AWS is the dominant cloud IaaS provider and has a number of key strengths:
Network offerings and configurations: AWS offers customer control and flexibility over defining network topology and private network connections through the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and Direct Connect offerings. It also includes robust load-¬‐balancing options for both external-¬‐ and internal-¬‐facing applications. AWS has expanded the feature setof its Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) service to include session affinity and metrics-¬‐driven load balancing.
Security and access: AWS has solid implementations of security documentation, customer controlled firewalls/access control lists (ACLs; security groups), comprehensive compliance certifications and reports, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)-¬‐secured endpoints and broad role-¬‐based authorization controls for all services through the use of AWS Identity and Access Management(IAM).
Availability options: AWS has multiple availability zones (AZs) within its regions. These AZs are effectively multiple data centers in close proximity to one another. AWS’s architecture is designed to make it easier to run applications across multiple AZs; customers are responsible for architecting their applications for high availability.
Management controls and DevOps enablement: AWS includes comprehensive offerings at the management console and API layers, custom metadata tagging of resources and detailed API logging through AWS CloudTrail application deployment services (AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS OpsWorks and AWS CloudFormation) in addition to customizable monitoring and alerting through Amazon CloudWatch.
