Instead of being installed directly on premise at the customer’s, modern software solutions are increasingly provided as cloud-based solutions.
As a modern software provider for publishers and media houses, ppi Media relies on Amazon Web Services amongst others to help shape the future of the media industry.
Amazon and IT services?
Amazon is best known as the leading e-commerce company. Whether it is electronic gadgets, clothes or books that you are after – online shoppers can quickly find it all on Amazon thanks to its huge range of products. Being one of the largest online stores means that Amazon has an enormous network of data centers all around the world. To offer this infrastructure as a service led to the foundation of the subsidiary, Amazon Web Services (AWS), in 2006, which today is the market leader in cloud computing.
Scalable, highly available, cost-effective
Traditionally, companies have to install the software that is used on their own servers while also having to buy, develop, protect and maintain the required infrastructure. This is where AWS comes in, as all these tasks related to the infrastructure can be outsourced to the Amazon service. By doing so, a company no longer needs to use staff resources to maintain its IT while they can also avoid having to spend a lot of money hardware and to deal with the challenges of high availability, scalability and disaster recovery. Companies can focus exclusively on the implementation of a product vision and their core business. They only use those services offered by AWS that it really needs, and only these will be charged.
ppi Media goes AWS
ppi Media has recognized the benefits of AWS for itself and its customers, international publishers and media houses: For some time now, the certified AWS developers and architects at ppi have been looking into the possibilities offered by Amazon Web Services and their growing complexity. The diverse offer includes anything from freely configurable virtual machines to fully managed services such as database systems and user administration or alarm systems and monitoring, from which publishers and media houses benefit immensely in their everyday lives. ppi Media is drawing on this portfolio to quickly build the required infrastructure for a solution, thus enabling developers to focus more closely on the business logic of their products. This means that many ideas can be implemented and established on the market as MVPs to test and evaluate them quickly in a very short period of time. If one of these MVPs proves popular on the market, automated rules to adjust the infrastructure kick in to meet the new hardware and software requirements. In addition to this, entire systems can be created and deleted for quality assurance or load tests in an instant just by pressing a button.
Where is the data stored?
Since the introduction of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May last year, there has been an increased focus on the issue of data privacy especially in Germany. The way Amazon Web Services handles data privacy is therefore of great importance to ppi Media. Customers can use the AWS cloud in 62 so-called availability zones within 20 regions. To fulfil the standards for security and data protection set out by the GDPR, ppi only uses AWS data centers in the EU and, if possible, only in Frankfurt/Main for its customers. These are subject to strict controls.
Staying ahead of the game
Amazon Web Services publishes enhancements and improvements on an almost daily basis, in addition to entirely new services which are launched at regular intervals. The challenge for ppi’s developers is to stay on top of things and keep their knowledge up to date. Our dedicated AWS developers and architects achieve this through continuous training and by regularly attending workshops and events. It remains exciting to see how cloud computing will develop in the future, especially for the publishing industry.