Practically Speaking about Amazon Web Services – Part 1: The Evolution of Amazon AWS

Practically Speaking about Cloud Computing – Series by Cloudtweaks

Practically speaking: Gartner declared that Cloud Computing is at its peak of the Hype Cycle with inflated expectations in 2010. We are witnessing the same in reality now. The talk is no longer about its definitions or security concerns. As cloud computing is entering into the offices of CIOs, CTOs, CFOs and CEOs with a bang, it is execution time. In this Practically Speaking Cloud Computing Series in Cloudtweaks, let us have information-exchange of practical knowledge and experience.

Practically Speaking about Amazon Web Services – Part I: “The Evolution of Amazon AWS”

Last week Amazon celebrated their fourth birthday of its Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (Amazon EC2). No doubt that Amazon Web Services is the pioneer and poster child of cloud computing.  It is quite appropriate that we take Amazon Web Services as first to go for Practically Speaking:

Cloudtweaks Cloud Computing talks.

If we have a look at Google Trends for cloud computing, we can note that the whole thing started in the year 2007. Since then, particularly in the past four years, 2009 and 2010 have been the years of peak. Almost all major hardware and software IT vendors announced their strategy and service offerings in these two years. They include Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM, Google, HP, Dell, Intel and so many others.

Google Trends for cloud computing all regions_ Cloudtweaks chart.

However, Amazon Web Services started its Amazon EC2 Service from the year 2006 itself.

Google Trends for Amazon Web Services all regions Cloudtweaks Chart.

The Amazon Cloud Evolution

With one region, one instance type and one pricing model in 2006, Amazon EC2 has grown to,

Four regions: US East, US West, Europe,  Asia Pacific.
Nine Instance Types: Standard Instances – Three types as Small, Large and Extra Large.
High Memory Instances – Three types as High-Memory Extra Large, High-Memory Double Extra Large, High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large.
High CPU Instances – Two types as High-CPU Medium, High-CPU Extra Large.
Cluster Compute Instances – As one type Cluster Compute Quadruple Extra Large.

These nine instance types are available in different operating systems: Windows Server 2003/2008, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Open Solaris, Fedora, openSUSE Linux, Gentoo Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu Linux, Debian.

Pricing Models:As for as the pricing model goes, now, there are three different pricing models.
On Demand Instance pricing, Reserved Instance pricing and Spot Instance pricing.
The products and services offered by Amazon Web Services ranges from Computing to Monitoring through Storage, Content Delivery, Database, Ecommerce and Messaging.

What these regions, instance types and pricing models mean to enterprises?

Read Part 2 of this series...

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