Will the Cloud Rain on the CDN's Parade? Panel Discussion

Track B: Business & Content
10:30-11:30

Moderator: 
Duncan Burbidge, CEO, Stream UK Media Services Ltd, UK 
Panel:
Sean Knapp, Co-founder, CTO, Ooyala, USA
George Fraser, VP of EMEA/Asia, Limelight Networks UK
John Dillon, Chief Marketing Officer, Velocix UK

Amazon's EC2 network offers cheap data delivery ($0.10/GB). Smooth Streaming uses http to deliver live footage. Azure is on the way. Session provides a look at how these considerations affect the current glut of CDN providers. As the content delivery quickly turning into a commodity, how can CDNs expand their ecosystem to prevent churn and attract new business? Also, how can customers decide which solutions are best for their needs?

Ooyala is a video platform provider utilizing Cloud. Sean Knapp underlines the power of cloud and what becomes to it's easiness, costs (its cheap) and robustness. From the Velocix point of view a Cloud seems to be something unclear and he also asks how technically robust the cloud providers can make their service.

Sean Knapp claims that the performance of cloud is perfect, just fine. As a background of this he proudly presents that Ooyala has tens of millions users for their platform. They can monitor the performance of cloud by monitoringthe baheviour of their video client and the results are justa fine, as mentioned before.

According to Velocix representative what becomes to the pricing comparisons between CDNs and Cloud, it's more complex than just comparing different CDN providers. That's because from the pricing point of view we're monitoring different things.

Fraser from Limeligth claims that the scalability and cost-base of cloud is not really clear. He¥s on to that the technical infrastructure ain¥t easy to build up. The 'new kids on the block' have lots of people just developing technology and building the network.

Ooyala can still (despiting the great amount of users domestic and international based) be counted as a start-up. Knapp says that the use of cloud is the right way to expand instead of investing to the HW and own data rooms.

As we see the trend in http video services utilizing H.264 are panelists asked if they see this also as a trend. Limelight answer is that http video delivery doesn't provide monitoring good enough. Ooyla's Knapp says that the trend exists and instead of wise and smart services the video clients (downloadable players) are smart. Still, the era of http streaming is not yet but during coming years.

According to the Knepp there is potential in p2p what becomes to the distribution of live video. Also Limelight finds potential and they believe in p2p but still there¥s a problem or better: a gap between offering CDN services as they are and as p2p cdn as the technology is so different and the big ones such as Akamai and Limelight couldn't easily mix.

Limelights Fraser analyzed IP Multicast which, according to him, is more for live video than On-demand for which the CDNs are good for. Limelight got a 'tight' question focusing on their nowadays model whereas customers need to make a long contract and asked if they ever gonna understand to change the model a little. Frasers answer to this was that they¥re probably not making andy changes in the near future which (IMO) clarifies their attitude. In common, as the Fraser said, the SMEs to distribute their content should make contracts with aggregators - not CDNs as the CDNs can't offer anything to them.