CDNs Are Big Business, EdgeCast Get $6 Million
Nick Gonzalez
10 comments »
When we watch movies or play music online, there’s a flurry of unseen activity making sure that data arrives when and where it’s supposed to be. This is the job of the high speed fiber and computer systems of the internet’s content distribution networks (CDNs).
Every website that streams content (live video, music) needs a CDN. The flurry of new media online has made it a prime time for companies like Akamai, Limelight Networks, Level 3, VitalStream, BitGravity, and EdgeCast who provide fast and efficient ways to deliver rich media to millions on the internet. The market is estimated to be around $800 million, of which Akamai controls about half.
One of the newer networks, EdgeCast (2006), has closed a $6 million in Series B financing led by Steamboat Ventures, which is affiliated with The Walt Disney Company, bringing their total financing to $10 million. Steamboat joins Series A investors such as Mark Amin, Chairman of CinemaNow as well as Jon Feltheimer, CEO of Lionsgate films. The new funds will be used to expand internationally, scale the network for additional capacity, enhance features, and market to more businesses.
EdgeCast has distinguished itself from other CDNs by charging for bandwidth instead of lumping the cost in with the cost of other CDN services. This means customers should see declines in their bill as bandwidth costs drop.
But these businesses are as much defined by their customer list as pricing plans. Level3 provides the backbone for YouTube’s content. Limelight handles Microsoft and Amazon Unbox. BitGravity serves Revision3. EdgeCast’s most recognizable customer is IMAX, but their investment from Steamboat Ventures leads me to believe they’ll be the CDN of choice for Disney as well.
Hey, nick scroll down to Giijii. Look at punch buggy. Don’t forget to punch your techcrunch fellow.
hrm. I thought you meant “Canadian”
Canadians are big business too. When prepared properly they are quite delectable.
I would love to know what the wholesale cost of bandwidth really is and how much they are making (margins) on such streaming deals. Hopefully, the more heavy bandwidth applications there are, the cheaper it will be for all of us to “rent” it
Jon
6 Million is chump change!
The problems with CDNs is security, in my opinion. If you are to deliver secured content where URLs or the content itself is “secured” in some way, then CDNs fall a little short. However, for standard assets it can very effective.
Also, there is a matter of hit ratio. When I was at Pictage we use a CDN that only gave us a 60% or less hit ratio. I ended up implementing my own thing (cacheing using Squid) where my hit ratio was in the high 90’s%.
In another job I used Akamai for a while with mixed results. We ended up canceling the contract, specially since the performance internationally was lackluster. A couple of Squid servers placed in the right spot ended up being the right solution (I can not take credit for this last move).
The idea of a CDN is awesome, but not the holly grail.
Level3 supplies bandwidth to YouTube, but not CDN services. Google has been working on bringing the CDN into its own datacenters.
Can someone please compare all these services to Amazon S3.
I was thinking about using Amazon S3 for CDN, they are pretty cheap.
1 Luv!
http://www.givemebeats.com
Max,
I was suggest you look up what a CDN truly is as S3 really doesn’t fit into the category.
-Ross