A global manufacturing company is modernizing its on-premises data processing pipeline. The pipeline involves several sequential steps: data ingestion, data transformation, and data loading into a data warehouse. Each step is implemented as a separate, long-running application. The company needs a fully managed solution to orchestrate these steps, handle retries, manage dependencies, and provide clear visibility into the overall workflow execution. Which AWS service should be used for orchestration?

Why the other options are wrong

• B. AWS Data Pipeline is a web service for processing and moving data between different AWS compute and storage services, as well as on-premises data sources. While it orchestrates data workflows, Step Functions offers a more modern, serverless, and flexible approach with superior state management and visual debugging for general application orchestration.
• C. SQS Standard Queue is a messaging service for decoupling components, but it does not provide orchestration, state management, or visual workflow capabilities for complex multi-step processes.
• D. Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus that makes it easier to connect applications together using data from your own applications, integrated SaaS applications, and AWS services. It's for event-driven architectures, not for orchestrating long-running, stateful workflows with explicit sequential steps and dependencies.