There's no doubt Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's leading cloud platform. It got there by offering more functionality than competitors—not just a wide array of services but features, too—not to mention flexibility, security, and operational expertise.
AWS has refused to stand still, innovating to invent new technologies that transform the way its customers work. A big part of its success is its large and dynamic community, including active customers from virtually every industry, systems integrators like Adaptavist, and independent software vendors who redesign their technology to work on AWS.
Here we take a closer look at six of the big benefits customers stand to gain from embracing cloud computing with AWS and joining that community.
1. Swap capital expense for variable expense
Data centres are costly to set up, run, and maintain—especially if you don't know how much capacity you need and when you’ll need it. But with AWS, you only ever pay for what you need, switching your capital expenses for variable or operational expenses. Instead of paying to keep infrastructure up and running in data centres and servers, you can focus on delivering new products to your customers.
2. Benefit from massive economies of scale
You know that massive customer base we mentioned at the top? Cloud computing with AWS allows you to make the most of all those other people using it too. With millions of customers worldwide, AWS is buying at scale, so you can achieve a lower variable cost from them than you could ever hope to get by going at it alone. And the savings don't stop when you become a customer—Amazon passes on savings periodically as services become more affordable. As AWS has grown, it's lowered its prices more than 60 times.
3. Stop guessing about capacity
Capacity planning is hard. What typically happens is organisations make an educated guess, but a guess nonetheless, about the capacity they need before deploying an application. They then end up with idle resources or limited capacity, impacting their customers. Some needs you can plan for to an extent—such as a Black Friday sale for an e-commerce site—but you can't predict everything.
With AWS, all that worrying goes out the window. If you need more capacity, you can arrange it there and then. All AWS data centres have up to 40 per cent extra capacity to accommodate its customers' unforeseen needs. You can always access as much (or as little) as you like, scaling automatically to suit your organisation within minutes.
4. Increase speed and agility
Time is money, and agility is essential. With new IT resources only a click away, instances can be created in minutes, so there's no waiting around to start projects. Your teams can originate ideas, get the resources they need, and make them a reality, helping get new features out to customers much faster than before. And because AWS tools take care of a lot of the heavy lifting, your people don't have to reinvent the wheel for each new application or feature.
5. Focus on what matters
By not spending money running and maintaining data centres, you can focus on other things besides infrastructure. Those projects set your business apart, put you head and shoulders above your competitors, and ensure you deliver value for your customers.
6. Go global in minutes
Growing a business globally used to take years, but these days you can be up and running in a new region in minutes. Without the cloud, you'll need to set up on-prem in your new destination, but AWS lets you deploy your application in multiple regions worldwide in just a few clicks. By harnessing the power of AWS' data centres worldwide, your customers benefit from reduced latency and a better experience.
If you're just getting started with AWS, we're here to help. As an AWS Partner, we bring the experience and expertise you need to make the most of all these benefits and ensure your applications are flexible, reliable, and scalable.
