Amazon Web Services is leading the cloud services industry. With a large and expanding customer base, new useful products (Virtual Private Cloud - VPC), and quick access to resources, AWS provides a flexible way to build an application or solution, without the difficulties of managing your own infrastructure.  However, the missing components for many companies are the services required to launch and manage an application successfully. 

 In our experience, the important services in the early portions of your application lifecycle may include:

• Pre-Release stress testing
• Application and infrastructure monitoring 
• Capacity planning analysis
• Application management services

The particular services you need to be successful depend on the existing skills of your team, the relative impact of your application on your business and the rate of growth in your customer base.