What Is AWS? A 2026 Business Guide to Amazon Web Services

Introduction 

Every business today faces a fundamental question: how do we scale our technology without overspending or hiring an entire IT department?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) answered this question for millions of companies worldwide. AWS is the world’s most comprehensive cloud computing platform, with over 200 services, from computing power and storage to artificial intelligence and machine learning, all delivered on-demand through the internet.

Instead of buying and maintaining expensive servers, businesses simply use what they need when they need it and pay only for what they consume. It’s like switching from owning a power plant to plugging into the electrical grid.

Today, AWS powers everything from Netflix’s streaming service to NASA’s Mars rover data analysis. Startups in Kathmandu use the same infrastructure as Fortune 500 companies in New York. That’s the power of cloud computing.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

• What AWS is and how it works
• Why businesses choose AWS over traditional infrastructure
• How AWS compares to other cloud platforms
• What AWS means for companies in Nepal
• How to get started with AWS cloud services

Whether you’re exploring cloud migration for the first time or evaluating AWS for your business, this guide gives you everything you need to understand Amazon’s cloud platform.

What Is AWS (Amazon Web Services)?

Amazon Web Services is a cloud computing service that gives access to various computing resources through the internet, according to the users’ demand. Instead of investing heavily in servers and data centers, businesses can rent various computing resources from AWS on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Think of AWS as a massive technology provider company. Just like we pay our electric company for our electric consumption rather than building our own electric power station, we can consume technology resources through AWS without having our own technology infrastructure.

The AWS Origin Story

AWS was founded in 2006 when Amazon understood that the infrastructure it had created to deal with the enormous traffic on its e-commerce platform could be used by other businesses as well. What began as simple storage and computing capabilities has now become a comprehensive platform offering more than 200 different services, ranging from simple hosting to quantum computing.

The platform changed the way businesses looked at technology. Before the arrival of AWS, starting a business meant investing a lot of money in infrastructure and technology. With AWS, one could start a business using a credit card from anywhere.

AWS By the Numbers

The scope of AWS is staggering. As of 2025, AWS holds approximately 32% of the global cloud infrastructure market, more than Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud combined. The platform operates 33 geographic regions worldwide, each containing multiple data centers that provide redundancy and reliability.

There are over a million active customers of AWS, ranging from a developer working on a personal project to huge corporations like Samsung, Spotify, and governments. These numbers represent actual businesses that moved away from traditional infrastructure and into cloud computing, with results that were not previously possible.

So, Why Do Businesses Use AWS

The migration from traditional infrastructure to AWS isn’t just a technology decision. It fundamentally changes how businesses approach IT investment and innovation.

From Capital Expense to Operating Expense

Traditionally, IT infrastructure involves significant capital expenditure (CAPEX). A business needs to plan for its computing requirements several years down the line, buy the equipment, and maintain it whether it is being used or not. This is a very painful decision to have to make.

AWS changes the capital expense model to an operating expense model. Businesses no longer need to buy equipment that will slowly depreciate. Businesses only pay for what they actually use. This allows new businesses to start with very little capital investment and seasonal businesses to scale up during the season and scale down afterwards.

Speeding the Market Process

For traditional infrastructures, scaling up means ordering the required hardware, waiting for the equipment to arrive, installing the equipment, and testing the entire system, which may take months. In contrast, with AWS cloud services, businesses are able to upgrade to new resources in just a matter of minutes. This helps businesses test their ideas quickly, react to market opportunities, and innovate without being hindered by the need for infrastructure.

Built-In Reliability and Security

AWS provides enterprise-grade security and reliability, which most businesses cannot achieve individually. It is certified in various compliance requirements such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, and PCI DSS. AWS is responsible for the physical security of its data centers, networks, and infrastructure redundancy, while businesses are in charge of their application security.

For businesses in Nepal and the rest of South Asia, it means having access to the same level of infrastructure used by Fortune 500 companies, only through AWS, without having to build, deploy, and maintain it individually. The easy availability of enterprise technology is perhaps AWS’s most important contribution to business today.

How AWS Works: A Simple Explanation

Understanding AWS doesn’t require technical expertise. At its core, the AWS platform delivers computing resources through a straightforward model: select the services you need, configure them through a web interface, and pay for what you consume.

Service Categories Explained

AWS has 200+ services, and these services are categorized appropriately according to the different needs of the business. Compute services, like Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), provide virtual servers that can be used to run your applications, while AWS Lambda lets you run code without the need for any server at all, and you just have to upload the code.

Storage services like Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) store everything from images on your website to massive data archives with redundancy. Your data is replicated across multiple locations, and you never lose critical business data due to hardware failure.

Database services, including Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) and DynamoDB, remove database management complexity while providing enterprise-grade performance. Instead of hiring database administrators and maintaining database servers, businesses get managed database services that handle backups, updates, and scaling automatically.

Networking and security services provide connectivity to your resources and control access to your resources within your AWS environment. Amazon IAM (Identity and Access Management) provides access control to only authorized users and applications to your resources.

The Shared Responsibility Model

AWS uses a “shared responsibility” model that helps identify who is responsible for what. AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, which includes the physical infrastructure, data centers, network equipment, and the software that runs on the AWS services.

The customer is responsible for the security “in” the cloud, which includes the applications, users, data, and configuration of the AWS services. This shared model allows AWS to provide the complex infrastructure security that most businesses cannot provide on their own, but you still have control of your business applications and data.

This model provides better security for most businesses than trying to do it all on your own, yet still provides the necessary controls for sensitive data and business-critical systems.

The AWS Global Infrastructure

AWS’s physical infrastructure forms the foundation of its reliability and performance. The platform is divided across the world into geographic regions, each operating independently with multiple availability zones.

Regions and Availability Zones

Every AWS region has a minimum of three availability zones, which are separate data centers with their own power, cooling, and network infrastructure. If there are problems with an availability zone, your applications will automatically switch to another zone without interruption.

For businesses in Nepal, the closest AWS regions are Mumbai (India) and Singapore, both offering low-latency connectivity throughout South Asia. This proximity enables your applications to run as fast as if they were hosted locally, with the added benefits of AWS’s global infrastructure and reliability.

Applications can replicate across availability zones automatically, ensuring hardware failures, power outages, or other issues don’t affect your business operations. This provides redundancy that would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars with traditional infrastructure.

Global Reach with Disaster Recovery

The choice of region matters for three reasons: latency, compliance, and cost. Applications function optimally when deployed closer to the users. Data compliance requires data to be stored within certain geographical boundaries. There are some variations in pricing between regions due to differences in infrastructure costs.

AWS provides the capability for disaster recovery that is not only feasible but also cost-effective. Applications are capable of automatically replicating data in other regions, which are then available immediately in the event that the primary region is no longer available. Businesses can implement sophisticated disaster recovery strategies that were previously accessible only to large enterprises with massive IT budgets.

AWS Pricing Model: What You Need to Know

AWS pricing follows a simple principle: pay for what you use, without long-term subscriptions and contracts or upfront commitments. This flexibility creates opportunities but also requires attention to cost management.

Pay-As-You-Go Structure

For most AWS services, you only pay for what you consume. For compute services, you pay per hour or per second. For storage, you pay per gigabyte per month. For data transfer, you pay per gigabyte transferred. This way of pricing ensures that you only pay for what you use, not estimates of what you might use.

For predictable workloads, AWS offers reserved instances that provide significant discounts, often 40-60% off standard rates, in exchange for one- or three-year commitments. Businesses with steady baseline usage can reserve that capacity at reduced rates while maintaining pay-as-you-go flexibility for various demands.

Understanding Cost Management

The flexibility of the AWS pricing model demands active cost management. Otherwise, costs will escalate beyond expectations as resources are created for testing or development and forgotten about.

AWS provides tools for budget alerts, cost analysis, and resource optimization. However, many businesses find value in working with AWS consulting partners who help optimize architectures for cost efficiency, implement governance policies, and ensure maximum value from cloud investment.

The truth of the matter is that most businesses will find AWS to be a much more cost-effective solution than traditional infrastructure once they understand their usage patterns and implement proper cost management. The variable cost model aligns spending with actual business value rather than fixed capacity planning guesswork.

Common Business Use Cases for AWS

AWS serves businesses across every industry, but several patterns emerge consistently across successful cloud adoptions.

Application and Website Hosting

The most common use case involves migrating existing applications from physical servers to AWS cloud computing infrastructure. E-commerce platforms, business applications, and corporate websites benefit from AWS’s reliability, automatic scaling, and global reach. A retail website can handle holiday traffic spikes without crashing, then scale back down when traffic normalizes.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Companies use Amazon S3 as a backup storage solution and AWS’s cross-region replication as a disaster recovery solution, all at a fraction of the cost of traditional backup solutions. Instead of having to manage expensive backup infrastructure and remote storage facilities, companies can replicate their critical data across regions using AWS’s infrastructure. In the event of a disaster at one location, business can continue at another location seamlessly.

Development and Testing

Development teams spin up complete test environments in minutes, use them for days or weeks, and then shut them down. This model allows development teams to only pay for the actual usage. This eliminates the need to have test infrastructure sitting idle between projects and makes sure development teams have access to test resources when needed.

Data Analytics and Business Intelligence

Businesses store vast amounts of data in AWS and analyze it using managed analytics services. Companies gain insights from customer behavior, operational data, and market trends without investing in expensive analytics infrastructure or specialized data teams.

These use cases share common threads: they leverage AWS’s scalability, pay-as-you-go pricing, and managed services to achieve results that would be prohibitively expensive with traditional infrastructure.

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AWS vs Other Cloud Platforms

While AWS leads the cloud computing market, businesses often evaluate multiple providers before making decisions. Understanding how AWS compares to alternatives helps clarify whether it’s the right fit for your needs.

The Major Cloud Providers

Microsoft Azure holds approximately 23% market share and integrates seamlessly with Microsoft’s enterprise software ecosystem. Organizations already using Windows Server, Active Directory, and Microsoft 365 often find Azure a natural fit for their existing infrastructure and licenses.

Google Cloud Platform captures roughly 10% of the market and excels in data analytics and machine learning capabilities. Companies with heavy data processing needs or those wanting cutting-edge AI tools sometimes prefer Google’s specialized strengths.

AWS maintains its leadership through the broadest service selection, the most mature ecosystem, and the strongest startup and SMB support. With over 200 services and the largest partner network, AWS typically offers solutions for virtually any business requirement.

Making the Right Choice

No cloud provider is a perfect match for every situation. AWS has a rich service portfolio, which makes it a good match for most businesses, especially those who consider service breadth, maturity, and global footprint to be critical selection criteria. However, specific organizational needs, like deep Microsoft integration or specialized analytics requirements, might favor alternatives.

Most importantly, the choice should align with your business strategy, technical requirements, and long-term goals rather than provider popularity alone.

Is AWS Right for Every Business?

While AWS offers compelling benefits, it’s not automatically the right choice for every situation. Understanding when AWS makes sense helps businesses make informed decisions.

When AWS Makes Sense

Businesses benefit most from AWS when they need scalability, have variable workloads, want to avoid infrastructure capital expenditure, require global reach, or lack in-house infrastructure expertise. Startups and growing companies particularly benefit from AWS’s ability to scale with business growth without major upfront investments.

For instance, companies that experience variations in demand due to the seasons, such as retail businesses with holiday seasons, educational institutions with academic cycles, or tax preparation services, find AWS’s pricing model very attractive. You scale up during the peak season and scale down after that, only using what you need.

When to Consider Alternatives

Businesses with completely static workloads that do not change may find that reserved capacity, as offered by traditional hosting, could be more cost-effective. Organizations with strict data sovereignty requirements may require special considerations that need to be taken into account.

The question isn’t whether AWS is perfect for everyone, but whether its benefits align with your business needs. Most modern businesses find that AWS’s flexibility, reliability, and innovation capabilities outweigh any adaptation challenges.

The Role of Cloud Consulting in AWS Adoption

While AWS provides extensive documentation and user-friendly tools, many businesses find significant value in working with AWS consulting partners during their cloud journey.

Why Businesses Work with Consultants

Cloud consulting partners bring experience across multiple implementations, helping businesses avoid common pitfalls and adopt best practices from day one. They assess your current infrastructure, design architectures optimized for your specific needs, and manage the migration process to minimize disruption.

Cost optimization represents another major value area. Consultants help structure AWS usage to maximize efficiency and minimize waste, often saving more than their fees through better resource management and pricing strategies.

Choosing the Right Partner

AWS has a partner network that recognizes and partners with qualified partners based on their technical capabilities and experience. For businesses in Nepal and South Asia, partnering with an AWS consulting partner based in the region offers the advantage of understanding the regional business context and conditions. A cloud consulting partner, such as ThinkMove Solutions, will act as a strategic advisor to the business, not merely as a technology vendor.

Amazon Web Services revolutionized the way businesses think about their technology infrastructure. Whether you’re a small business in Kathmandu or a multinational corporation, AWS offers the scalability, reliability, and innovation required to compete in today’s digital economy. The question isn’t whether cloud computing matters; the question is how quickly you can harness its power to gain a competitive advantage.