Amazon to launch CDN

Amazon CTO Werner Vogels announced a serious entry by the online retail giant into the content delivery network space early Thursday morning. The service, currently in private beta testing, does not yet have a formal name. Vogels said it will use localized edge points on three continents to give app developers and businesses the lowest possible latency for content delivery to users and customers. He expects the service to be offered publicly before the end of 2008.

Vogels said customers can make one call to an API, then "store the data in an Amazon S3 bucket" that can be used to register the content with the CDN. The stored data will be tucked away under a new domain name that customers can use in links to provide the content to end-users.

Another intriguing part of the Amazon CDN model is no minimum requirements or registration fees; Vogels insists the service will be pay-as-you-use, rather than pay-before-you-play. Keep an eye out for findings from Amazon's private beta to see if Amazon Web Service's CDN model can compete with existing (and successful) ones offered by Akamai, Level 3 and Limelight.

There are more than 50 companies with CDN offerings currently, according to Streaming Media.  It may be tough to wrest market share from entrenched offerings that have had significant lead time and development investment without a clearly superior offering. But if anyone has the established infrastructure and cash flow to fund a major expansion into this fast growing space, it certainly is Amazon. 

For more:
- read Vogel's bold pronouncement of Amazon's beta CDN. Blog post. 

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