Amazon Web Services is a platform of web services that offer solutions for computing, storing, and networking, at different layers of abstraction. For example, you can use block-level storage or highly distributed object storage to store your data. You can use these services to host websites, run enterprise applications, and my tremendous amounts of data.

Web services are accessible via the internet by using typical web protocols and used by machines or by humans through a UI. The most prominent services provided by AWS are EC2, which offers virtual machines, and S3, which offers storage capacity. Services on AWS work well together: you can use them to replicate your existing local network setup, or you can design a new setup from scratch. The pricing model for services is pay-per-use.

As an AWS customer, you can choose among different data centers. AWS data centers are distributed worldwide. For example, you can start a virtual machine in Japan in exactly the same way as you would start one in Ireland. This enables you to serve customers worldwide with a global infrastructure.