Why should you migrate to the AWS Cloud?

The short answer would be "Because there's where the winners are."

That is a reality and what was first, the chicken (success) or the egg (AWS)? Well, we are not going to discuss the details, but it is clear that there is a high correlation between the two, and that is what is significant.

The long answer though is "Because that's where the winners are, and they do it because they can access resources that allow them to do things more easily and evolve faster than their competitors creating competitive advantages before them".

Yes, it's more a question of the ecosystem there than what you are when you go in there. It's more about what you can become in there.

It's like when you go to a good school, the most important thing is the resources/opportunities you have at hand and that whoever sits next to you makes you evolve and not stagnate. If it's a good school, there are good resources to leverage and there's a better chance that you'll be a smart kid, that what they put on the board will motivate you, or that what you see other schoolmates doing will inspire you.

AWS invented the cloud. Well, they didn't, but they implemented it in the first place and today all their competition is trying to track them down. Without AWS, companies like Dropbox, Netflix, Spotify or even Amazon (the store) would probably not exist. AWS gave them the platform so they could focus on what they really knew how to do well, which of course was not systems engineering, and implement their business at scale, using new on-demand services that allowed them to innovate for little money and without having to make large capital investments. If it worked, well, if not, then the test has cost us only a few hundred dollars.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's most widely adopted and comprehensive cloud platform, offering over 175 complete data centre services worldwide. Millions of customers, including the fastest growing enterprises, the largest companies and major government agencies, are using AWS to reduce costs, increase agility and innovate faster.

AWS has the largest cloud infrastructure in the world. No other cloud provider offers so many regions with multiple availability zones connected by low-latency, high-performance, high-redundancy networks. AWS includes 69 availability zones in 22 geographic regions around the world. In addition, plans were announced to add 16 availability zones and five additional AWS regions in Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Africa and Spain. Gartner recognized the AWS availability zone and region model as the recommended way to run highly available enterprise applications.

Something that people tend to think is that the cloud is expensive and that if successful companies are there it is because they can afford it and they like to spend money. Successful companies are there because they adjust their spending to the maximum and get the maximum benefit. Running your workloads in the cloud can reduce your IT infrastructure costs by up to 60% while making you more efficient.

Could all these companies be wrong?

Here are the names that are on record publicly as using AWS

Aon, Adobe, Airbnb, Alcatel-Lucent, AOL, Acquia, AdRoll, AEG, Alert Logic, Amazon, Apple, Autodesk, Bitdefender, BMW, British Gas, Baidu, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Canon, Capital One, Channel 4, Chef, Citrix, Coinbase, Comcast, Coursera, Disney, Docker, Dow Jones, European Space Agency, ESPN, Expedia, Financial Times, FINRA, General Electric, GoSquared, Guardian News & Media, Harvard Medical School, Hearst Corporation, Hitachi, HTC, IMDb, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Intuit, International Civil Aviation Organization, ITV, iZettle, Johnson & Johnson, JustGiving, JWT, Kaplan, Kellogg’s, Lamborghini, Lonely Planet, Lyft, Made.com, McDonalds, NASA, NASDAQ OMX, National Rail Enquiries, National Trust, Netflix,  News International, News UK, Nokia, Nordstrom, Novartis, Pfizer, Philips, Pinterest, Quantas, Reddit, Sage, Samsung, SAP, Schneider Electric, Scribd, Securitas Direct, Siemens, Slack, Sony, SoundCloud, Spotify, Square Enix, Tata Motors, The Weather Company, Twitch, Turner Broadcasting,Ticketmaster, Time Inc., Trainline, Ubisoft, UCAS, Unilever, US Department of State, USDA Food and Nutrition Service, UK Ministry of Justice, Vodafone Italy, WeTransfer, WIX, Xiaomi, Yelp, Zynga and Zillow. Don't wait any longer, join the club. 

Photo Attribution: Photo by Pero Kalimero on Unsplash