Everyone knew it was coming, but this morning Amazon announced it will be providing a CDN service.
The process is the same as uploading to S3, then you simply make a call that says “Put this in the CDN”. Customers will be automatically sent to the closest For a lot of companies that are using S3 as a poor man’s CDN already this should provide some extra performance, although there aren’t any details regarding how many edge locations Amazon will be building. That will be a major comparison point between an Amazon CDN and other major delivery networks that have edges in most major POP’s around the globe.
From the article
This new service will provide you a high performance method of distributing content to end users, giving your customers low latency and high data transfer rates when they access your objects. The initial release will help developers and businesses who need to deliver popular, publicly readable content over HTTP connections. Our goal is to create a content delivery service that:
Lets developers and businesses get started easily – there are no minimum fees and no commitments. You will only pay for what you actually use.
Is simple and easy to use – a single, simple API call is all that is needed to get started delivering your content.
Works seamlessly with Amazon S3 – this gives you durable storage for the original, definitive versions of your files while making the content delivery service easier to use.
Has a global presence – we use a global network of edge locations on three continents to deliver your content from the most appropriate location.
As Amazon continues to provide easy interfaces to rather abstract problems, it will be interesting to see how the other major players will respond. Companies like VMware and Citrix will no doubt have their own EC2′ish API, and other CDN providers will publish their own API’s, but the real question is how all of these things will integrate together.
