Announcing Amazon CloudFront Streaming, EC2 Spot Instances, and VPC Unlimited Beta

Cool stuff.

Dear AWS Customers,

Today, we are pleased to share with you three exciting releases: Amazon CloudFront streaming, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Spot Instances, and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) unlimited public beta.

Amazon CloudFront Streaming

Amazon CloudFront, the easy-to-use content delivery service, now supports the ability to stream audio and video files. Traditionally, world-class streaming has been out of reach of many customers -- running streaming servers was technically complex, and customers had to negotiate long-term contracts with minimum commitments in order to have access to the global streaming infrastructure needed to give high performance.

We've designed Amazon CloudFront to make streaming accessible for anyone with media content. Streaming with Amazon CloudFront is exceptionally easy: with only a few clicks on the AWS Management Console or a simple API call, you'll be able to stream your content using a worldwide network of edge locations running Adobe's Flash® Media Server. And, like all AWS services, Amazon CloudFront streaming requires no up-front commitments or long-term contracts. There are no additional charges for streaming with Amazon CloudFront; you simply pay normal rates for the data that you transfer using the service.

Visit the Amazon CloudFront page to learn more.

Amazon EC2 Spot Instances

Spot Instances are a new way to purchase and consume Amazon EC2 Instances by allowing you to bid on unused Amazon EC2 capacity and run those instances for as long as your bid exceeds the current Spot Price. The Spot Price changes periodically based on supply and demand, and when your bid meets or exceeds the Spot Price, you'll gain access to the available Spot Instances (paying only the Spot Price, regardless of what amount you bid). These instances will continue to run until you choose to terminate the instances, or your maximum bid falls below the Spot Price (whichever is sooner). Spot Instances are complementary to On-Demand Instances and Reserved Instances, providing another option for obtaining compute capacity.

If you have flexibility in when your applications can run, Spot Instances can significantly lower your Amazon EC2 costs. Additionally, Spot Instances can provide access to large amounts of additional capacity for applications with urgent needs. A few examples of categories of applications well suited to Spot Instances include image and video processing, conversion and rendering, scientific research data processing, and financial modeling and analysis.

Visit the Amazon EC2 Spot Instances page to learn more and get started using this new pricing feature.

Amazon VPC Unlimited Public Beta

We're also announcing unlimited access to Amazon VPC. Amazon VPC offers a secure and seamless bridge between your company's existing IT infrastructure and the AWS cloud. Amazon VPC enables enterprises to connect their existing infrastructure to a set of isolated AWS compute resources via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection, and to extend their existing management capabilities such as security services, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems to include their AWS resources. Since August, Amazon VPC has been in a limited beta and today, all current and future Amazon EC2 customer accounts are enabled to use the service.

Visit the Amazon VPC page to learn more.

It has been an exciting December, and we hope you find these new AWS capabilities useful in your applications and for your business.

Sincerely,

The Amazon Web Services Team