stands for Elastic Compute Cloud. It is a virtual application server, meaning that it is a cloud server on which you can deploy your applications and it processes all the code. Because it is scalable it can meet your businesses changing requirements.

Amazon S3 – This is the Amazon Simple Storage Service. Just as the name suggests, this is a storage service for your business’ data. It offers secure storage that is scalable to your business needs.

AWS IAM – Identity and Access Management, this AWS product secures access to AWS services and resources. It allows the management of users, access keys and permissions to keep your data safe.

Amazon VPC – The Amazon Virtual Private Cloud. With this product you are attaining an isolated section of the AWS cloud to build your own virtual network and you can specify IP range and subnets.

AWS Lambda – frees you from provisioning or managing servers by running code in the cloud in response to events. For example, it can be triggered by an upload to an Amazon cloud storage system and Lambda will execute the function.

Amazon DynamoDB – a NoSQL database product that secures and backs-up your data while automatically scaling to your requirements.

Amazon API Gateway – API stands for application programming interface and is the connection that allows programmes to communicate. API Gateway is Amazon’s product for API, and they have both RESTful APIs (for HTTP APIs that require API proxy functionality), REST APIs (for APIs that require API management features and API proxy functionality), and WebSocket APIs (for message transfer between your server and your customer’s browser, e.g. chat apps and streaming dashboards, where two-way communication needs persistent connection).

AWS CloudFormation – this product it used to automate the configuration and deployment of other AWS products. Templates are used to automatically provision and configure other products for deployment, making deployment easier and faster.

Want to explore the full range of AWS products? Click here.

It’s easy to get lost in this myriad of services but what does it mean for you and your business? The AWS services we’ve gone through are the behind the scenes tools that work to deliver complete digital transformation for businesses, and you don’t need to become an expert in any of them to achieve the advantages that can be gained. AWS service providers work with you to understand your business, what you want to achieve, and then recommend the services needed to achieve your aims.

Still curious about AWS? Want to know how they can be best utilised for your business? As members of the Amazon Partner Network (APN), Pulsion Technology are experts in using AWS for cloud migration. Contact us to take part in a discovery session and see what your business could be.