Interesting comments from MLCO:
On 8/28, we co-authored a comment with Merrill Lynch
Internet and E-commerce analyst Henry Blodget regarding
the formation of Content Bridge, a standardized CDN
(content distribution network) announced by leading
Internet players.
Content Bridge is an alliance of leading hosting
companies, CDNs, and ISPs designed to help them share
their networks (“join forces”) in order to compete with
Akamai. Content Bridge is based on INKT's Traffic
Server and managed by Massachusetts-based Adero, a
private company. Other initial members of Content Bridge
include Inktomi, AOL, Adero, Digital Island, Exodus
Communications, Genuity, Madge.web, Mirror Image,
& NetRail.
Web hosting companies and CDNs who join Content
Bridge will be able to push content to the edge of the
Internet using the combined footprint of members’
networks, including the thousands of caching servers that
sit at the “edge” of those networks.
We believe this is an important step forward for the
industry and expect a small handful of major CDN
(Content Delivery Network) platforms to successfully
emerge. Akamai has already captured the front-runner
position with its proprietary product. Content Bridge
represents an attempt to develop second platform with a
more “open standards” approach. We may see additional
CDNs emerge over time – for example, those that leverage
the architecture of storage network companies
This is still in early stages, and we expect Akamai to
respond to this threat strongly. Overall, the substantial
progress of Content Bridge will mean improved
performance of the Internet overall, and push Akamai and
the Content Bridge partners to continue to evolve their
offerings.
If successful, we believe Content Bridge could eventually
help drive demand for Inktomi’s Traffic Server by
accelerating its adoption as an industry standard. Hosting
companies Exodus, Digital Island and Genuity also
strengthen their offering with Content Bridge and counter
the long-term threat from Akamai to move hosting to a
distributed basis.
We do not view success as a given, however, in part
because multi-company alliances are notoriously difficult
to manage. In addition, technology upgrades are needed
for the functionality of Content Bridge to compete with the
more advanced AKAM solution.
Key operating hurdles to track the success of Content
Bridge include membership growth and the development
of a streaming standard and QOS (quality of service)
software.
It becomes more interesting when read in conjunction with the Aug 30th release concerning PSIX and AKAM strengthening their relationship:
biz.yahoo.com
dailynews.yahoo.com |
