Exploring Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The AWS Well-Architected Framework serves as a guide in designing an effective, secure, reliable, efficient and cost effective cloud infrastructure.  This consists of design principles specifically discussing the 5 pillars of a well-architected framework.  Based on industry best practices it'll help you assess your designs for any gaps or limitations that you may have overlooked and will give you a basis to work on in creating a holistic solution. When should you use it? Ideally, you should review this documentation thoroughly and have a clear understanding or the 5 pillars before designing your cloud infrastructure or solution.  However, in most cases when the solution might have already been deployed beforehand,  you can use it as a guide to assess the solution design implemented and make corrective actions where deemed necessary based on your finding. What are the 5 Pillars? The 5 Pillars comprises the following: Operational Excellence Security Reliabil...

The Game Development category currently only has 1 service available.  This service is designed for deploying game servers in the cloud. Below is the service available in this category. Amazon GameLift        - Amazon GameLift is a fully managed service for deploying, operating, and scaling session-based multiplayer game servers in the cloud. Built on the AWS computing environment, GameLift lets you scale high performance game servers up and down to meet player demand.        - Save thousands of engineering hours and reduce cost with Amazon GameLift, the dedicated game server hosting and matchmaking solution built on AWS.

The IoT or Internet of Things category is a collection of services that are specifically designed for the management and implementation of IoT technology.  These allows you to easily integrate IoT models or functions into your application. Below are the various IoT services available in this category. IoT Core        - AWS IoT provides secure, bi-directional communication between Internet-connected devices such as sensors, actuators, embedded micro-controllers, or smart appliances and the AWS Cloud. This enables you to collect telemetry data from multiple devices, and store and analyze the data. You can also create applications that enable your users to control these devices from their phones or tablets. IoT 1-Click       - AWS IoT 1-Click is a service that makes it easy for simple devices to trigger AWS Lambda functions that execute a specific action. Some examples of possible actions include calling technical support, reordering goods and ...

The End User Computing category comprises of services which cater to Workstation Services needs.  It provides virtualized computer terminals as well as an Application Streaming service in a client-server setup. Here are the two services that are currently in this category. WorkSpaces        - Amazon Workspaces enables you to provision virtual, cloud-based Microsoft Windows desktops for your users, known as WorkSpaces.  It eliminates the need to procure and deploy hardware or install complex software.  You can quickly add or remove users as your needs change.  Users can access their virtual desktops from multiple devices or web browsers.        - Virtual terminals (VDI).  A way of having your desktop in the cloud. WorkDocs        - Amazon WorkDocs is a fully managed, secure, enterprise storage and sharing service with strong administrative controls and feedback capabilities that improve user prod...

The Business Applications category lists services that supports business productivity functions. Here is the list of the available services in this category. Alexa for Business        - Alexa for business makes it easy for you to use Alexa in your organization.  It gives you the tools you need to manage Alexa devices, enroll your users, and assign skills at scale.  You can build youe own context-aware voice skills using Alexa Skills Kit, and the Alexa for Business APIs, and you can make therse available as provate skills for your organization.  Alexa for Business also makes it easy to voice-enable your products and services, providing contect-aware voice experiences for your customers. Amazon Chime        - Amazon Chime is a secure, real-time, unified communications service that transforms meetings by making them more efficient and easier to conduct.  The service delivers high-quality audio and video through an applicati...

The Customer Engagement category is a collection of services that makes it easy for your applications to interact with your end users. See below a list of the available services in this category. Amazon Connect        - Amazon Connect makes it easy for you to setup and manage a customer contact center and provide reliable customer engagement at any scale.  With Amazon Connect you can deploy a customer contact center with just a few clicks in the AWS management console, on-board agents from anywhere, and quickly begin to engage with your customers. Pinpoint        - Enables you to understand and engage with your app users.  Amazon Pinpoint helps you understand app user behavior, define who to engage, determine which notification to send, decide when to deliver the notifications, and track the results of your campaign.        - Enables push-notifications.  Ex.  When a mobile app user is close to a rest...

The Application Integration category hosts a suite of services that would help you manage your application functions and provide you a means to decouple them.  It also contains services that can manage message handling, distribution and queueing. Below are the list of current services under this category. Step Functions               - AWS Step Functions makes it easy to coordinate the components of distributed applications as a series of steps in a visual workflow.  You can quickly build and run state machines to execute the steps of your application in a reliable and scalable fashion.         - It is a way of visualizing what is going on in your environment. Amazon MQ        - Amazon MQ is a managed message broker service for Apache ActiveMQ that makes it easy to migrate to a message broker in the cloud.  A message broker allows software applications and components to communicat...