Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, has extended its Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) to all AWS Regions, allowing enterprises to launch their Amazon VPC environments.
The new areas covered by the VPC are: the US East and West Coasts, Europe, Singapore, and Tokyo, and in multiple AWS Availability Zones within each Region.
AWS announced new capabilities for customers designed to support the security, network management, dedicated connectivity, and identity management requirements of enterprises when deploying mission-critical applications in the cloud.
The company said that Amazon VPC enables businesses to provision a private section of AWS, where they can then launch AWS resources in a virtual network that they define and control, including selection of IP address range, creation of subnets, and configuration of route tables and network gateways.
Enterprises can connect to their Amazon VPC via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or through an Internet connection. Starting today, enterprises can now also connect multiple networks, such as branch offices, to each other as well as to their central corporate Amazon VPC environment, said the company.
AWS today also announced AWS Direct Connect, a new service that enables enterprises to bypass the Internet and deliver data to and from AWS via a private network connection.
With a private connection, enterprises can increase bandwidth throughput, reduce networking latency and costs, and provide a more consistent network experience when moving data between AWS and their datacenters, the company said.
AWS Direct Connect is available in Virginia, and additional AWS Direct Connect locations are planned for San Francisco Bay Area (San Jose), Los Angeles, London, Tokyo and Singapore in the next several months, said the company.
AWS has also added new functionality for AWS Identity and Access Management (AWS IAM) that enables "identity federation," or the ability for enterprises to use their existing corporate identities to grant secure and direct access to AWS resources without creating a new AWS identity for those users.
This capability enables enterprises to programmatically request security credentials, with configurable expiration and permissions, that grant their corporate identities access to AWS resources controlled by that enterprise.
Amazon Web Services vice-president Adam Selipsky said as enterprises make the move to the cloud, many have leveraged Amazon VPC for workloads that they have wanted to manage using their existing management and security policies.
Selipsky said, "With today’s launch of Amazon VPC worldwide, AWS Direct Connect and the new IAM federated identity capabilities, enterprises have even more flexibility and control over deploying their workloads to the cloud.
"These capabilities provide even more privacy, and along with AWS’s existing cloud services allow enterprises to choose the environment that is best suited to each of their workloads."
