Amazon Web Services Inc. has just added a new service, called Amazon Location Service, to its cloud offerings to help customers with location-based needs.

“Amazon Location Service is a new geospatial service that makes it easy for customers on AWS to integrate location information into their applications,” said Andre Dufour (pictured), General Manager, Amazon Location Service, AWS. “One of the things that’s really cool about Amazon Location is we enable customers to access this high-quality data in a way that’s incredibly cost effective. It’s up to 10 times cheaper than some of the alternatives.”

Dufour spoke with Rebecca Knight, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed Amazon Location Services and uses cases the demonstrate how customers are leveraging this new service. (* Disclosure below.)

Using Amazon Location Service for location-based services

The idea behind location information can mean things like maps, points of interest, places and geo codes from trusted global high-quality data partners, according to Dufour. Besides being cost effective and easy to scale because it’s a native AWS service, Amazon Location Service also takes privacy very seriously, keeping customer location data in their AWS account.

“One thing that we’re seeing customers commonly using location for is location-based customer engagement,” Dufour explained. “What that means is including a location component when you are reaching out to your customers with timely offers. So, for example, when they’re in close proximity to one of your retail locations, sending them an offer tends to increase their satisfaction and their conversion.”

Many customers are also using maps for visualizations of data — like showing a route between two points or dropping location pins on a map in order to enhance the visual understanding of subject matter — and for asset tracking in real time.

“Additionally, customers also use us in end-to-end delivery use cases, be it last-mile delivery for goods that were ordered online or food delivery, which of course is increasingly prevalent these days,” Dufour said.

One of AWS’ use case includes a customer called Singleton Solutions and its product MobileLog, which lets customers manage the logistics of a delivery business within the cloud. MobileLog was able to retire a lot of the custom codes it had built, because nothing was really available to meet their location needs.

“They were able to consolidate their location infrastructure from multiple clouds onto just AWS, which simplifies their solution,” Dufour said. “They were able to move more quickly on behalf of their customers, and they managed to reduce their costs while doing this up to 60%.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: Amazon Web Services Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE