Tired and satisfied are the two words the CDN Alliance can connect to the IBC that is just behind us. Four intense days of running from meeting to meeting, from happy hour to happy hour and from event to event. We’ve had dozens of meetings where we met up with members, future members and partners. We look back on a successful event with confidence that we are on the right track.
With over 65 exhibitors that relate to CDN and Content Delivery (up from 50 last year), the importance of our industry was proven. We also expect the number of CDN related exhibitors to grow next year. With the move to IP as the future for media distribution (both across the internet as well as within operator networks themselves) it is inevitable that more and more organizations will depend on CDN and Content Delivery.
The trends
While at IBC, we spoke with new players who are building next-gen CDNs, focusing on local markets as well as operator CDNs who take the step forward to show their advantage with the footprint they have. We also had great discussions with P2P CDNs who take sustainability seriously and even talked to content providers who started to look at how to leverage their own infrastructure as a CDN to other content providers. The industry is still rapidly moving.
The biggest trend we saw, like most of us did likely, was the route to profitability of content providers instead of the growth of revenue or subscribers. It was good to see that although cost-cutting and profitability are now important trends for content providers, quality of distribution through CDNs and Content Delivery remains a high priority. Some even say it is even more important now to avoid churn. CDN and Content Delivery are seen as a vital part of their service which underlines the importance of CDN and Content Delivery.
Another trend we’ve observed during IBC was the bigger need for standards for multi-CDN. With more and more companies using and offering multi-CDN as part of their delivery mix, implementations for multi-CDN are still a lot of work with every CDN having a different implementation. With the increased diversification between CDNs and the rise of Edge we had several organizations that shared their concerns that their multi-CDN will become more complex if no further standards are developed. There is certainly more work to be done on that front.
CDN Alliance Connect
Our main highlight at IBC was of course our own event, CDN Alliance Connect on Saturday evening. Just like last year the number of registrations and visitors were above our expectations. This again is proof that our event certainly fills a gap of connecting people that relate to CDN and Content Delivery. We got amazing feedback on the event and heard that a lot of people (re)connected, which is the main goal of the event. More about the CDN Alliance Connect soon!
All in all a great IBC and after a few days of rest we are back to our day-2-day business. We thank everybody and our sponsors for CDN Alliance Connect that supported us before and during IBC and we look forward to next year!