EC2 let developers `ssh` into instances in minutes instead of waiting for hardware — the foundation of modern cloud infrastructure. Auto scaling groups, AMIs, and spot instances followed; every Terraform `aws_instance` resource echoes this launch.

EC2 made virtual servers a utility you could provision with an APIApplication programming interface — a defined way for programs to talk to each other or to a service. call.

It shifted startups and enterprises from owned data centers to elastic cloud compute.