AWS certification will allow us to offer more and better cloud computing services and differentiate from our competition.
The cloud computing industry is huge and continues to grow at a breakneck pace.
This market is growing at nearly 20% per year and is expected to reach $141 billion by 2019.
More and more companies are eschewing the idea of owning and maintaining their own servers and are moving their software applications to the cloud.
This allows companies to be more agile, cut costs, and focus on their business instead of spending lots of time and money on setting up and maintaining their servers.
We’ve been helping organizations like Sprint and Nokia take advantage of cloud computing for years.
But now it’s official – Thorn Technologies is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Certified solutions provider!
So what does this all mean?
Let’s find out by defining cloud computing, learning more about the huge role that AWS plays in today’s cloud landscape, and why we decided to get certified.
The Definition of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing refers to the on-demand delivery of IT processing resources.
In the past, if you needed computing resources such as servers, storage, databases, and other application services, you would have to spend money upfront to buy a bunch of servers, house them in a room, connect them to your computers, and make sure they are always up and running.
With the cloud, you can access a shared pool of these resources, set them up extremely quickly, and pay as you go.
An analogy is buying a car vs. being a member of Zipcar.
To get around, you used to have to shell out thousands of dollars to buy a car. Then you would have to purchase insurance for the car. Then you’d have to find a place to park it. And you’d have to pay mechanics to maintain the working condition of the car.
If you’re a member of Zipcar, you would have access to a bunch of cars (not just one) that you can rent on an hourly basis, whenever you wanted. No maintenance, no insurance, no worries.
Cloud computing is the Zipcar of information technology.
The cloud has allowed businesses to create applications much more easily, quickly, and inexpensively and has massively transformed how software is developed and deployed.
Amazon Web Services’ role in the cloud landscape
Amazon launched AWS in 2006 to a bit of confusion.
Many wondered why Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, would create a new business line providing IT infrastructure. It seemed like an odd direction to follow at the time.
But the move totally made sense. They were already building this infrastructure to run their online marketplace, so they could relatively easily offer this to businesses.
By June 2007, AWS had over 180,000 developers using its platform.
Now AWS is by far the leader in cloud computing infrastructure providers.
AWS holds over 30% market share, more than its next four competitors (Microsoft, IBM, Google, and Salesforce) combined.
And it’s an almost $8 billion business and still growing fast.
Thorn Technologies and AWS Partner Certification
We’ve been using AWS in client projects and internal product builds for years now.
AWS is so easy to set up and offers the widest array of high-performing products for developers, which is why we love it.
While we believe our experience has made us pretty knowledgable about AWS, we knew that there was more to learn.
So we decided to become AWS partner-certified for a number of reasons:
- To better understand and learn more about the entire scope of AWS’s offerings
- To differentiate our business and show current and potential clients that we have the expertise to deploy their new applications or migrate their existing apps to the cloud
- To join the AWS community so we can continue our education about the platform
To become partner-certified, we needed to complete online courses and pass online and in-person tests.
The AWS Business Professional course helps marketers and salespeople like me better articulate the benefits and services that AWS provides.
The AWS Technical Professional course is designed for our technical staff and engineers to provide the foundational knowledge necessary to deploy cloud solutions for customers.
And the AWS TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and Cloud Economics course gives us the knowledge to communicate the economic value of AWS compared to on-premise server solutions.
Dan, our VP of Software Development, and Rob, our iOS Developer, also became AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associates and Certified Developer Associates.
The certification process took scores of hours of coursework and studying.
But with the knowledge we’ve already acquired, and the business that we expect to gain from this knowledge, this investment is sure to pay off.
Conclusion
We’re excited to be certified partners of AWS.
The knowledge we’ve gained has already been valuable, and we’re eager to continue our educational journey in cloud computing.
We’re also looking forward to helping more companies transition to the cloud and build and deploy new apps to AWS.
AWS Partner Accreditation should help continue to fuel our rapid growth, and we’re excited for 2016 and beyond!
