who's using AWS great read Who's Using Amazon Web Services? [2020 Update]
Who's using AWS? Who are the biggest AWS users and what kind of workloads are they using AWS for?
Here's a spoiler: If you're looking at AWS for enterprise-level deployment, you have plenty of company, and if your enterprise is already using AWS, you're in very good company indeed.
A Look at AWS Users
According to Amazon, the number of active AWS users exceeds 1,000,000.
While small and mid-size companies make up the majority of that user base, recent polls by private consulting firms suggest that enterprise-scale users make up at least 10% of that total.
AWS Customers: The Ultimate List
Whether it’s technology giants, television networks, banks, food manufacturers or governments, many different organisations are using AWS to develop, deploy and host applications.
Here are the names that are on record publicly as using AWS:
Aon, Adobe, Airbnb, Alcatel-Lucent, AOL, Acquia, AdRoll, AEG, Alert Logic, Autodesk, Bitdefender, BMW, British Gas, Baidu, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Canon, Capital One, Channel 4, Chef, Citrix, Coinbase, Comcast, Coursera, Disney, Docker, Dow Jones, European Space Agency, ESPN, Expedia, Financial Times, FINRA, General Electric, GoSquared, Guardian News & Media, Harvard Medical School, Hearst Corporation, Hitachi, HTC, IMDb, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, International Civil Aviation Organization, ITV, iZettle, Johnson & Johnson, JustGiving, JWT, Kaplan, Kellogg’s, Lamborghini, Lonely Planet, Lyft, Made.com, McDonalds, NASA, NASDAQ OMX, National Rail Enquiries, National Trust, Netflix, News International, News UK, Nokia, Nordstrom, Novartis, Pfizer, Philips, Pinterest, Quantas, Reddit, Sage, Samsung, SAP, Schneider Electric, Scribd, Securitas Direct, Siemens, Slack, Sony, SoundCloud, Spotify, Square Enix, Tata Motors, The Weather Company, Twitch, Turner Broadcasting,Ticketmaster, Time Inc., Trainline, Ubisoft, UCAS, Unilever, US Department of State, USDA Food and Nutrition Service, UK Ministry of Justice, Vodafone Italy, WeTransfer, WIX, Xiaomi, Yelp, Zynga and Zillow.
The Big Spenders
Clearly, AWS is the cloud computing platform of choice for businesses across a range of industries. But who are the biggest, and how much money are they spending on these services?
According to Intricately, the top ten AWS users based on EC2 monthly spend are:
- Netflix: $19 million
- Twitch: $15 million
- LinkedIn: $13 million
- Facebook: $11 million
- Turner Broadcasting: $10 million
- BBC: $9 million
- Baidu: $9 million
- ESPN: $8 million
- Adobe: $8 million
- Twitter: $7 million
Putting AWS to Use
Now that you have a better understanding of the different types of AWS customers, you’re probably wondering how they actually use the platform? Here are a few examples:
Netflix Pushes AWS to its Limits
Among enterprises, Netflix was the most prominent early user of AWS, adopting it in 2009.
According to an article in Business Insider from January 2016, Netflix placed enormous demands on the resources available to AWS at the time, often pushing the service to its limits and beyond. The ongoing pressure from Netflix, combined with Amazon's willingness to improve its service and meet its customers' requirements, pushed AWS to develop into the full, enterprise-scale integrated set of services that it is today.
All in: the Big Commitment
By mid-2015, Netflix had gone ‘all-in', closing the last of its major data centres and moving all of its IT operations to AWS. Other enterprises have also gone all-in with AWS, including Intuit, Hertz, and Time, Inc. These companies have demonstrated their willingness to trust AWS with their entire IT operations, including transactions, customer databases, and the rest of the information infrastructure on which they depend. This level of commitment and trust on the part of long-established (and often very conservative) enterprises speaks volumes about the ability of AWS to meet the needs of enterprise-level clients.
According to Amazon, Netflix uses more than 100,000 server instances on AWS for “nearly all its computing and storage needs.'' This includes databases, analytics, recommendation engines and video transcoding.
Speaking about the firm’s use of Amazon Kinesis Streams, Senior Software Engineer John Bennett said it “processes multiple terabytes of log data each day and that “events show up in our analytics in seconds”. He added:“We can discover and respond to issues in real time, ensuring high availability and a great customer experience."