AWS continues to expand on multiple fronts

Amazon will launch new AWS Local Zones into 32 metropolitan areas in 26 countries and has teamed up with Salesforce to create a new streaming platform.

Alongside announcing the completion of 16 AWS Local Zones in the US, Amazon says it plans to launch new AWS Local Zones in 32 new metropolitan areas in 26 countries around the world. These are essentially edge computing sites that are designed to reduce latency connection to cloud services, among other things.

“The edge of the cloud is expanding and is now becoming available virtually everywhere,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, VP of Infrastructure Services at AWS. “Thousands of AWS customers using US-based AWS Local Zones are able to optimize low-latency applications designed specifically for their industries and the use cases of their customers. With the success of our first Local Zones in 16 US cities, we are expanding to more locations for our customers around the world who have asked for these same capabilities to push the edge of cloud services to new places. AWS Local Zones will now be available in over 30 new locations globally, providing customers with a powerful new capability to leverage cloud services within a few milliseconds of hundreds of millions of end users around the world.”

Meanwhile AWS has collaborated with Salesforce on a service aimed at leveraging both firms’ specialities in the content streaming space. It doesn’t seem to have a proper name (the release just repeatedly refers to as a ‘direct-to-consumer video subscription offering’) but it appears to be targeted towards content distributors and provides real-time viewer data and behaviour info, such as where they click and pause.

“The Salesforce and AWS relationship brings together a comprehensive, industry-specific media offering designed for video and live streaming services,” said Christopher Dean, VP and GM, Media & Entertainment & Media Cloud, Salesforce. “This allows content distributors to enhance their capabilities, while also helping them rapidly launch new service offerings, such as subscription packages and product bundles. Together we’re providing a rich set of scalable content tools and AI-driven subscriber journeys to further help studios, streamers, publications and other distributors quench consumers’ thirst for personalized content.”

Both ventures point to AWS’s relentless expansion and Amazon is clearly ploughing more investment into this side of its business – which makes total sense since it’s latest financials painted the picture of cloud services propping up its traditional etail business.