Amazon Web Services has launched a new pay-as-you-go content delivery service for businesses and developers, promising low latency and high data transfer speeds.

CloudFront uses Amazon's existing cloud infrastructure to deliver HTTP content through a worldwide network of edge locations.

The service caches copies of content close to end users to ensure low latency, and Amazon claims that smaller firms and developers with fewer resources can benefit because there are no upfront costs and commitments.

Use cases include video distribution, software downloads, music downloads and delivering frequently accessed website images and objects, said Amazon.

"Our customers asked us for a way to globally distribute their most frequently accessed content with all the benefits that Amazon Web Services provides: low, pay-as-you-go pricing, high performance and reliability," said Adam Selipsky, vice president of product management and developer relations at Amazon Web Services.

"Amazon CloudFront provides low latency, inexpensive content delivery, and simple integration with Amazon S3, without complex sales negotiations or upfront commitments."

Tristan Rogers, SaaS pioneer and chief executive of on-demand collaboration software provider Concrete, argued that firms such as Amazon, Salesforce.com and Google are effectively creating their own commercial ecosystems.

"As a consumer, we pick our mobile networks according to the phones and tariff, and we pay a simple monthly subscription according to usage," he explained.

"For the new cloud platforms, both developers and consumers will judge them similarly; what interfaces do they provide, and what can they connect me to? The platform and software is merely the conduit - it’s what we can do with it that determines the value."