Microsoft's mapping, imagery, location and search platform is evolving constantly, but the latest move from the Redmond company is guaranteed to deliver a boost in performance. On May 20, 2009, the software giant started rolling out Virtual Earth to the Content Delivery Network. How does this move impact performance? Well, the Content Delivery Network is an integral part of the Microsoft Edge Caching Network, and through CDN Virtual Earth content will make its way in Microsoft datacenters around the world. The Redmond company indicated that VE would be made available to end users from multiple geo-distributed data centers (across the Americas, but also Europe and Asia) instead of being limited to just a single datacenter.

“Virtual Earth has historically been in a single data center serving up all these billions of tile images (and the AJAX map control) which service our mapping platforms including the AJAX map control, Silverlight Map Control, Virtual Earth Web Service and 3D Managed Control,” explained Chris Pendleton, Virtual Earth tech evangelist, Microsoft. “Now, we’ve deployed the Virtual Earth map tiles and AJAX control to geographically dispersed data centers that provide global load balancing which means you’ll get your Virtual Earth tiles and AJAX control from the data center that is closest to you – no more waiting for tiles to come from Virginia.”

Microsoft has already informed developers building on top of the Virtual Earth platform that they will be able to deliver content faster to end users, granted they leverage the advantages provided by the Content Delivery Network. Following the integration with CDN, Virtual Earth content delivery speeds have exploded as much as 82%. The Redmond company informed that the performance boost was valid for both the Virtual Earth AJAX Map Control and Virtual Earth Silverlight Map Control.

“To begin utilizing CDN, [developers] will need to make an opt-in, non-breaking change to your AJAX map control code; no action is required for Silverlight Map Control users, as CDN logic is already built-in. Given the significant performance benefits of CDN, it will be the preferred method of accessing Virtual Earth content,” Pendleton added.