Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched support for dynamic content in CloudFront, the company’s content acceleration service. The technology giants are keen to increase the presence of the new capability, highlighting it as a cost-effective alternative to traditional CDNs for AWS customers looking to improve the performance, reliability and global reach of their websites.
By using CloudFront, customers can now deliver all of their content, including the dynamic portions of their site that change for each end-user. Amazon CloudFront works with dynamic applications running in Amazon EC2, without any custom coding or proprietary configurations, making the service easier to deploy.
And because Amazon CloudFront charges the same rates for both static and dynamic content, customers can now accelerate all of the content on their website for a lower price, without up-front fees or long term commitments.
While CloudFront has so far received a fairly modest uptake among AWS users, the service is being pushed by Amazon as a vital solution for web developers looking to gain similar performance improvements as traditional content delivery networks (CDNs) but without the vast expense, both in terms of time and finance.
It states that 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 intricacy to their architecture.
With this release, Amazon CloudFront states it 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.
“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.”