Verizon Digital Media CDN (EdgeCast) Expands Globally

Verizon Digital Media Services announced that "Since its acquisition of EdgeCast Networks [see "Verizon Acquires EdgeCast; Will it Serve DT and TeliaSonera?" - here] .. Verizon Digital Media Services has rapidly expanded the capacity of the Verizon EdgeCast CDN, adding more than 20 new points of presence, or POPs, in major cities around the world since January. These cities include Warsaw, Stockholm, Milan, Vienna, Melbourne, Helsinki, Kaohsiung, Batam, Jakarta and Sao Paulo. The company also expanded its presence with additional POPs in many cities already served, including London, Madrid, Paris and Amsterdam. These additions offer customers even greater connectivity and performance within these markets.

.. Each new POP is built securely on Verizon Digital Media Services’ latest generation of delivery servers, with pre-built dedicated space for rapid expansion. The POPs have multiple diverse connections into last-mile networks and are provisioned to support the full suite of Verizon EdgeCast services".

See "Verizon Digital Media Services Expands Global Content Delivery Network" - here.

PeerApp, Limelight and Sandvine Show Policy-Managed Delivery of 4K Video over CDN and Operator Cache

PeerApp announced that it has "successfully demonstrated its implementation of the Content Service Extension (see "PeerApp, EdgeCast and Limelight Create Open Framework for Content Delivery" - here) architecture in cooperation with Sandvine and  Limelight Networks

The demonstration features managed delivery of 4K video content from Limelight’s global CDN footprint into the home, triggering operator caching and network Quality of Service (QoS) extension services in a trusted and controlled fashion. The operator-side implementation of the CSE service architecture includes PeerApp’s UltraBand cache and CSE controller platforms as well as Sandvine’s Service Delivery Engine (SDE) .. This offers a first time reference implementation of an end-to-end content delivery architecture utilizing a global CDN footprint in combination with operator caching and guaranteed QoS, using the Packet Cable Multimedia (PCMM) standard, defined and promoted by the PacketCable industry consortium, founded by CableLabs"

See "PeerApp, Sandvine and Limelight Demonstrate End-to-End Guaranteed Delivery of 4K Video and Content Monetization using Content Service Extension Architecture at CableLabs" - here.

Verizon Acquires EdgeCast; Will it Serve DT and TeliaSonera?

  

Verizon announced a "definitive agreement under which the company will acquire EdgeCast, an industry leader in content delivery networks. Verizon Digital Media Services will integrate EdgeCast complementary capabilities to further improve and increase its ability to meet the exponential growth in online digital media content, as well as broaden its portfolio of site acceleration services for digital enterprises.

EdgeCast has more than 6,000 accounts and serves some of the world’s leading Web brands for global media delivery and acceleration services". 

Nevertheless, EdgeCast also have carriers as customers: Deutsche Telekom [here], TeliaSonera [here] and Telin [here]. I wonder what will happen here. PeerApp, EdgeCast's caching partner may enjoy this as well (see "PeerApp and EdgeCast Offer Operators Joint CDN/Caching Solution" - here).

See "Verizon Plans to Acquire EdgeCast Networks" - here.

PeerApp, EdgeCast and Limelight Create Open Framework for Content Delivery

PeerApp announced the formation of the "Content Service Extension (CSE) initiative in cooperation with global CDN service providers EdgeCast Networks and Limelight Networks .. Market trials for CSE-based products and services are scheduled to take place in the second half of 2013"

"The Content Service Extension initiative offers a service framework that will allow third party CDNs and Internet content services to extend their footprint deep into operator networks by leveraging operator infrastructure already in place. The goal of the initiative is to promote cooperation among network operators and Internet content ecosystem participants based on open interfaces and interoperability. It is open to broad participation by global CDN providers, network operators, content service providers and technology vendors". 

See "PeerApp Announces Content Service Extension Initiative to Foster Open Collaboration within Content Delivery Ecosystem" - here

Joint CDN/Caching Solution by Limelight and Qwilt

Qwilt  announced that "..Limelight Networks and Qwilt have partnered to develop solutions that will address the dramatic growth of online or “Over-the-top” (OTT) video content .. Limelight’s content delivery network (CDN) optimizes the long haul by delivering video content directly to the operator network. Qwilt’s next generation transparent caching platform, in turn, optimizes the short haul by caching and delivering content at the network edge, close to the consumer. The integration of Limelight and Qwilt solutions will streamline video delivery from the content provider origin servers all the way to the network edge, close to the consumer".

Similar announcements have been announced in the past: Oversi (now Allot) and Jet-Stream (here), PeerApp and EdgeCast (here)

See "Qwilt Partners With Limelight Networks, Inc. for Video Delivery Technology" - here.

CDN Deployments [248]: TeliaSonera Partners with EdgeCast

   

EdgeCast Networks and TeliaSonera announced a ".. managed CDN agreement that will bring new site acceleration and CDN solutions to TeliaSonera’s customer base while expanding the reach and capacity of the EdgeCast network .. TeliaSonera will offer solutions to achieve great web performance and scalability for websites and applications to the Nordic enterprise market. For media and entertainment, TeliaSonera will provide unprecedented reach and quality for over-the-top media delivery .. The companies have begun the network deployment and services are already available from TeliaSonera"

TeliaSonra's CDN offers the following services: Web performance, Media Delivery, HTTP Caching, Analytics, Storage, Security, Rules Engine and Edge Optimizer (using Google’s PageSpeed technology - see "EdgeCast Shows 77% Performance Improvement w/Integrated Google’s PageSpeed" - here). 

TeliaSonera has "CDN presence on five continents thanks to our own footprint and the global CDN Federation. In addition to our Edge CDN nodes in the Nordic countries, we also have presence in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia". 

 

Staffan Göjeryd, VP Product Management, TeliaSonera said: “Site acceleration and global content delivery have become core business requirements for many of our customers, and therefore offering those services is of critical strategic importance to us .. The partnership with EdgeCast positions us perfectly to offer a global suite of CDN solutions to the Nordic customer base while also adding a significant new source of revenue”.

See "EdgeCast and TeliaSonera Partner on Content Delivery" - here.

CDN Deployments [235]: TELIN [Indonesia] Partners with EdgeCast

  

EdgeCast Networks has entered into a ".. partnership with PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International (TELIN) to power a TELIN-operated Indonesian CDN, The partnership will enable TELIN to offer CDN services to its enterprise customers and further expands the reach and capacity of EdgeCast’s global network, which now carries more than 4 percent of the world’s Internet traffic".

See also "EdgeCast Announced "Licensed CDN"; Deployed by Pacnet and AT&T(?)" - here.

TELIN's (part of Telkom Indonesia) focus is as an "international carrier services and strategic investment in international telecommunication business serves as Telkom’s business arms in managing and developing its business lines abroad".

Syarif Syarial Ahmad (pictured), CEO, TELIN said: “With rapidly-growing rate of Internet adoption in Indonesia, we have observed a commensurate rise in CDN usage among enterprise companies here .. This partnership with EdgeCast enables us to participate in that growth by leveraging CDN as a source of new revenue”.

See "Edgecast and Telin partner on Indonesian content delivery" - here.

CDN Deployments [190]: DT Uses EdgeCast for Application Delivery Network

    

Deutsche Telekom International Carrier Sales & Solutions (ICSS), the international wholesale arm of Deutsche Telekom AG, announced " .. the launch of Application Delivery Network. The new service is capable of substantially improving the performance and throughput of web applications and the provision of dynamic content. Application Delivery Network (ADN), based on the cutting-edge CDN technology of EdgeCast, is a multi-layered, easy-to-use service that combines best practice optimizations with core technology refinements".

See "EdgeCast Shows 77% Performance Improvement w/Integrated Google’s PageSpeed" - here and "EdgeCast Announced "Licensed CDN"; Deployed by Pacnet and AT&T(?)" - here.

Source: ICSS

"With ADN, ICSS complements its CDN Solution portfolio, which is based on a global footprint. It supports content delivery requirements, be it caching, multi-platform streaming, premium storage, content security and in-depth analytics. Value-added services and the web-based, self-provisioning portal complete the CDN offering"

See "Deutsche Telekom launches Application Delivery Network" - here.

[Dan Rayburn]: AT&T is Giving up on Carrier CDN

In recent months it looked like the "carrier CDN" trend is picking up (see - Infonetics, Ericsson/Akamai solution, ALU customers).

According to Dan Rayburn (pictured), EVP StreamingMedia.com, at least one major carrier may have changed his strategy - "After many years of AT&T trying to sell their own CDN services into the enterprise, multiple sources tell me that AT&T has decided that it makes more sense for them to simply re-sell CDN services from either Akamai or Limelight. Both vendors are currently in negotiations with AT&T bidding on the business and while AT&T has not yet picked a winner, I’m hearing that even though Limelight had been favored to win the deal, the reseller business is now Akamai’s to lose".

  

".. AT&T has always been using EdgeCast’s licensed CDN platform for their wholesale CDN services (here) and federation model, so I would expect AT&T would still manage this portion of their CDN business".

See "AT&T In Talks To Re-Sell Akamai or Limelight’s Enterprise CDN Services" - here.

CDN Announcements: EdgeCast Shows 77% Performance Improvement w/Integrated Google’s PageSpeed

EdgeCast Networks announced it has "integrated Google’s PageSpeed (see "Google Optimizes Web sites and Brings CDN Service to the Masses" - here) front end optimization (FEO) technology into the company’s content delivery network". 

"This major step makes PageSpeed - and the significant speed improvements it can provide for static and dynamic content - available to thousands of customers and millions of web sites. Customers can now select from many “best practice” optimizations to apply to their content, and those optimizations will be conducted on-the-fly, on the edge server closest to the end user, and without requiring any changes to site code .. PageSpeed will also be incorporated into the EdgeCast managed and licensed CDN software platforms [here] making the technology available to EdgeCast distributors such as Motorola Mobility, Dell [here], and the operators they serve".

"The integration is the first implementation that executes PageSpeed logic directly on the edge server closest to each end user - a fundamental architectural distinction that results in major improvements in site performance. Early customer testing has shown up to a 77% improvement in site performance compared to customer origin without the service".

See "EdgeCast brings google pagespeed to the edge" - here.

Dell and EdgeCast to Offer Carrier CDN

 
Dell announced ".. Dell Deliver, its first-ever Content Delivery Platform (CDP) that allows network providers to sell Content Delivery Network (CDN) services to the enterprise as well as manage the on-demand delivery of any video to any screen quickly, efficiently and at low cost. Offering network operators a new, easier path to CDN ownership, Dell Deliver is built on Dell PowerEdge 12th generation servers and software from EdgeCast Networks and Elemental Technologies".

"..Dell Deliver is available with a number of deployment models and built with software from EdgeCast Networks, the CDN that delivers a substantial portion of the world’s Internet traffic on behalf of more than 4,000 content providers and Elemental Technologies, a supplier of video processing solutions for multiscreen content delivery. Dell Deliver allows network operators to launch their own CDN quickly and affordably, and allows them to concurrently offer a valuable new service to their enterprise customers and support their own video delivery initiatives".

Will it include transparent caching as well? see -  "PeerApp and EdgeCast Offer Operators Joint CDN/Caching Solution" - here.
 

Competition:

• Limelight Launched Managed CDN Platform, with Cache - here
• EdgeCast Announced "Licensed CDN"; Deployed by Pacnet and AT&T(?) - here
• Akamai to Offer Products for Operator's Own Content Delivery - here

See "Dell Teams Up with EdgeCast Networks and Elemental Technologies to Make Content Production and Delivery Networks More Attainable for Service Providers" - here.

PeerApp: “Caching is the future of Optimization”

   
Few days ago I met Shmulik Bachar, VP of products and marketing, PeerApp, in its R&D site.

PeerApp, according to Frost and Sullivan recent research, leads the transparent cache market (see “F&S: Transparent caching market to Reach $708M by 2015; PeerApp Leads” – here). In 2011, the market had estimated revenues of $140M.

Some of the Q&A we had:

Q: Who do you see now in the caching market?

A: As direct competitors we mainly see Blue Coat. Note that we are also selling through OEMs, which includes Allot Communications and BTI Systems.

Q: What about the cache offering from Juniper, Cisco and the video optimization vendors?

A: These companies do not compete with us directly. They use caching as internal mechanism in their solutions, but not as a solution for optimizing Over the Top (OTT) traffic, as we do.

Q: We saw recently some announcements of integrated Carrier CDN and transparent caching solutions. Are the two will finally become one?

A: In many cases, carriers like to see one solution. This is why we announced a joint solution with Edgecast (here), and Verivue, who came from CDN solution side is now adding transparent caching (here). Transparent caching and CDN provide the carrier with similar benefits, although the technical solution for transparent caching and CDN is different.

Q: What is the business case for transparent caching? It is still about bandwidth savings?

A: It is no longer just savings, except for specific regions. The main goal now is to improve the subscriber’s quality of Experience (QoE) and monetize OTT services.

Q: Monetize? How?

A: One example, implemented by some of our customers, is the ability to sell higher tiers of service (usually volume-based) knowing that caching will enable better QoE.

Q: How about PeerApp? Where is it going?

A: We continue to focus on caching. It is the future of optimization, both for fixed and mobile operators. I believe that the different Adaptive Bitrate technologies (from Apple, Microsoft and Adobe) will make the other real-time/network based video optimization technologies (see here) redundant. Caching has real value, for bandwidth savings, QoE improvement and monetization.

PeerApp is doing very well, we closed a $8M investment last year (here) and we are working on additional OEM opportunities to expand our reach to other elements of the core network.

EdgeCast Announced "Licensed CDN"; Deployed by Pacnet and AT&T(?)

 
EdgeCast Networks officially announced its " .. licensed CDN program. Following two years of success and traction within the carrier community, EdgeCast is the first CDN provider to successfully build a production CDN on behalf of a tier one telecommunications carrier .. The company has reached the General Acceptance milestone in its design, development, and deployment of a licensed CDN for a tier one U.S. telecommunications carrier. This comes just three months after EdgeCast signed a licensing agreement with Pacnet — one of Asia’s largest telecommunications carriers — to power Pacnet’s CDN service."

Earlier this year, EdgeCast and PeerApp announced a joint CDN and transparent cache solution (here). 

".. Two weeks ago, EdgeCast transferred control to the U.S. carrier of its own fully functional, high-performance CDN with more than a dozen points of presence across the U.S. The EdgeCast software covers the entire CDN stack: content delivery for caching and streaming; load balancing; network and server management; reporting; customer and account provisioning; technical support; and other back office functionality".

According to Rob Powell from Telecom Rumblings, the unnamed carrier is AT&T (see "EdgeCast Takes the Carrier Plunge" - here). AT&T is also using a CDN solution from Cotendo (here) that was recently acquired by Akamai (here).  

See "EdgeCast launches licensed CDN program following global deployment of two major carrier CDNs" - here. 

Caching Announcements: Verivue Adds Transparent Caching

 

The trend of integrated CDN and OTT transparent caching solutions continues. Recently we saw the PeerApp and EdgaCast partnership (here) and Dan Rayurn's call to Akamai to acquire a transparent caching vendor (here) and now Verivue, a CDN solution vendor, announced that "it extended its OneVantage™ content delivery solution with the announcement of a software add-on for Transparent Caching".

Jim Dolce (pictured) , CEO of Verivue said: "With the rapid growth of both managed and unmanaged content, operators are faced with solving both problems independently .. This first-of-a-kind, fully integrated platform consolidates support for both 'over-the-top' and conventional managed content in a comprehensive, software based solution. For the first time, the significant cost savings and enhanced Quality of Experience (QoE) typically associated with Transparent Caches can be combined with the revenue generation and new service benefits of a CDN".

See also Jim's post to the company blog "The Case for Integration" (here) that doesn’t ignore the PeerApp/Edgecast partnership.
  

See "Verivue Extends OneVantage Carrier CDN Platform with Transparent Caching" - here.

PeerApp and EdgeCast Offer Operators Joint CDN/Caching Solution

 
EdgeCast Networks and PeerApp announced a "comprehensive content delivery solution for network operators [that] combines EdgeCast licensed CDN software .. with PeerApp’s UltraBand transparent caching platform .. these technologies will let operators cache all content – managed and unmanaged – that is carried across their networks ..  both traditional CDN and transparent caching are needed in order to allow operators to capture and manage the broadest set of content entering their networks .. The combined architecture will include functionality that lets operators use a single set of caching configurations for content, regardless of publisher relationships, capturing more content without disrupting application functionality. It will also provide the ability to monitor performance and administer the platform through a single interface, delivering new operational efficiencies"

Aditya Kishore (pictured), senior analyst, Heavy Reading said: "CDNs cache and deliver content based on paid agreements with content owners, so they only address ‘contracted’ content. Other traffic that may be causing network problems is left largely unaffected .. Conversely, the transparent cache is deployed by operators to intercept traffic based purely on its impact on delivery costs and network congestion. Both approaches use edge caching as a solution, but have different objectives. Operators can combine the two approaches to help alleviate congestion, improve QoE and cut transit costs on one hand; but also generate incremental revenue and create a place in the online video distribution value chain, on the other.”

See "EdgeCast and PeerApp Join Forces on Operator CDN Solution" - here.