Amazon CloudFront Expands, Allows Private Streamed Content

By Chelsi Nakano (@chelkano) Mar 31, 2010

Amazon (news, site) has been busy. In addition to a brand new edge location for CloudFront, the company's content delivery Web service now supports private content—which means customers can sell or secure.

AWS CloudFront

In case you aren't in the know, CloudFront is an online tool for delivering content. It integrates with other Amazon Web Services, and just gained streaming support early this year. Though it's nowhere near the likes of Hulu, CloudFront's competitive prices could mean trouble for small to mid-sized companies should Amazon continue to develop the platform.

The platform delivers content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for objects are automatically routed to the nearest one, so content is delivered with the best possible performance. The new Singapore edge location means a reduction in latency for end users throughout Southeast Asia, and is the country's third locale (and Amazon's fifteenth).

“Developers and businesses located in Asia, as well as those with a multi-national presence, have been eager for Asia-based infrastructure to minimize latency and optimize performance,” said Adam Selipsky, Vice President of Amazon Web Services. “We’re very excited to announce the expansion of AWS infrastructure into Asia to help our customers plan their technology investments and better serve their end-users."

Now Supporting (more) Privacy

CloudFront has supported private content since November of last year, but the deal only included static content. Now that private streaming content is supported (at no extra charge), users have detailed control over who is able to receive their streaming media.

"You can protect content by combining dates, date ranges, IP addresses, and IP address ranges," explained AWS evangelist Jeff Bar on his company blog.

Bar also reports that Amazon has been working with a handful of application and toolkit developers "to make sure that the tool and toolkit support for private streamed content is ready." He mentioned a few:

JetS3t open source Java toolkit and application suite
Bucket Explorer for Windows and Mac
CloudBerry S3 Explorer for Windows
CloudBuddy Personal for Windows

It's a small step for video content management overall, but a significant one for Amazon. For more information, including that competitive pricing structure we mentioned earlier, head on over here.