What does Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service) do?

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a fully managed messaging service that is designed to facilitate the sending of notifications and messages to various subscribers. Its primary function is to provide a reliable and scalable way to distribute messages or alerts to individuals or systems. Users can publish messages to a topic, and SNS takes care of delivering those messages to all subscribed endpoints, such as email addresses, phone numbers for SMS, or application endpoints.

The capability to support multiple protocols—like email, SMS, and application endpoints—allows SNS to be versatile and easily integrated into workflows, ensuring that users receive timely notifications across different platforms. This makes it particularly useful for scenarios like alerting users of system changes, sending updates, or notifying applications about critical events.

The other options do not accurately describe the function of Amazon SNS. For instance, while a content delivery network provides efficient delivery of web content, billing automation relates to managing payments, and database management involves storing and processing data, none of these functions encapsulate the messaging and notification role that SNS specifically provides.