AWS Cloud, Amazon’s Crown Jewel That Redefined Digital Infrastructure, Turns 15

Since its launch on March 14, 2006, AWS became the world’s biggest cloud vendor by revenue. Check out how the company pioneered the cloud computing era and how it brought the product from the drawing board to the market.

Amazon Web Services or Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) launched this week in 2006 with just eight microservices. Now, 15 years later, with 300 microservices, over 100 trillion objects, and $45 billion annual revenue under the beltOpens a new window , the tech giant pioneered a whole new industry which we now know as cloud computing.

In 2015, AWS S3 was launched as a highly scalable, reliable, low-latency, and inexpensive data storage infrastructure. AWS then relied on its experience and leveraged technical know-how from managing the vast array of computing infrastructure required to keep Amazon.com afloat.

The cloud computing service was initially conceptualized by an AWS engineer Allan Vermeulen on a napkin. The possibility of Vermeulen’s pay-as-you-go model for unlimited storage becoming a reality was feasible since the wheels had already been set in motion by Andy JassyOpens a new window , who had then suggested selling digital infrastructure.

“We started with a simple conceptual model: Uniquely named buckets that could hold any number of objects, each identified by a string key. The initial API was equally simple: create a bucket, list all buckets, put an object, get an object, and put an access control list,” wrote Jeff BarrOpens a new window , Vice President & Chief Evangelist at AWS, in a blog. “This simplicity helped us to avoid any one-way doors and left a lot of room for us to evolve S3 in response to customer feedback.”

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Building on S3, AWS has since evolved as a major cloud vendor and the biggest enterprise storage vendorOpens a new window globally, rivaling Dell, Microsoft, and HPE. AWS leads in the infrastructure-as-a-service space and is an undisputed leader, followed by Microsoft’s Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, IBM, and others.

The company’s early foray into cloud computing allowed it to spearhead offerings to enable large-scale digital transformation for companies of all sizes across multiple industries. The most significant example in recent times, for example, is the reliance of pharma company Moderna on AWS cloud services for the development of its vaccine used against the novel coronavirus.

Besides Moderna, Airbnb, Netflix, LinkedIn, Facebook, BBC, Twitter, even China’s Baidu and other big-name service providers leverage cloud computing services offered by AWS. Ben SaundersOpens a new window , former VP of Strategy & Consulting for EMEA at IT services consultancy Contino wroteOpens a new window , “By mid-2015, Netflix had gone ‘all-in’, closing the last of its major data centres and moving all of its IT operations to AWS. Other enterprises have also gone all-in with AWS, including Intuit, Hertz, and Time, Inc.”

“These companies have demonstrated their willingness to trust AWS with their entire IT operations, including transactions, customer databases, and the rest of the information infrastructure on which they depend. This level of commitment and trust on the part of long-established (and often very conservative) enterprises speaks volumes about the ability of AWS to meet the needs of enterprise-level clients,” he noted.

See Also: Cloud Wars: Azure Closes the Gap on AWS with 50% YoY Growth

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General Electric Oil & Gas also migrated over 350 of its applications to AWS cloud and ended up slashing more than half of its average cost of ownership in the process.

AWS also supports AI, database, edge/IoT, machine learning, serverless deployments. The company has essentially shaken up the foundations of web-driven operations, enabling it to eclipse Amazon.com’s profits by 59% in 2020Opens a new window .  

Amazon’s offspring is a major revenue generator — last year, S3 crossed the $45 billion Opens a new window mark in global revenue. The service has grown exponentially and has expanded beyond the original design (that could store 20 billion objects) to a 100 trillion capacity.

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Besides a soaring customer base, its ecosystem partnerships have enabled it to maintain a lead over competitors.

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