Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), today launched support for dynamic content in Amazon CloudFront. This new capability gives AWS customers a simple, cost-effective way to improve the performance, reliability and global reach of their website by using Amazon CloudFront to deliver all their content, including the dynamic portions of their site that change for each end-user. AmazonCloudFront works seamlessly with dynamic applications running in Amazon EC2, without any custom coding or proprietary configurations, making the service simple to deploy and manage. And, because Amazon CloudFront charges the same low rates for both static and dynamic content, customers can now accelerate all of the content on their website for a low price, without any up-front fees or long term commitments. For more information about delivering dynamic content with Amazon CloudFront, visit http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront.
Previously, developers who wanted to improve the performance and reliability of their dynamic content had limited options, as the solutions offered by traditional CDNs are expensive, hard to configure and difficult to manage. This often requires custom code on their websites, and configuration can take days or weeks. Now, developers running web applications with both dynamic and static content can accelerate their entire website in minutes using only the AWS Management Console, without adding undue cost or complexity to their architecture. Amazon CloudFront has implemented several performance optimizations such as maintaining persistent connections with the origin web servers and other network path optimizations to speed up the delivery of dynamic content. When dynamic content delivery is used with origin web servers running in Amazon EC2, customers get an even better experience as AWS monitors and streamlines the network paths from each Amazon CloudFront edge location to the various AWS Regions for improved latency and reliability. All of these features are available at the same low prices that Amazon CloudFront already offers to its customers.
“With this release, we are continuing on the same path we started when we launched CloudFront: iterating based on customer feedback and making premium and innovative content delivery features that other CDNs sell at high prices much less expensive and much easier to use,” said Tal Saraf, AWS’s General Manager for Amazon CloudFront. “In 2008, CloudFront showed customers that they didn’t need to pay premium prices and sign long term contracts to get great performance and reliability for static content. In 2009, we did the same for video on demand, offering RTMP streaming at the same low prices we were already charging for static object delivery. In 2011, we did the same for live events. Now, with this release, customers can use CloudFront to accelerate their dynamic content, and again, customers don’t have to pay any more than our already low rates. No up-front fees, no requirement to make a long term commitment, no monthly platform fees, no need to hire expensive consultants to help with configuration, no more being over-charged by traditional CDNs that used to be the only ones who could provide this important feature for customers.”
Earth Networks gathers and analyzes environmental observations from around the world to help promote a better understanding of the planet and its atmosphere. “We use Amazon CloudFront to deliver static content and are excited to take advantage of the new capabilities that Amazon CloudFront has added to deliver dynamic content generated by our application servers running in the AWS cloud. With these new features, we can be sure that our customers get the accurate and personalized weather updates they need to plan their day and stay safe from severe weather as quickly as possible,” said Andy Rosenbaum, Development Manager at Earth Networks. “With Amazon CloudFront’s strong performance, ease of use and flexibility, our team can use the API or the Management Console to quickly make changes to our CDN configuration and see the updates within minutes. And with the low cost of delivering dynamic content using Amazon CloudFront, we expect to see significant cost savings as well.”
“We use Amazon CloudFront to deliver over 5 billion requests and 250TB of bandwidth per month to our international user base,” said Steve Corona, CTO of Twitpic. “The reliability of Amazon CloudFront allows our small team to focus on our core products instead of scaling servers and network resources. Support for dynamic content is a natural extension of Amazon CloudFront and is something we’re eager to provide our customers to give them a better user experience at Twitpic.”
With this new feature, requests for dynamic, static and streaming content are all routed through Amazon CloudFront’s full worldwide network of edge locations, giving customers improved performance and reliability through network and route optimizations that accelerate the delivery of content from the origin to the end user. There are no additional costs beyond Amazon CloudFront’s existing low prices for data transfer and requests, and no long-term commitments for use. You can get started at http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront with just a few clicks in the AWS Management Console.
