Skytide Blog

Understanding the CDN Economics of Build vs. Buy

May 7th, 2012

StreamingMediaBlog.com’s Dan Rayburn provides some more details here about the “CDN Economics of Build vs. Buy” panel at the upcoming Content Delivery Summit in New York. Skytide’s CEO, Michael O’Donnell will be participating alongside Comcast’s Jacob Rosenberg and Jet-Stream’s Scott Landman.

There will be a lot of interesting terrain to cover including:

  • The value of building a Telco CDN compared to buying from a third party
  • What operator CDNs need to do to compete on analytics and reporting and its importance in network optimization and monetization
  • Operational considerations and challenges of the build vs. buy decision
  • The total cost  of ownership argument and architectural considerations
  • Other factors such as geography and service provider size that can impact the build vs. buy decision

 

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Skytide to Sponsor Content Delivery Summit

April 26th, 2012

After attending the Content Delivery Summit in New York for the past few years, we decided to up the ante and become a Gold Sponsor. It’s a very intimate, focused conference that really hones in on the issues affecting the content delivery ecosystem.

Skytide President & CEO, Michael O’Donnell will participate in a panel discussing the “CDN Economics of Build vs. Buy,” a subject that is particularly relevant given the rise of Telco CDNs (service providers that are increasingly choosing to build their own CDNs rather than purchase CDN service from a third party). The panel will address questions such as:

• What’s the best path, economically, for operators contemplating a CDN strategy?
• Build it, or rent capacity from a growing roster of third-party partner CDNs?
• What are the tradeoffs associated with CDN planning and implementation?

While there are some very compelling reasons for operators to build their own CDN solution, they would be best served to select an out-of-the-box analytics and reporting solution rather than attempt to build one from scratch. View the slideshow below to see why.

6 reasons not to build your own analytics & reporting solution

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Skytide Selected as “Cool Vendor” by Gartner

April 23rd, 2012

It always feels gratifying to be praised, but to be lauded as “cool” may be the highest form of flattery.

So, we’re thrilled to be designated by Gartner, Inc. as a “Cool Vendor in Communication Service Provider Infrastructure.”* Full details here.

In recognizing Skytide, Gartner specifically acknowledged our ability to handle the volume and complexity that adaptive bitrate streaming demands. Adaptive streaming — also called smooth streaming or dynamic streaming — is an increasingly popular technology that enables communications service providers to dynamically change the quality of online video based on available bandwidth. But…. it’s a real beast to measure. View the slideshow below to see why.

What is Adaptive Bitrate Streaming?

*Gartner, Inc., Cool Vendors in Communications Service Provider Infrastructure, 2012, Akshay K. Sharma, Deborah Kish, April 5, 2012.

 

About the Cool Vendor:

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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Mobile CDNs transform OTT from threat to opportunity

April 16th, 2012

Strategy Analytics has just published a new study which reinforces what we at Skytide have been saying for quite some time: over-the-top (OTT) content can be a friend to broadband providers and not the existential threat that many have assumed.

According to the study, “Mobile Content Delivery Networks Reduce Media Delivery Costs and Create OTT Revenue Opportunity,” CDNs can offer mobile broadband operators significant revenue opportunities via:

  • Value-based response to the dominance of OTT content providers
  • Multi-screen delivery of video to smartphones, tablets, laptops and televisions
  • Premium content services with differentiated Quality of Service (QoS)

This certainly aligns with what we’re seeing among Tier 1 service providers.  In fact, two of the operators cited in the study — BT and Telecom Italia — are Skytide customers.

For more on how service providers can use CDNs to profit from improved QoS, read our white paper, “How Telcos and ISPs Can Learn to Love OTT.”

Posted in Online Video Trends, Telco CDN | No Comments »

Skytide partners and customers clean up at IPTV awards show

March 27th, 2012

If you are judged by the company that you keep, then Skytide is in very good shape.

Some of our key partners and customers just received awards at the IPTV Industry Awards in London, honoring innovation within the fields of IPTV, OTT, Connected TV and Hybrid TV.   The awards show was the exclamation point on the IP&TV World Forum, which Skytide sponsored.  Award winners included:

Skytide partners:

  • Ericsson — Best Component or Enabler
  • Cisco — Best TV Consumer Device

Skytide customers:

  • Telstra — Best TV Service Innovation
  • BT — Best Service Growth Achievement

Congratulations to all.

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Skytide Appoints Hamid Bahadori as CTO and Vice President of Engineering

March 20th, 2012

LONDON — (Marketwire) — 03/20/12 — IP&TV World Forum — Skytide, the leader in Online Video Management Analytics and sponsor of the IP&TV World Forum, today announced that it has appointed Dr. Hamid Bahadori as Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Engineering. A 24-year veteran of the software industry, Bahadori has held senior management positions at web analytics, business intelligence and performance management providers, designing and managing large-scale product architectures and applications.

Prior to Skytide, Bahadori served as Vice President of Product Development and Hosted Operations for Adaptive Planning, Inc. He has also served as Vice President of Engineering and Hosted Operations at Webtrends, as well as Vice President of Engineering at Coremetrics (acquired by IBM). Other past positions include: Founder & CEO of Kooh10 Technology, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Actuate, Senior Director of Engineering at Oracle and Senior Staff Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“We’re excited to add Hamid to our management team at this pivotal phase of our company’s growth,” said Michael O’Donnell, Skytide’s President & CEO. “His technical leadership and vision will enable Skytide to expand upon the success of our industry-leading CDN analytics solution and to introduce new applications across the broader digital media and big data ecosystems.”

Bahadori received a PhD in Computer Science and a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to his graduate studies, Bahadori received Bachelor of Science degrees from Purdue University in Computer Engineering and Math.

“I’m delighted to join Skytide,” said Bahadori. “The rise of online video and big data is creating a lot of market disruption and I believe that Skytide’s core technology and domain expertise position it well to capitalize on this disruption.”

About Skytide:

Skytide, the leader in Online Video Management Analytics, provides content delivery providers and digital media companies with the most complete operational view of their streaming video businesses, delivering the information necessary to make better-informed business decisions. Skytide is venture-backed and works with leading digital media and technology companies including: British Telecom, Broadpeak, Cisco, Clear Channel Communications, Ericsson, HP, Juniper Networks, Tata Sky, Telecom Argentina, Telecom Italia, Telefonica and Telstra.

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Carriers Catch CDN Fever

March 12th, 2012

It’s always satisfying to have industry experts confirm your observations.  Which is why it was particularly fulfilling to stumble upon this video interview with Heavy Reading analyst, Adi Kishore in which he explains how and why a growing legion of carriers are deploying their own CDNs.

His observations mirror what we’re seeing in the marketplace.

Telcos currently find themselves in a vicious cycle from which they need to free themselves… quickly. At the same time that their traditional revenue streams like landline service wane, operators are obligated to invest ever larger sums to fund capital expenditures necessary to meet the enormous OTT video demand on their networks.  They are getting it coming and going.

To extricate themselves from this bind, telcos are increasingly choosing to launch and operate their own CDNs rather than utilize established pure-play CDN providers like Akamai and Limelight Networks.  By deploying their own content delivery networks, operators can leverage their inherent strengths — ownership of the network infrastructure and direct relationships with end users and content owners — to reduce video transit costs and greatly improve online video QoS.  Read: How Telcos & ISPs Can Learn to Love OTT

According to Informa Research, more than 41 carriers are reported to be in some phase of CDN deployment.  That sounds about right.  Now that some of the world’s largest telcos (many of them Skytide customers) have deployed their own CDNs and are realizing the benefits, the rate at which other telcos follow suit is likely to accelerate.

Additional Reading:

 

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Posted in Online Video Trends, Telco CDN | No Comments »

Improve CDN Capacity Utilization with Peak Load Pricing

February 14th, 2012

In the bleak mid-winter, it may be difficult to mentally grasp how soon that the 2012 Summer Olympics will be underway.  In just 164 days, nearly a million fans from every corner of the globe are expected to begin streaming into London for the festivities, pushing an already congested metropolis to the limits of its capacity.

A similar scenario will play out online.

Millions of fans will log on to their broadband service to view the action, creating bandwidth bottlenecks brought about by peak demands on the network.

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) will have their hands full.

They’ll need to accommodate the huge traffic spikes or risk angering their customers.   The problem with provisioning bandwidth to this type of peak usage, however, is that CDNs are left with excess capacity during off-peak times.

Infrastructure-intensive industries that face similar fluctuations in capacity utilization — like electric utilities and public transit — are increasingly turning to peak load pricing. To reduce gridlock, the city of London even imposes a “congestion charge” on vehicles that travel through specific zones during peak times.

CDNs need to put something similar in place.  But doing so will require a different approach.

Most CDNs currently factor peak usage into their pricing using “95th percentile billing,” where they charge content providers based on an approximation of their peak bandwidth utilization.  That method is deeply flawed though, particularly because it does nothing to motivate a CDN’s customers to shift usage to the network’s off-peak times

We’ve just published a new whitepaper that addresses this issue in more depth and puts forward a solution for CDNs to adopt peak load pricing.

 

Read Improving CDN Capacity Utilization with Peak Load Pricing

 

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Skytide keynotes at CDN Asia 2012 conference

February 8th, 2012

Ask not what the CDN conference can do for you, but what you can do for the CDN conference.

Not only did we participate in the “Monetizing CDN Services” panel at this week’s CDN Asia conference in Hong Kong; when a speaker dropped out from another presentation, Skytide’s Roy Peterkofsky quickly stepped in with an impromptu presentation on the “7 Online Video Trends to Watch in 2012.”  You can read our white paper of the same name here.

 

Posted in Online Video Trends, Skytide in the News | No Comments »

Skytide white paper featured among 12 best

December 23rd, 2011

Much love to Slideshare.  They featured Skytide’s 7 Online Video Trends to Watch in 2012 among their 12 best presentations with predictions.

Posted in Online Video Trends, Skytide in the News | No Comments »

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