What is the primary function of Amazon Redshift?

Amazon Redshift is primarily designed as a data warehousing solution. Its main function is to enable users to run complex queries and perform analysis on large volumes of structured and semi-structured data. Redshift utilizes a columnar storage approach, which provides efficient data retrieval for analytical workloads, allowing organizations to manage and analyze massive datasets quickly and effectively.

The architecture of Redshift is optimized for online analytical processing (OLAP), which means it is tailored for read-heavy workloads typical in business intelligence and analytics applications. Users can execute queries across petabytes of data and take advantage of Redshift's capability to scale storage and compute resources independently as demand grows.

In contrast, the other options are focused on different functions; for instance, object storage refers to services like Amazon S3, which are used for storing and retrieving any amount of data. Application hosting and website hosting pertain to services designed to run applications or serve web content, like AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Amazon Lightsail, respectively. These services serve distinct purposes and are not centered on the specialized data analysis capabilities that Redshift provides.