cloud storage – Growing Forward

Amazon Web Services has grown into one of the biggest cloud-computing platforms in the world. Here’s how some of the most influential companies are using it.

Whether you work for a new start-up or an established corporation, chances are your company stores its data in some type of secure platform. While many corporations store their data on-site, a growing number of companies are switching to cloud-based platforms. And for good reason. Cloud storage offers flexible pricing, ample storage space, and reliable security. By storing their data off-site on a secure cloud platform, companies can also redirect their focus on innovating their products and services rather than worrying about maintaining their in-house infrastructure.

Are you thinking about using Amazon Web Services for your company? AWS is one of the most powerful cloud storage platforms on the market. Some of the most influential companies in the world use Amazon Web Services to store and manage their vast amounts of data. Let’s take a look at Amazon Web Services in action by assessing how its top clients are using it.

How the World’s Biggest Companies Leverage Amazon Web Services

From entertainment companies like Netflix to B2B service providers like WeTransfer, some of the top companies use AWS.

1. Twitter

Twitter is a leading social media platform used by millions of people around the world. On the business side, PR managers and reporters often use Twitter to break news stories or make announcements on behalf of their clients.

Last year, Twitter announced that it would be using Amazon Web Services to help manage its extensive content database. It planned to use AWS’s global cloud infrastructure to help support the millions of tweets sent out by users everyday. By working with Amazon Web Services, Twitter anticipated an uptick in product performance, growth in new areas, and significant savings.

2. Netflix

With over 193 million paid memberships, Netflix continues to come out on top in the streaming wars. Subscribers enjoy some of the best in TV, film, and unscripted content the entertainment industry has to offer.

In order to manage the sheer volume of content it offers, Netflix needs a powerful storage solution. That’s why the company relies on AWS for all of its computing and storage needs. For instance, Netfliix uses Amazon Kinesis to help process the billions of traffic flows that pass by each day. By leveraging this service, Netflix can provide fast and efficient customer support for its users.

3. Capital One

Capital One is one of the leading financial corporations in the United States. The company services customers across the country in auto loans, banking, savings accounts, and credit card services. By partnering with AWS, Capital One is able to provide a top-tier customer experience while AWS ensures the infrastructure behind the company’s operations remains stable.

4. General Electric

General Electric is a multinational conglomerate with divisions in aviation, power, renewable energy, digital services, and additive manufacturing. Back in 2017, the conglomerate named AWS its preferred cloud provider.

Several years prior to this announcement, General Electric had already begun to move thousands of its core applications to Amazon Web Services. At the time of the announcement, General Electric was still moving applications from its various business divisions to AWS. Several of these applications use AWS’s analytics and machine learning services in addition to its cloud storage properties.

This move toward AWS has since allowed General Electric’s IT teams to cut down time spent running its data centers and refocus their efforts back to innovating General Electric’s product offerings.

5. Kaplan

If you ever took the SAT or ACT, chances are you purchased a Kaplan book to help you prepare. This for-profit corporation specializes in test preparation for over 90 standardized tests, including the GRE, MCAT, GMAT, and LSAT. Kaplan uses AWS’s Elast Container Service, Elastic Compute Cloud, and CloudFormation. Together, these services allowed Kaplan to cut costs, improve operational efficiency, and roll out new features at a faster pace.

6. Pfizer

Pfizer is one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. This well-known company makes drugs like Advil and Viagra.

Pfizer’s top data scientists teamed up with Amazon Web Services for their clinical trial that tested the efficacy of the company’s digital biomarkers. For the trial, Pfizer needed to process wearable sensor data from various participants. In order to help Pfizer process this sensor data, an Amazon Web Services Solutions Architect created an infrastructure that was scalable, flexible, secure, and reproducible.

7. Glossier

Glossier is a global makeup and skincare company that emerged from a popular beauty blog by founder Emily Weiss. One of the things that differentiates Glossier from its competitors is its focus on the providing the ultimate customer service experience.

Glossier fans love engaging with the brand on its blog and social media accounts. They also have the opportunity to interact with associates in-person when they purchase a product online before picking it up at the store. That’s why Glossier relies on Amazon Web Services for data security. With so much customer information in their hands, they needed a data solution that they could trust.

Final Thoughts

The sheer number of companies that rely on Amazon Web Services is a testament to how reliable and effective it is. Whether you are in the healthcare industry or specialize in B2B services, you can benefit from using Amazon Web Services.

Does your company use cloud platforms to store data? Let us know in the comments!

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Technology is paramount in one degree or another for all businesses to improve productivity, reliability, and professionalism and above all safety. Those stuck in the era relying on paper trails need to get with the times, technology can solve a lot of mundane time and cash consuming business processes you use to try and protect your data, you just need to figure out what can and will work for your specific businesses industry and size. It’s natural to feel as though the world of technology is quite daunting, and where to begin to enhance your business’s safety, so here are two areas to think about to get you started.

Security

Thinking about the safety of your files is so essential when you consider the outcome of a hacker gaining access to them. Especially when you take into account Statista’s report of $1.33 billion being lost in monetary value due to cybercrime. Whether it’s access to your business account details and statements, identity, address, your work or customer credentials, you most likely have something valuable worth protecting, that could cost you a lot of money, and a large portion of your existing reputation should anyone gain access to it. Security technology is the step where most businesses should begin to guard vital information.

Begin searching for services that are appropriate for your business such as computer security software. Or you could choose to outsource this task to an IT service that can professionally guard this information for you.

Back-Up

To enhance your previous decision to allocate cyber fighting software to protect your business information, you also need to back the info up in the unfortunate event your business intel is stolen or destroyed. This isn’t limited to cybercrime, there are an array of disasters that might occur which could ruin your data. Such as a fire, flood or hurricane to name a few. Getting your business back up on its feet following a catastrophic event is costly, especially if you’ve lost all of your enterprise’s intel in the disaster. This is why it’s important not to delay this step and to back-up everything as soon as possible.

The scale of back-up you need depends on the type and size of your business. For instance, for a freelance website designer working independently, they could back up their work on a Cloud Computing service and store any finished products or client details on an external hard drive and keep this in a separate building from where they work. For larger businesses such as a document filing agency, they may require in-built servers within different locations with employee and management access from anywhere in the world. This is to store, protect and gain access to vital business information to keep the company running in the event of a disaster.

Research, source, download and purchase the technology that’s right for your business by scouring opportunities, assessing the reputation and usage of the software and always update your knowledge to keep ahead of any technological advancements that could protect and save your business from a document storage disaster that is both time-consuming and costly to fix.