Case Study: Fast and secure media content delivery with Amazon CloudFront and Lambda@Edge

This case study shows how ABCloudz engineering team resolved site performance issues using Amazon CloudFront and Lambda@Edge of AWS.

Challenge

Our partner iCleanse offers its clients the Swift UV devices, designed to disinfect hands and mobile phones. As the device disinfects a phone within 15 seconds, it simultaneously displays sponsored video content, generating advertising revenue. Businesses of any type can benefit from installing these disinfection stations, not only by reducing costs on traditional disinfection methods and aligning with green initiatives but also by earning a share of the advertising profits. The expansion of this business model was hindered by the lack of a content management system for iCleanse partners who operate the Swift UV devices. Additionally, the delivery speed of media content often fell short of expectations.

Our comprehensive solution

ABCloudz has developed a bespoke Content Management System (CMS) that revolutionized the way custom content is managed and displayed on Swift UV devices. This user-friendly platform is designed for efficiency, enabling easy uploading, organization, and scheduling of multimedia content across multiple units, no matter their location. Additionally, the CMS supports unlimited client additions, comprehensive campaign management, and offers real-time analytics to ensure optimal content delivery and performance.

To address the initial challenges faced by the client, ABCloudz crafted a dual-component architecture for this CMS:

Admin web application: This application utilizes Angular and Node.js, integrated with a PostgreSQL database hosted on AWS RDS for data storage. To boost data retrieval performance, Amazon ElastiCache (Redis) is utilized.

Client-side mobile application: A native Android library supports kiosk mode operation on tablets mounted to disinfection stations, ensuring a user-friendly display of advertisements.

CloudFront Integration

A pivotal element in the project’s architecture was the seamless integration of AWS CloudFront. This integration was crucial for efficiently and securely distributing the Angular application. By leveraging CloudFront in conjunction with AWS services like Lambda@Edge and S3, we optimized content delivery by serving it from the closest geographical location to the end-user, significantly enhancing user experience and system performance.

CloudFront also played a key role in strengthening the application’s security. It addresses three crucial security aspects:

Access management and control: CloudFront offers robust mechanisms for managing access to the distribution, content, and origin, essential for protecting sensitive data.

Data transmission security: CloudFront ensures encrypted connections and utilizes proxy architectures to protect data during transmission, mitigating interception and tampering risks.

Advanced security services integration: CloudFront can be enhanced with AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall), providing vital protection against malicious internet traffic.

Furthermore, our team integrated CloudFront with Application Load Balancer, ECS Fargate (Elastic Container Service), and WAF, empowering the WebAPI with auto-scaling capabilities based on CPU and RAM utilization. This dynamic scaling ensures high availability and resilience amid fluctuating traffic and potential security threats, guaranteeing seamless application performance and robust defense against digital threats.

Lambda@Edge for Enhanced Performance

Lambda@Edge significantly enhances the performance of web applications by executing code closer to user locations, which drastically reduces latency and accelerates response times. By processing requests at AWS edge locations, Lambda@Edge minimizes the travel distance for data, ensuring faster content delivery and a superior user experience. The performance improvements include:

Edge Computing: Executes application logic at edge locations, minimizing the need to communicate with the origin server, which speeds up content delivery.

Content Personalization: Dynamically modifies content at the edge, facilitating real-time personalization without compromising the core application’s performance.

Smart Routing: Implements intelligent routing decisions based on user location, efficiently redirecting traffic to reduce latency further.

Integrating CloudFront with Lambda@Edge allows our clients to enjoy reduced loading times and a smoother, more responsive user interface. This combination not only optimizes the delivery of multimedia content but also significantly boosts the overall operational efficiency of the iCleanse platform.

Operational Insights with Monitoring

To ensure seamless performance and robust health of the iCleanse web application, we have implemented a comprehensive monitoring system using Amazon CloudWatch and DataDog.

This advanced system offers crucial operational insights, essential for maintaining the efficiency and security of the marketplace. CloudWatch provides metrics, logs, and alarms to monitor resources, while DataDog delivers advanced analytics and visualization tools for real-time monitoring and troubleshooting.

This dual-framework monitoring architecture ensures that the iCleanse solution can effectively handle high volumes of media files and vast datasets, while maintaining top levels of security, performance, and scalability.

Results

Over the project’s 12-month duration, iCleanse achieved significant milestones. The company improved its management of advertisements, rolled out over-the-air (OTA) updates, and enhanced its analysis of ad performance data. These improvements enriched the management and operational capabilities of its Swift UV product line.

Conclusion

The strategic partnership between iCleanse and ABCloudz led to the successful deployment of a scalable and secure management solution for Swift UV disinfection stations, integrated with CloudFront. By leveraging innovative AWS services, the project addressed significant challenges in data security, system performance, and scalability, establishing a new standard in user engagement within the hygiene industry.