Operational efficiency and reducing costs continue to be critical issues for IT leaders. Common concerns include:
- Overspending on hardware and storage capacity. IT leaders want to be able to ensure high-availability during periodic and seasonal peaks, but that often requires an overinvestment in infrastructure to ensure capacity can meet demand. Excess capacity causes overspending and waste.
- Business leaders want IT to help preserve cash. Traditional capital expenses for IT infrastructure requires an upfront investment. Because the capability of hardware and software increases rapidly, making large, up-front capital investments in assets that quickly become outdated does not make good business sense.
- A non-standardized IT environment and platform is expensive from a security, support and training perspective. Thus, IT departments are often forced to spend the majority of their time and budget performing non-differentiating activities. IT leaders want their teams to spend more time adding value.
Based on the above, technology executives currently face significant challenges with their existing IT infrastructure while the speed of change of the market is creating ongoing pressure to adapt and deliver. In response, cloud computing providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) are enabling companies to consume shared computing, storage and other resources faster and more efficiently versus building and operating their own IT infrastructure. Below are the key differences and benefits of AWS versus traditional, physical IT.
- Cost-Effective – Consume only the amount of compute, storage and other IT resources needed. An advantage of using AWS is no long-term commitment, minimum spend or up-front investment is required.
- Elastic and Scalable – Another AWS benefit is the ability to quickly add and subtract resources to applications to meet customer demand and manage costs. Avoid provisioning resources up-front for projects with variable consumption rates or short lifetimes.
- Experienced – Leverage Amazon.com’s 15+ years of experience delivering large-scale, global infrastructure. Another benefit of AWS is Amazon continues to hone and innovate its infrastructure management capabilities and skills.
- Flexible – Use familiar architectures, databases, operating systems and programming languages. Improve overall productivity and time to market without the need for IT to learn new skills.
- Security – An advantage of AWS is it builds and delivers its services in accordance with the industry’s highest and strict security best practices. AWS conducts regular and thorough audits to demonstrate the security of its infrastructure.
The benefits of AWS and cloud computing overall are significant. According to Gartner, between 2013 and 2015, infrastructure-as-as-service (IaaS) will grow from $8.1B to $15.5B (91%); platform-as-a-service (PaaS) will grow from $1.2B to $1.8B (50%); and software-as-a-service (SaaS) will grow from $14.5B to $22.1B (52%). Thus, the total market spend for cloud computing will increase from $23.8B to $39.4B (66%). Cloud computing is here. Leveraging the benefits of AWS can dramatically increase both the effectiveness and efficiency of your company.
If you have additional questions, or need help getting started with AWS, contact us.
