Better Business in the Cloud - Migrating to Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is an on-demand cloud computing platform for businesses to power their web applications in the cloud. AWS offers many cloud management tools and services to their customers. The first AWS platform was publically available in 2002, and Amazon is continuing to evolve their solutions and expand their service offerings for their customers. AWS offers many services for cloud storage, database management, and they are supporting newer technologies like Machine Learning, Internet of Things (IOT), and Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR).

Our team has leveraged AWS to support many of our clients’ applications, particularly migrating their robust business applications into the cloud for increased performance, security, and reliability. An added benefit of AWS is it is cost effective; all of their pricing is based on the AWS setup and services selected to fit each unique application’s requirements. Amazon offers pay-as-you-go options, discounts by reserving instances, and also offers volume based discounts. AWS is currently used by over 1 million customers and has an expanding global presence; AWS is currently available in 21 regions around the world and they are continuing to grow their digital reach.

Features Offered by AWS

AWS offers many on-demand tools and services to their customers and enables them to modify and change their subscribed services as needed. Here are a few:

• EC2 instances for server configuration and hosting
• RDS options to quickly setup dedicated instances for databases that are fully managed by AWS’s support team
• Auto-scaling and elastic load balancing, which means IT departments no longer have to estimate their computing needs
• Reliable backups and disaster recovery
• CloudWatch to monitor real-time analytics
• CloudFront Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• Secure environments with multi-factor authentication and encrypted data storage options
• Versioning
• And much more…

Benefits of Being in the Cloud

We have seen significant performance increases in the applications that we have migrated to AWS; on top of that, our clients have seen increased cost savings from the migration! We encourage anyone that is experiencing issues with latency, and/or want to save on hosting costs to explore migrating to the cloud. Here are some other benefits we have seen when using AWS:

• Scalability - AWS scales with your application and database by offering tools to quickly spin up or shut off additional servers as needed, within minutes. They even offer auto-scaling options that upon setup can be left to AWS to manage autonomously. There are no long-term commitments or upfront expenses for AWS.
• On-Demand Management - AWS comes with the AWS Management Console which gives you visibility and control of all your AWS services; you can sign-up for new services, manage existing services, as well as access robust analytics for ongoing server monitoring.
• Agnostic – AWS doesn’t favor operating systems or programming languages over another in the cloud; they support a range of databases, operating systems, and programming languages.
• Reliability - AWS has impressive reliability in regards to uptime and scalability – for this reason many enterprise businesses like Comcast and large web apps like Netflix are hosted on AWS.
• Sustainability – AWS is committed to sustainability and our environment. They aim to use 100% renewable energy to power their data centers and continue to move the needle by continuing to announce new wind and solar farm projects.

We migrated one of our client’s robust and high traffic web applications to AWS. Once we moved them to the cloud, our client saw a 2x to 3x performance increase and they are seeing approximately $45,000 a year in hosting cost savings from the move!

To Cloud or Not to Cloud – Is That Even a Question?

More and more businesses and organizations are turning to the cloud as a great solution for secure hosting, increased cybersecurity, and on-demand management tools to better support and scale their applications. AWS allows organizations to work faster, reduce downtime, ensure a great user experience, and generate a higher revenue. Additionally, many organizations and businesses are choosing AWS over other cloud solutions because Amazon is constantly evolving their services to better support their customers. Check out the latest updates AWS has released.

AWS is dependable, cost-effective, and trusted by many organizations and continues to have a positive impact on a business’ bottom line. Are you interested in moving your applications to the cloud to save on server management costs and headaches from recurring downtime? Reach out to us to schedule a consultation to discuss cloud options that can better support you and your users.