Content delivery network (CDN) provider Limelight is not afraid that its video content customers are migrating to a multi-CDN configuration. In fact, the company welcomes the challenge.
Multi-CDN is the practice where OTT providers use various CDN providers as a way to improve global latency and service uptime.
Ultimately, in a multi-CDN approach, video providers will allocate certain amounts of traffic to each CDN player. The remainder of the traffic will then be based upon real-time performance, meaning the CDN that is delivering the best performance will get more traffic than others that are not performing well on a particular day.
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Michael Milligan, senior director of product and solution marketing at Limelight Networks, told FierceOnlineVideo the company has the right elements in place to get a large amount of traffic from customers that have implemented a multi-CDN strategy.
“At Limelight we’re actually okay with this strategy,” Milligan said. “We know we have high caching efficiency and we think we’ll get more than our fair share of traffic because of the work we have done.”
Milligan added that the goal of OTT video providers using multi-CDN is to provide the best customer experience.
“From a OTT video provider standpoint that’s what they are trying to focus on: what gives their customers the best experience,” Milligan said.
In order to provide decent performance for its customers, Limelight’s CDN approach leverages edge-caching technology, fast Origin Storage Services, and HTTP/2 to accelerate webpage loading.
The CDN player recently introduced various improvements to its Orchestrate platform, including its EdgePrism cache management and operating system. The company says this new capability can help its customers optimize performance, regardless of connection type or speed, without requiring client-side code.
“Anyone that’s not a Limelight customer can come to us for 90 days we’ll deliver your video traffic for free,” Milligan said. “We guarantee if we have not delivered a 10% improvement in re buffering rates, you don’t pay anything for those 90 days.”
This is not the first time that Limelight has offered promotions to lure new customers in what has become a competitive CDN market. In August 2016, the company began offering bundled services to OTT providers, as well as 500 TB of free storage and 100 TB of CDN traffic for new customers.
There’s plenty of CDN business for Limelight to chase. A recent Market Watch study revealed that the CDN market will grow to $12.16 billion by 2019, with North America expected to be the largest in terms of revenue contribution.