Over the next several years, as more and more professionally produced video becomes available over the Internet, media companies will lift their service expectations for the CDN partners with whom they work. Because positive viewer experiences reflect directly on the media brand itself, the new expectation will be that CDNs must be responsible for end-to-end delivery, managing and measuring quality all the way through the viewer experience. Consequently, the notion that the extent of a CDN’s responsibility ends with the edge of their network will soon be outdated and CDNs will need to extend their reach downstream to last mile networks, in-home networks and WiFi networks. This shift will have a dramatic impact on the CDN landscape and will likely give way to a new order of leaders. The resulting consistency in viewer experience will truly enable Internet-video to become a peer with what we currently recognize as television and will usher in a new era of targeted, measurable and high brand-value advertising.
What does end-to-end delivery responsibility mean? Imagine a parcel delivery service like FedEx or UPS where the only quality of service metric that they managed and measured was delivery to the local depot, not to the final house or office destination. And let’s say that they could tell you that “most of the time” delivery from the local depot to the destination would happen within a day but not always and that after delivery they were unable to report to you when the package was actually delivered or its condition. Would that be a competitive service today? Of course not. But 25 years ago, when the US Postal Service delivered most packages, this was the quality of service norm. Only by adding “receipt required” service and priority delivery could you expect any better. Today’s CDNs operate largely according to this dated model of delivery.
This is an excerpt from a whitepaper written by Charlie Oppenheimer. To get the paper in its entirety visit: http://www.digitalfountain.com/landing13.asp
