I have been using Amazon AWS leading public cloud service since year 2012. And here is my experience about this vendor.
Amazon AWS Public Cloud Service is the first public cloud provider that I tested in year 2012. Just like any IT Professional, I saw how fast the business grew in the past. AWS mainly provided two cloud services, they were Amazon EC (Virtual Machine) and Amazon S3 (cloud storage). Amazon AWS is now providing over a hundred kinds of cloud services worldwide. Amazon is definitely the leading public cloud provider in the world.
With knowledge in different kinds of AWS cloud services, it provides me creativity and flexibility to propose innovative IT solution to my clients. For example, to run an IT firm, you can hire your designer/developer talents remotely by setting up the IT Office Infrastructure on AWS cloud. First you use Amazon VPC to create a virtual private network and then you use AWS Directory Service to setup the company directory, and create a virtual desktop instance with the Amazon Workspace. If you hire a developer in Russia, all you need to do is to create a user account on the AWS directory and assign him an Amazon Worksapce (virtual desktop). Under this controlled virtual desktop environment, the developer will not be able to obtain your company's resources at all and this makes scaling up and down your human resource easily.
Of course this is not the exact AWS implementation, but you get my idea on how innovative one can leverage the cloud service in business management.
AWS is coming to Hong Kong
I have tried a lot of AWS cloud services, they are mostly flexible, easy to configure, however, one must have a good understanding in IT infrastructure knowledge to master it. But if you need support from AWS, they provide different support plans. I have tried the Business support plan, their technical support teams are very helpful.
In year 2018/2019, Amazon AWS will launch a new AWS region in Hong Kong. A friend who works in iAdvantage Data Center told me. Amazon rented ten floors of i-Advantage Mega Plus Data Center They are converting the ten floors into their Hong Kong AWS Region office. I believe we should be able to use AWS Region Hong Kong in year 2019.
Finally, if you considering to use Amazon EC2, you should think about taking up their 3 years Reserved Instance plan, it is the most cost-effective and best value-for-money VM plan you can get.
Cloud computing will become more and more important in the IT industry. The technology is very mature now. And I forsee most of the new IT projects will use some of the cloud services. More hybrid cloud IT solutions will be proposed too. If you want to start a new IT project, make sure to find a vendor that knows how to leverage the cloud services.