Amazon operates AWS, the cloud platform that began offering services in 2006.
Amazon Web Services was created from infrastructure Amazon had built to support its own retail operations. The service launched publicly in 2006 with offerings including Amazon Simple Storage Service, or S3, and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2.
AWS lets organizations rent computing power, storage, databases, networking, and other services rather than purchasing and maintaining all the necessary hardware themselves. It became a major business for Amazon and helped establish cloud computing as a standard way to deliver information-technology resources.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and began as an online bookstore. It expanded into electronics, household goods, digital media, logistics, advertising, and devices. AWS is often confused with Amazon's retail website because both belong to Amazon, but they serve different markets and have distinct operations.