Comments on: Amazon’s CloudFront Could Storm Rival CDNs

By: Voxel Adds Cloud Computing With SilverLining

Voxel Adds Cloud Computing With SilverLining — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:04:01 +0000

[...] cloud operators are trying to provide, either on their own or through partnerships. Late last year Amazon launched its own CDN called CloudFront with competitive — and transparent — [...]

By: Amazon CloudFront and S3 Performance Reviewed on The Bitsource » Post » The Bitsource: The Pulse of Technology.

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 02:20:24 +0000

[...] CloudFront Reviewed on GigaOm: http://gigaom.com/2008/11/18/amazons-cloudfront-could-storm-rival-cdns/ [...]

By: Amazon Launches EC2 in Europe - GigaOM

Amazon Launches EC2 in Europe - GigaOM — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:45:57 +0000

[...] AM PT | 0 comments Today Amazon launched its Elastic Compute Cloud in Europe, where it joins Amazon’s CloudFront and Simple Storage Service as an option for European developers. This means companies using Amazon [...]

By: links for 2008-11-21 « Amy G. Dala

links for 2008-11-21 « Amy G. Dala — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:02:22 +0000

[...] Amazon’s CloudFront Could Storm Rival CDNs – GigaOM (tags: aws cloud_computing) [...]

By: Roundup: Job report hurts stocks, BlackBerry reviews surface and more » VentureBeat

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:54:08 +0000

[...] Amazon creates mysterious online ad company — The connection between Amazon and Adzina was just discovered by TechFlash, but an Amazon spokesperson says Adzina has actually been around for a year. Earlier this week, Amazon also launched its content distribution network, dubbed CloudFront. [...]

By: Denise Richards

Denise Richards — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:49:58 +0000

Cool development. Amazon understands that you need online services, not expensive sales reps. Setup, pay, configure and go. But Amazon forgets that you also need professional support and SLA's. Professional statistics. Streaming support.

I got a preview of the upcoming StreamZilla service which does all: online self service in Amazon style and professional support Akamai style.

By: William Blanchard

William Blanchard — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:07:12 +0000

My motto is: "If you can't easily find the price then it cost too much."

My problem with services like Akamai is that you need to call and talk to a sales rep to get started. In the Web 2.0 world this may work, but in an Web 3.0 environment where services and computing power is on hand (and unlimited), no one has time for a sales rep and a contract.

Amazon CloudFront is easy to get started and less than 15 minutes your done.

Companies building Web 3.0 (like mine) will go for Amazon's ease of access to resources. I predict Amazon will dominate the CDN landscape in less than 3 years. We will be doing our part to help make that happen. :)

By: The origin of CloudFronts competitive advantage | Yousef Ourabi

The origin of CloudFronts competitive advantage | Yousef Ourabi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:11:41 +0000

[...] Sorry for the word play, but I’m about to drop some nerd up in here. There is some FUD being spread by people who either don’t understand the real advantages of Amazons cloudfront, or have a vested interest in spreading fear. One conversation that caught my attention for was in the comments section of an article published on GigaOM: Amazons cloudfront could strom rival CDNS [...]

By: jgannonwp

jgannonwp — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:44:10 +0000

Amazon's CDN will probably compete with guys like Panther Express, not AKAM. AKAM is doing much more with regards to optimizing the path around the network, driving computation to the edge, plus all of the other stuff that previous commenters have mentioned (transcoding, etc) I didn't do the math but I wonder how the pricing of Amazon's CDN matches up vs the cost of bandwidth (my guess is that they are pretty darn close to one another).

Amazon will certainly uplevel the feature set over time but it will take them a long time to catch up w/AKAM, who is not going to stand still, either.

By: Tom Coseven

Tom Coseven — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:29:54 +0000

Dan, if you shorten “years to come” to less than 2 years, then maybe an $18B AMZN has no chance to match Limelight’s $120M revenue… Then again, the CDN market is in perpetual transition and has no 800 pound gorilla. It’s not like they are trying to take on Google in search.

By: rohit

rohit — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:34:19 +0000

@ Dan, …no streaming but isnt most (short form) video progressive download anyways ? http://www.reelseo.com/progressive-download-vs-streamin/ says 65% of all video is progressive downloads… so at least for some segment of online video it would be useful to build/operate amazon based and optimized services vs. conventional CDNs.

By: Stacey Higginbotham

Stacey Higginbotham — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:52:12 +0000

Dan, Amazon pulled its Window’s EC2 offering out of beta in a few weeks. Also total revenue isn’t anything to scoff at, but we also should look at revenue growth and margins. I don’t look at this industry every day like yourself, so I respect your experience in this, but I do think this will pose a challenge and may indeed put the hurt on the major players, especially as it offers up a new type of product geared at a slightly different audience.

By: Dan Rayburn

Dan Rayburn — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:21:03 +0000

Limelight first started offering services in 2001 and has been doing so for the past eight years. In that time frame, they have grown CDN revenue to roughly 25% of Akamai's CDN only revenue. There is no way Amazon is going to come anywhere near that in the next two years. Plus, if you look at Amazon's AWS offerings, most of them stay in beta for years before they come out of beta and Amazon adds things like SLAs.

This has nothing to do with stock. Let the revenue speak for itself. Two years from now Amazon's CDN offering won't be doing the revenue that Limelight has today, let alone the hundreds of millions of dollars a year that Akamai is doing. How is that a "challenge"?

By: Tom Coseven

Tom Coseven — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:05:01 +0000

Stacey, you are backing down too quickly. Do you really think Amazon won’t provide a challenge for “YEARS to come”? AKAM went public less than 10 years ago, how old is Limelight? How different was the landscape just 3 short years ago? In 2006, no one thought McDonalds could challenge Starbucks. Run a two year stock price comparison, and you will see how quick a well managed competitor can take down a well respected market leader.

By: False Positives » Blog Archive » The Amazon Web Services (AWS) StartUp event in Toronto

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:31:51 +0000

[...] Nov 18th : Amazon’s CDN is out, via GigaOm : Amazon’s CloudFront Could Storm Rival CDNs, with more details on the AWS blog” Distribute Your Content With Amazon CloudFront and Amazon [...]

By: Stacey Higginbotham

Stacey Higginbotham — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:49:53 +0000

Dan, okay, I got carried away with my Texan love of bravado. I do appreciate you pointing out the limits of the service, and please check out our New Tee Vee coverage for a deeper dive. My focus was on pricing for smaller players and how this service would be useful for startups today. Eventually I do think it will be a threat, but you’re right that today it’s not.