Amazon Web Services Gets Direct Connect, Global VPC, Identity Federation

AWS Direct Connect lets enterprises open dedicated network connections to Amazon’s cloud, bypassing the public internet, which can potentially save a lot on bandwidth costs and boost performance both. Currently, the only Direct Connect location is Equinix’s Ashburn, Va., colocation facility, but other locations are planned. For now, plugging in grants access to the full range of AWS solutions in the Eastern U.S. region, from Amazon EC2 compute to Amazon VPC private clouds.

And speaking of Amazon VPC, the AWS hardware-isolated cloud infrastructure solution is now available globally in all zones and regions. And with that rollout, administrators everywhere get the ability to segment their VPCs across zones, providing — by Amazon’s examples — failover capabilities or secure connections between private clouds in different parts of the world.

Finally, Amazon Identity and Access Management now features identity federation with corporate networks, enabling administrators to create applications to programmatically request AWS login credentials using the existing legacy directory.