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Cloud

Published

Jul 20, 2023

min read

Published

Jul 20, 2023

min read

Published

Jul 20, 2023

min read

Published

Jul 20, 2023

min read

The War of On-Demand Cloud Computing Platforms

This theoretical essay explores the war of on-demand cloud computing platforms.

2.1 The Octopus

Although the Amazon we all know today started as an online bookstore, it is now recognized as a platform that brings together all kinds of services, from the sale of the most banal items, streaming multimedia content, to the sale of cars.

Figura 1 - Gráfico dos serviços Amazon - "Amazon is at war with everyone", TeamBlind 2019

But the company's biggest source of profit is generated thanks to the rental of its servers, for storage and processing power, we are talking about Amazon Web Services, better known as AWS, a branch of cloud computing that keeps about 33% of the current internet running1.

Amazon Web Services were created in the early 20002s, as a way to support the Amazon Store because the CEO did not want his platform to depend on other infrastructures to support his projects.

It was then on March 19, 2006, after 6 years of development that "S3" was launched, the Simple Storage Service, the first of the numerous services that AWS offers today.

This was the first step in the implementation of the organization that Amazon envisioned for the entire internet.

Figura 2 - AWS Market Share em 2018, CBInsights, 2018

By using part of the astronomical revenues for the construction of infrastructure, the so-called Data Centers provide storage, processing power and even conversational services for any individual willing to pay, with plans ranging from the free package to huge amounts to support the costs of infrastructures that are used by millions simultaneously.

2.2 The other side of the coin

What drives more than 1 million companies to use AWS services? Powerful companies like Netflix, Twitch, LinkedIn, and even Facebook hand over $58 million a month in exchange for Amazon's services. This is because the infrastructures necessary for processing require an initial investment and constant maintenance that translates into a much higher cost than that of permanent rental.

AWS has become so popular that institutions such as NASA, the CIA, and various international Ministries rely on the platform to host their servers.

But what does Amazon's imminent monopoly mean?

In 20153, Netflix, IMDb and Airbnb, among others, were down for several hours, because of a human error that forced the restart of one of the main cores of the S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service) service and that cost the giant 160 million dollars. This was the first of since named "cloudapocalypse".

To get a sense of how many services we use AWS on a daily basis without waiting for the next break, we can use a plug-in available on GitHub, called "F**k off AWS"4 that completely disconnects the user from all services that use the giant's services.

2.3 The huge web

The webpage for the products provided to AWS users features more than 150 items to choose from, sub-categorized into 25 distinct classes.

Figure 3 - All Available Categories, AWS 2020

Due to the high extent that would be a consequence of the exhaustive analysis of each of the products, I will limit the explanation only to the units of greatest importance for the curricular unit.

For a better understanding of the available panoply of categories provided by AWS, I will explain the most important items that I considered essential in the following modes: Compute, Storage, Migration, Security, and Databases:

1) Computing:

a) EC2 – Elastic Compute Cloud, better known as EC2, is a server concierge that allows the customer to run numerous applications on virtual machines, according to the chosen plan. Through Amazon Machine Images (AMI), you can choose the operating system to use (Windows or Linux) or upload a custom OS. There are, however, 3 types of instances and "models" for which this type of technology is used:

i) Compute Optimized: For operations that require powerful processors with multiple action cores;

ii) Memory Optimized: Instances that offer more memory for speed of access and operation;

iii) Storage Optimized: Machines prepared with high-end SSD disks for frequent and fast access.

b) Lightsail: Considered the perfect framework for beginners, it allows a very basic configuration of a server with just a few clicks. It automatically equips the server with WordPress, Magento, Joomla and other web applications that are quite common in the environment. Although it seems simple, Lightsail is not just a tool for beginners, and is widely used in the professional world due to its flexibility and cost/efficiency, for example, a server with 512MB of RAM, 1-core processor and 20GB of storage reaches customers for only 3 euros per month5.

2) Storage:

a) S3: The Simple Storage Service that Amazon offers is the most adopted system for data storage because it is extremely cheap and offers a "pay as you go" regime, which adds to the price each GB of memory used;

b) Glacier: Similar to a giant glacier that accumulates ice from decades spent adrift at sea, this type of storage is for customers who intend to store data in bulk for decades. Each search for a file can take hours, but the attractive price and the infrequency of searching and the need to query appeal to many users to trust TB's of data in Glacier.

3) Migration:

a) DMS: The Database Migration Service is a service created with the purpose of migrating on-site databases to the AWS platform, although it is mostly used to migrate between databases, for example: Oracle to MySQL6;

b) SnowBall: An interesting product, since it was created by Amazon to move TB's of data within AWS servers in a few minutes.

4) Safety:

a) IAM: The Identity and Access Management Service allows the administrator to manage users, create groups and manage large masses of users;

b) CM: The Certificate Manager platform was created with the purpose of providing free SSL certificates for all domains associated with AWS through Route537.

5) Databases:

a) Amazon RDS: The database management system authored by Amazon, allows you to run relational databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, among others. Amazon's system can automatically manage these platforms, with antivirus services and regular updates;

b) Amazon DynamoDB: A database that stands out for its response speed and latency in the order of milliseconds and for being NoSQL;

c) Amazon ElastiCache: A web-service that allows you to store cache data within the cloud. Usually used to remove processing load from common databases by storing the most frequent queries in memory;

d) Amazon RedShift: A system launched for the purpose of storing large amounts of data, such as warehouse management, which allows "OLAP" queries to be performed with some ease8.

3. Competition

3.1 The distant podium

After a brief look at the services offered by Amazon, it's not shocking to realize that AWS actually ranks first when it comes to consumer choice. However, the monopoly is decreasing thanks to Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, which have been gaining market share in recent years9, thanks to their integration with test development platforms and the fact that they are open source.

Figure 4 - Growth & market share 2018-2019, ParkMyCloud 2020

4. Conclusion

So what does the future hold for cloud computing platforms?

By gathering all the analysis data carried out, we can then point to a future in which more and more companies will depend on external servers and their management, making the existing physical assets almost nil.

Companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google are increasingly competing with each other for more attractive prices, more fulfilment solutions and, above all, greater ease of implementation, and, of course, those who benefit from all this are consumers who see the range of choices increase significantly without the gap that once existed for competition.