Top Nine Reasons to Master AWS

AWS: not a recommendation but a standard

In the view of most users, Amazon is a huge online store that delivers goods anywhere in the world. But to a great extent (63% of total profit), the success of the company is influenced by its cloud computing subsidiary — Amazon Web Services. Let’s discuss why AWS is so successful and why an IT professional should learn cloud computing.

Why does AWS captivate users?

Amazon employs about 1.5 million people, the store sells over 12 million items, and over 200 million users visit the website monthly. To achieve such tremendous success, the company has been gradually improving its internal infrastructure. Over time, enhanced Amazon technology has become able to process large amounts of data (orders, launching web applications, storing information, and so on).

At some time, Amazon management came up with the idea of selling their state-of-the-art solution to other organizations. As a result, numerous companies have a great opportunity to replace obsolete bulky data centers with convenient and efficient AWS.

Since then, Amazon cloud has gained recognition and trust. Almost all services running on the Internet are tied to AWS. These are Netflix, Zoom, Pinterest, Twitter, and so on. Businesses of all sizes use AWS, from small startups to financial corporations. We can say that it was the first cloud in the modern sense of the word. Although solutions from Google and Microsoft have entered the competition, AWS is still ahead of them.

Services that Amazon cloud offers

AWS has dozens of data centers (including physical ones) in 80 availability zones (AZ) located in 25 regions all over the world. All AZs are linked by network connections. Such an organization provides a reliable infrastructure where data centers and servers are resistant to failures.

There are more than 26 offerings on AWS that can improve your state of affairs, reduce costs, and ensure that your business will successfully scale. Amazon cloud offers data storage, computing services, mobile, game, and web development tools, instant messengers, migration programs, and many more. The pool of services is huge, from storage and management to security.

Reasons to learn AWS

The interest in cloud computing is growing rapidly, and IDC figures prove this: by 2022, cloud spending had risen to $370 billion. And most of that share comes from AWS (76%). Here are a few more reasons why IT professionals should pay attention to this dominant platform.

Mainly, businesses migrate to AWS

Small, medium and large enterprises see the benefits of cloud technologies and the prospects of cloud-based machine learning and artificial intelligence. Instead of huge data centers that require a lot of energy, maintenance, and upgrades, you can use AWS virtual services.

With global IP data center traffic hitting 1.7 zettabytes per month by the end of 2021 and the global market growing, non-cloud businesses are looking to keep up with the popular trend. Of course, they need cloud professionals who will help them successfully and correctly move from a conventional IT infrastructure to a virtual one. Therefore, mastering AWS can become a big step forward in an IT professional’s career.

Working with the cloud is inevitable for IT specialists

As practice shows, the amount of data is growing rapidly, and the use of PCs for processing becomes insufficient. Companies want to easily scale their work, which is possible thanks to AWS-powered programs.

Forbes also gathered IT professionals’ opinions about cloud technologies. Most of them believe that the development of AI and ML is driving interest in the cloud. Moreover, companies are striving for flexibility and mobility and trying to implement the IoT and DevOps whenever possible. Therefore, working with the cloud, in particular, with AWS, will become not so much a recommendation as a mandatory skill for an advanced IT specialist.

AWS: the fastest-growing public cloud

As we have mentioned above, AWS is a pioneer in its niche. It was seven years ahead of its competitors. By the end of the first year of the platform’s operation, the company employed more than 170,000 programmers. And the number of employees has kept growing all the time. AWS has increased its global market share to 52%. For about 25 years, public cloud revenue has been steadily growing and will reach $354.6 billion by the end of 2022.

For an IT specialist, the steady growth of AWS is a good reason to start learning cloud computing and develop as a professional.

AWS: the most popular cloud platform

According to Investopedia, in 2020, AWS had a 32.4% market share. It owned 47.8% of the market in the Infrastructure as a Service sector, as well as 25.2% in the Platform as a Service segment. There were more than 13,000,000 servers around the world, and almost half of them belonged to AWS.

The Amazon cloud platform is so well established that even the US government uses it. If the pace set by AWS continues, the knowledge of this cloud platform will be extremely useful.

Free account and reasonable prices

AWS has provided ways to learn how to use the platform by offering a free account to newcomers and learners. An owner of such a perpetual “bonus” account can master some free services (EC2, S3, Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon RDS, and others). You can use flexible services to hone your skills and become an advanced user.

The demand for AWS experts exceeds the supply

A study of the US market showed that it is difficult for business owners to find specialists with decent knowledge of cloud technologies. In addition, the job search site Indeed found that 60% of job postings from employers include “cloud computing” among the required skills. It turned out that there are 6–12 times more vacancies than applicants for a position.

Availability of education

There are no obstacles to mastering AWS, the main thing is desire and free time. Specialists have access to textbooks, courses, and forums for studying the theory. In addition, you can use a free account as we have mentioned above. There are also several online and offline AWS communities that support professionals learning the platform and help them properly plan their education and build a career after certification.

Certification helps professionals confirm their knowledge and reliability. An AWS “diploma” suggests to an employer that an applicant is well-trained and able to handle the job. In addition, the more certifications an organization has, the more benefits it can receive through the AWS partner network.

Opportunity to choose a specialization

When a specialist learns cloud technologies and the best web programming languages, they are not limited to one specific type of activity. This knowledge is relevant to cloud architects, developers, system administrators, DevOps engineers, AWS network or big data specialists, cybersecurity experts, and so on. For example, you can study AWS with a focus on ML or data storage.

Ensuring high-level security

Cloud security is still controversial. But AWS has dealt with this issue most efficiently. Security includes infrastructure and data protection and threat detection.

To help protect a web application from attacks, AWS filters traffic based on predefined rules (such as IP addresses, HTTP message headers and bodies, and so on) and provides encryption, key management, and threat detection. The platform services also continuously monitor information about suspicious activity and potential vulnerabilities. In this way, organizations can relieve themselves of security management. The cloud provider will be responsible for this.

Conclusion

Once just a drop in Amazon’s business ocean, AWS has slowly evolved into a $12.7 billion tech giant. It is a very successful business by any measure. With reputable companies such as NASA, General Electrics, Netflix, IMDb, and Airbnb partnering with the platform, AWS is the leader in the cloud computing market. As Vincent Quah points out, the cloud is no longer an experiment, it’s a standard. Therefore, knowledge of the cloud can be the key to success for any IT specialist.

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