Foreword

Throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, I worked in the rank and file of system administrators who endeavored to keep network services online, secure, and available to users. At that time, working with systems was a tedious, monotonous affair involving cable slinging, server racking, operating system installation from optical media, and manual software configuration. Any businesses wishing to engage in the emerging online marketplace bore the burden of managing physical servers, accepting the associated capital and operating costs, and hoping for enough success to justify those expenses.

When Amazon Web Services emerged in 2006, it signaled a shift in the industry. Many of the previously repetitive, time-consuming tasks became unnecessary, and the cost of launching new services plummeted. Suddenly anyone with a good idea and the ability to execute could build a global business on world-class infrastructure at a starting cost of just a few cents per hour. In terms of cumulative disruption of an established market, a few technologies stand above all others, and AWS is among them.