Amazon offers a direct connection to their cloud services

Amazon Web Services is now giving its customers the ability to directly connect to their cloud services over a dedicated, private connection, bypassing the internet and turning AWS into an extension of the customer's network, much like any WAN connection.

Marketed as AWS Direct Connect the service uses a dedicated private connection, provided by the customer, from the customer's network to Amazon's service using standard 802.1q VLANs. Each connection can be partitioned into multiple logical partitions and the logical connections can be modified at any time by the customer to meet their business needs.

This capability addresses many of the business concerns over connecting to cloud resources over the public internet. Issues such as varying network latency and congestion, which can affect the way that applications can perform, are done away with by using a dedicated connection, where the bandwidth and performance are predefined and not shared with other users. Security of the connection is also improved as the data never passes outside of the control of the customer or Amazon; never crossing into the public cloud.

The cost of the service is very reasonable, and it will be up to each customer to determine if the value of the direct connection is sufficient to cover the cost of the dedicated connection that can take advantage of the 1 Gb and 10 Gb ports offered by Amazon