Limelight and Level 3 Look at Changes in the CDN Market
As viewer's use of online video changes and grows, so do the challenges facing the content delivery networks (CDNs). In his talk at the recent Content Delivery Summit Europe in London, Chris Townsley, director of European sales for Limelight, listed some of his company's current challenges: the huge proliferation in streaming devices, the increase in mobile usage, and rising consumer expectations.
One of the biggest challenges, said Townsley, is preparing for unexpected usage spikes.
"We've seen a huge change in the last 10 years. We have spent the last 10 years building out this global CDN. And what are our challenges? Absolutely scale. The key thing is scale. And I'll come onto what the network looks like, but fundamentally when I talk about scale, we need to probably run 50 percent headroom on our network at any point and time. There's a lot of reasons for that. One is obviously for organic growth with existing customers. Two are obviously new customers coming onto the network. But the big big thing that we have to plan for is unplanned: unplanned live events. So the Chilean minors a number of months ago, that created huge spikes on the network. We had the Obama inauguration a couple years ago, the Michael Jackson funeral. At peak, I think, the Michael Jackson funeral was 4-point-something million concurrent watching the Michael Jackson funeral," said Townsle.
"Those are what I call the unplanned events that we need to -- we can't plan for them, but we need to at least make sure that we've got the scale and the headroom," Townsley explained.
For more from Limelight, and to hear Level 3 explain how telcos can adapt to offer CDN services, watch the video below. Skip ahead to the five-minute mark.
Meeting the Demand in Europe
Chris talks about the nuances Limelight sees that are specific to Europe, looking at both commercial and technical challenges, and how the approaches differ for one of the largest global CDNs when targeting the Europe market.
Chris Townsley, Director of European Sales, Limelight Networks UK Ltd
Being a Tier 1 Telco in the CDN Market: Telcos Adapting to Offer CDN Services
As telcos increasingly adapt their network and service offerings to introduce CDN services, we ask the longest running and largest tier 1 global 'TDN' to advise regional telcos on their strategy as they adapt to new service models.
Derek Gough, Director, Product Management, European Markets Group, Level 3 Communications
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