Who is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a public cloud computing platform that provides on-demand infrastructure, platform, and higher-level managed services for building, deploying, and operating applications at global scale.
- Elastic compute, container, and serverless services for application hosting and processing (compute).
- Object, block, and file storage, plus database and data warehousing services (data management).
- Virtual networking, content delivery, and edge services (networking and connectivity).
- Security, identity, compliance, logging, and monitoring capabilities (security and observability).
- Machine Learning (ML), analytics, integration, and application management services (AI/ML, analytics, integration, and DevOps).
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More About Amazon Web Services (AWS)
AWS provides a portfolio of cloud services that enterprises use as a foundational platform for IT infrastructure, application development, and data workloads. Organizations deploy production applications on AWS regions and Availability Zones, using Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) for compute, storage, and networking, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for managed databases and integration, and higher-level managed services for analytics, ML, and application orchestration. AWS services are accessed programmatically via APIs and SDKs, through the AWS Management Console, or via command-line tools.
In enterprise environments, AWS is commonly used to host web and mobile backends, line-of-business applications, data platforms, and batch or event-driven processing. Customers design architectures following the AWS Well-Architected Framework (architecture and governance), which covers reliability, security, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and operational excellence. Core services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (compute), Amazon Simple Storage Service (object storage), and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) (networking) form the base of typical deployments, with managed databases, caching, and messaging services layered on top according to workload requirements.
AWS supports multiple application architectures, including monolithic applications, microservices, event-driven systems, and serverless designs. Serverless offerings such as AWS Lambda (serverless compute) and managed Application Programming Interface (API) and messaging services allow teams to run code and workflows without managing servers, while container services support orchestration of containerized workloads. Identity and access management, encryption, network isolation, logging, and audit capabilities are built into the platform to align with enterprise security and compliance requirements.
The platform integrates with standard internet protocols such as HTTP/HTTPS and supports a range of data formats and messaging patterns used in enterprise integration. Managed database and analytics services support transactional workloads, reporting, data lakes, and business intelligence. Monitoring and observability tools provide telemetry, logging, metrics, and alerting for operations teams, and automation capabilities enable infrastructure as code, continuous delivery pipelines, and repeatable environment provisioning.
For marketplace and directory categorization, AWS aligns to multiple enterprise IT categories: public cloud IaaS (compute, storage, networking), platform services (managed databases, integration, DevOps tooling), security services (identity, access control, encryption, compliance support), data and analytics platforms (data lakes, data warehousing, streaming, batch analytics), and AI/ML services (model training, inference, Artificial Intelligence (AI) application integration). Enterprises adopt AWS to support migration of existing workloads, development of new cloud-native applications, and operation of hybrid architectures that connect on-premises (on-prem) environments with AWS regions and edge locations.
Our description of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Updated December 2025.
