Om Malik explains why: "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." Amazon’s CDN will:

- Allow developers and businesses to get started easily, with no dollar or volume commitments. Like our other services, this one will be pay-as-you-go.

– Be simple and easy to use. In fact, a single API call is all that’s needed for you to start delivering your content.

– Work seamlessly with Amazon S3, for durable storage of the definitive versions of your content.

– Have a global presence, using edge locations on three continents in order to deliver your content from the most appropriate location.

"You will start by storing your content in an Amazon S3 bucket and then marking the content as publicly readable," says Jeff at the Amazon Web Services Blog. "Next you’ll make a single API call to register the bucket. The call will return a domain name that you’ll use to refer to your content in your web page or application. When clients request the object via the returned domain name they’ll be routed to the nearest edge location, for high performance delivery."

It looks like the service will change the way things are done – particularly pricing. Amazon is offering businesses that are interested in potentially using the service a closer look at it if they provide their contact info.