This document summarizes one company's experience transitioning from self-managed infrastructure to using Amazon Web Services (AWS) over many years. Some key points: - The company started with AWS for inexpensive storage but gradually moved more services over time, such as computing and databases, saving costs and effort. - Elastic scaling of computing on AWS (EC2) allowed the company to easily adapt to unpredictable loads for tasks like photo rendering. - Later AWS services like auto-scaling, load balancing, and DynamoDB and CloudSearch enabled migrating more complex systems that were previously difficult to support. - Migrating to AWS freed the company to focus on its core business instead of managing infrastructure and improved