In this 2-part post, I’ll discuss two ideas that can turn Limelight into a multi-billion dollar CDN. These two ideas are “killer”, better than any CDN idea or feature in the last decade. They have the potential to generate billions of dollars in revenue, and change the CDN industry for good. First, let’s start off by discussing the current state of the CDN industry.
Current State of CDN
Let’s face CDN reality, there are only so much Alexa accounts or Fortune 1000 websites that Limelight can go after. Every high volume website is already using a CDN. Every one of those website has an annual contract with a CDN, sometimes with an exclusivity clause. It’s not like a CDN can waltz in there, and take the business away. There is only one way Limelight, or Akamai, can dramatically increase their top line growth; they have to expand into different technology niches, niches that have huge potential, and in which Limelight can leverage its the existing CDN knowledgebase. The two game changing ideas are Shape Security and Splunk. Do what they do, and do it better. Shape Security introduced a security appliance that incorporates an innovation that is a game changer, not only in the security industry, but also in CDN industry.
Mimic Shapely Security
At the most basic level, Shape Security created a type of code, called polymorphic code, that acts as an Anti-Bot, protecting against the legions of bot-attacks launched by cybercriminals. The code acts like a bot-wall, and changes every time the page is rendered in the browser. Thus, the bots only see gibberish text, making it impossible for them to guess what fields are for the username and password.
The best part of it, the websites that are using this bot-wall technology, are going to force the cybercriminals to change their tactics. They will avoid websites that have bot-walls, and target websites that don’t have bot-walls. This idea is ridiculously genius, and makes FEO, DSA, Token Auth, TCP/IP Optimization and Mobile Acceleration, look like kids play.
The exec team at Shape Security is loaded with personnel from the ranks of Google, Palo Alto Networks, VMWare, The Pentagon, Mozilla & Cisco. All this brain power has created this great product. In addition, they have conducted the research, beta tested with a few of the Fortune 1000, and have gotten great feedback from them. The market is there for the taking. All Limelight has to do now is take the polymorphic code by the horns, and feast on it. Now that’s intelligence. Continued in Part 2.