My first experience of internet-based video was in 1996 when I
worked for a division of AOL that offered hosted online video at
28.8kbps. There was a big celebration when we moved to 56k! We did
a deal with UEFA around that time and you could hardly see the ball
in the football matches we showed.
I then worked for Real Networks and I remember thinking that
Flash video would never catch on. What do I know?! You look now at
how people are viewing content on things like iPlayer and it's
amazing.
More than 50% of all internet traffic, across the world, is now
video-related and on any given day, Limelight will be delivering
about 20% of that traffic.
When a piece of content reaches Limelight Networks one of our
big jobs is to encode the item for delivery to multiple platforms
like PCs, mobiles, tablets and TV sets. Our software then decides
on the most appropriate version of the asset to send depending on
the type of device, its operating system, where on the planet it's
located and what its available bandwidth is.
Broadcasters and publishers use a CDN for this process for 2
main reasons:
- We can store their content (and all of its associated metadata)
in the Cloud. That means that when someone goes to a web page which
contains video, the asset itself is delivered from one of our
servers or caches around the world.
- We dedicate resources to keeping up to date with technology
challenges. In my opinion, convergence is NOT happening. Divergence
is happening. We're getting more connected devices, not fewer, and
there are therefore more parameters to consider. There are
ever-changing security protocols, protection requirements and
streaming standards, and by the time a broadcaster has upgraded
their legacy systems they may already be out of date.
All that said, it's important to note that Limelight has grown
exponentially since we opened our doors ten years ago, and we are
now so much more than a CDN. We help customers capitalize on three
important trends in the marketplace: the ever-growing shift of
content and advertising online, the explosive growth of mobile and
connected devices and the migration of IT applications and services
into the cloud. Limelight helps customers capitalize on these
trends by handling the complete website lifecycle in the cloud,
including publishing workflow, site acceleration and hosting, video
and content publishing, mobile and tablet distribution and site
monetization.
And that's our entire premise: we create better efficiencies and
workflows to help our customers helptheircustomers.
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