AWS originated as a “side business” for Amazon but quickly grew after it exceeded all expectations with “a remarkable $10 billion run rate” (Miller, 2016). The development of AWS stemmed from an e-commerce issue within Amazon that caused scaling problems during service launches between Amazon and other companies. Amazon found it difficult to make one main platform for various services that it and other parties could utilize together. There was a desperate need for secure and compact internal systems that all parties could easily access. These issues forced Amazon to make a better internal system that could adequately deal with the extensive amount of growth the company was dealing with.

In August 2006, Amazon launched its first cloud computing service, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. Further challenges arose, and the services created to tackle them built AWS. After the launch and success, of AWS, it took some time for any competitors to appear in the cloud computing market. The success of Amazon Web Services was quite a surprise as it came from a side service.

Now, AWS has grown to take the number one spot while its competitors trail far behind in terms of revenue and quality of service. AWS continues to grow and will undoubtedly be the cloud computing king for years to come.

Refererences:

Miller, R. (2016, July 2). How AWS came to be. Retrieved July 16, 2018, from http://social.techcrunch.com/2016/07/02/andy-jassys-brief-history-of-the-genesis-of-aws/