[qi:080] It was a matter of when, not if, that Amazon (s AMZN) would launch a content delivery business in addition to its current suite of web services that include S3 storage service and EC2 on-demand computing. The Seattle-based company has announced its intention to offer a content delivery service that could shake the very nature of the industry and pose a serious challenge to not only dozens of CDN upstarts but also become a thorn in the side of existing giants such as Akamai Technologies (s AKAM) and Limelight Networks (s LLNW).
In an email to its customers today, Amazon said that the service will be available later this year and will utilize the company’s points of presence in North America, Europe and Asia.
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.
Ironically, Amazon was beaten to the CDN punch by New York-based Voxel, which started offering CDN services based on Amazon’s S3 service. “We are announcing this right now because we want to give a heads up to our customers,” said Adam Selipsky, VPr of product management and developer relations for AWS. It’s more like putting their competition on notice, but Adam was too polite to say that. “It is a more horizontal and broad offering.” In other words, while it is not going to replace Akamai tomorrow, it is going to make CDNs affordable even for the tiniest startup, without major cash outlays.
Why is this service disruptive? Amazon is going to bring a level of transparency to a business that has a sales model much like a brokerage firm in the 1980s. Amazon wants to make buying CDN services as simple as buying a book. Amazon executives told me that company is going to be charging its customers on usage instead of the long-term contracts current players foist on their clients.
In addition, the company will publish its prices on the web — most importantly it is going to be inexpensive. And that will make the service even more attractive to hundreds of small companies who are already using Amazon Web Services for their web operations, who don’t want to sign long contracts with CDN operators. When I asked Tal Saraf, general manager of the AWS Content Delivery Service, if the company expected the video-delivery to be one of the most used service, he said the company expected to delivery all sorts of content, including web objects (images, JavaScripts etc.)
You’ll start by storing the original version of your objects in Amazon S3, making sure they are publicly readable. Then, you’ll make a simple API call to register your bucket with the new content delivery service. This API call will return a new domain name for you to include in your web pages or application. When clients request an object using this domain name, they will be automatically routed to the nearest edge location for high performance delivery of your content. It’s that simple.
Amazon executives declined to talk about the pricing. “We will talk about the pricing when we launch the service,” Selipsky said. He declined to comment on the impact the pricing will have on their competitors -– nearly two dozen content delivery networks –- and how much their business is going to suffer. Dow Jones Venture Source estimates that from 2005 through the second quarter of 2008, almost $980 million was invested in content delivery companies.
If Amazon delivers what it is promising -– a simple, API-based CDN – then it would put then not only ahead of all CDN players, but also force rivals to meet the rules (and pricing) set by Amazon. There is a good chance that it’s going to drive weaker players right out of the game.
My final take on this news: Akamai is less likely to be impacted in the near term, but it further commoditizes the CDN business and forces a big shakeout in the industry, taking down the small and the weak. Akamai has been focusing on value-add services, as a way to stay ahead of the commoditization of the basic CDN services.
Read Amazon CTO Werner Vogels take on the news on his blog.
This is interesting but expected news. Also interesting that you mention Voxel- check out their new website and recent Press Release. It seems that not only did they do the S3 integration but as of a few days ago they are publishing tiered pricing on their own CDN service and it is quite competitive with Amazon S3. And they let you combine your bandwidth with their hosting products at no premium. I wonder if this Amazon ‘coming soon’ annoncement is in response to the PR that Voxel issued yesterday.
We know Amazon already has a few POPs in the US and one in Europe. They are going to have to do a lot of work to build out their global network to compete with the likes of Akamai and Limelight. I wonder if bandwidth on Amazons new CDN will be the same price as S3. Overall, somewhat of a yawn. Companies like Voxel and Panther Express are already well on their way to commoditizing the CDN industry. And the fact of the matter is for most people a proper CDN is a far better solution than a single location download service like S3.
Providing CDN is more than raw API and moving bits that S3 provides. What about reporting and customer service? Those are two big items that Amazon has an uphill battle on. A simple API for their CDN isn’t going to suffice for big customers.
And what about Live streaming services? I wonder
The market is getting heated and moving very quickly. Interesting times.
Great move for Amazon S3 users !
I’m a little confused. CDN is a low margin business, yet that isn’t stopping Amazon from entering it. I know that their other services aren’t as substantial as their main e-Commerce business but this has to make you a little made if you’re an investor.
And from the viewpoint of a prospective user of the service, it’s hard to get too excited when other Amazon Web Services go down and out and business are left to suffer. Building on Google (not that I’m endorsing them) seems to just work – except for email.
Lets just hope that they have a tighter grasp on uptime with this.
The title of this post is misleading, and unfortunately it’s already on Techmeme. Amazon hasn’t launched the service yet, it’s coming “later this year” as you even noted later in the post. So it’s either launched or it isn’t, and the answer is “isn’t.”
Om:
I totally agree – not if but more when. People are already using S3 as a CDN anyway, independently of what Voxel is offering.
Interesting, but unless they price their CDN less than S3, Amazon won’t be the cheapest player in the game, like they are with S3 (and almost the only player with S3 too).
Even if it is the same price as S3 (like a free add-on), then value companies like SimpleCDN will still provide huge savings, especially at lower transit numbers (less than 150TB, etc.).
Further, early indications point to a HTTP only delivery CDN. What about SSL? What about Flash, Windows Media, 3GPP streaming? And live streaming?
I mean Amazon announces that they *are going to* launch a CDN service (a basic one at that), they don’t even announce pricing, and already we are calling for the death of all the new CDNs in the marketplace.
Yet another cool service from Amazon for the average Joe. We have to wait and see what the pricing be for this service, and how much more will it cost from the standard S3. Will the price be low enough that low-budget customers will make the move from S3 to CDN?
I think Ashish Prasad hit the nail on the head, I think this Amazon CDN service will be aimed at smaller business and smaller developers. I wouldn’t be too worried, yet, if I was one of the already established CDNs.
No-frills HTTP-only CDNs like Panther Express are screwed by the Amazon CDN announcement. Just in time for their new VP of Sales and his new sales team.
here is a video of Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, talking about their push into becoming an infrastructure company that supports other companies:
http://www.scribemedia.org/2008/10/15/werner-vogels-amazon-asw-s3-ec2/