Amazon Web Services (AWS) is making it easier and more cost-effective to add location functionality to applications without compromising user privacy or data security.

With Amazon Location Service, users can embed location functionality in their applications using data from location-based service (LBS) providers Esri and Here Technologies to provide maps, points of interest, geocoding (converting location information to a point on a map), route planning, geofencing (creating virtual perimeters), and asset tracking.

Amazon claims the service is as low as a tenth the cost of the most common LBS providers, and users pay only for the number of user requests, assets tracked or devices managed.

Location data are vital for companies of all sizes and across every industry to support a range of use cases such as asset tracking, route planning and location-based marketing that rely on the explosion of connected devices. However, due to privacy and security compromises, cost-prohibitive pricing, and a difficult integration process, many face significant barriers when integrating location functionality into their applications.

For example, some LBS providers impose licensing terms that give the provider the rights to access, use and commercialise the location data, such as the position of users, facilities or vehicles. Additionally, the pricing often makes it too expensive to use location functionality in all ways possible.

Even when the licensing terms and price are less prohibitive, onboarding an LBS provider requires investment in integrating data and building supporting tools before using the provider’s location data in an application. For more advanced use cases such as asset tracking or geofencing, it may need to be built from scratch, which can add months of development time.

Furthermore, some may want to use an additional provider for a specific application or region, but this requires resources in onboarding and integrating the provider into the application, which increases cost and complexity.

Amazon says its service eliminates the complexity of adding location functionality to an application by providing a single, managed service that lets users control what access providers have to confidential data, cost-effectively implement location-based features, and easily integrate data from Esri and Here Technologies into their applications.

Built with user privacy and data security top of mind, the service gives complete control of location data. It removes metadata and account information from queries before they are sent to an LBS provider, and sensitive tracking and geofencing information never leaves a user’s AWS account unless they choose to share it.

Additionally, the licensing terms do not grant Amazon or third parties the rights to sell or use the location data for advertising.

The technology has built-in tracking and geofencing capabilities, so users do not need to spend resources building services, and can instead focus on building applications.

The service comes integrated with Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail and Amazon EventBridge, so users can view monitoring, management and log data, and can trigger actions based on events, such as when a device enters or exits a geofence or when a vehicle arrives at its destination. It also integrates with AWS security services, including AWS Identity & Access Management (IAM) and Amazon Cognito, so users can reduce complexity and maintain consistent security practices with identity management and authentication tools that work across administrators and end-users.

A single API works across LBS providers and lets users switch between providers easily based on their specific use case or region, without needing to onboard new vendors or set up separate supporting infrastructure.

“Our customers are excited to use location data to take advantage of the explosion of connected devices available today,” said Bill Vass, VP of technology at AWS. “With built-in support for tracking and geofencing and a number of use cases that are as low as a tenth the cost of the most common LBS providers, Amazon Location Service is pretty compelling for any company that wants to bring location functionality to their application using a fully managed AWS service built with the highest standards for privacy and data security.”

The service can be accessed through the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) or the Amazon Location Service API. It is available in North Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, Frankfurt, Ireland, Stockholm, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo regions.

Azit is a mobility-as-a-service company that aims to connect people in motion by providing a last kilometre transportation service throughout Japan.

“Last year, we launched Crew Express, a new delivery-as-a-service platform that gives businesses and general consumers a comprehensive solution for last mile delivery,” said Masato Sogame, CTO of Azit. “We chose Amazon Location Service because it allowed us to get up-and-running quickly and its pay-as-you-go pricing was perfectly suited to our business. With Amazon Location Service, we were able to implement a new feature that estimates arrival times in just a few weeks, rather than the months it could have taken if we tried to build it ourselves.”

PostNL is an ecommerce and postal logistics provider in the Netherlands. On a given weekday, it delivers on average 1.1 million parcels and 8.1 million letters throughout Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, connecting the physical and the digital world.

“We’ve implemented Amazon Location Service in our IoT platform to track the movement of a quarter-million unique loading devices (ULDs), known as roller cages, which are a critical component of our logistical network,” said Sander Heije, IoT platform owner at PostNL. “Previously, tracking ULDs in the network was difficult because we weren’t able to monitor the assets as they’re moved around and stored. With the implementation of Amazon Location Service, we can easily monitor our ULDs, which will generate important savings for our operation. We can now maximise ULD usage so they don’t sit idle and customers always have the right amount of ULDs in case they have a surge in deliveries. This real-time visibility to track and analyse assets with Amazon Location Service, especially at our scale, has spurred multiple initiatives to further optimise the logistics of our supply chain.”