Akamai has been busy lately tackling multiple enterprise initiatives in the areas of security and media distribution. Akamai’s media segment accounts for more than 40% of its overall revenue. They are very active in trying to grow the media segment business. Today is no different, with Akamai announcing that its Intelligent Platform is fully integrated with Aspera. Aspera is the leading high speed file transfer solution, used by all the leading media companies including video distribution platforms, professional filmmakers and broadcasters.
Phase 2 of Akamai and Aspera
With the integration under its belt, Akamai jumps into the B2B media content exchange business. They offer customers an end-to-end large file media delivery service from the media source to the destination. Drama Fever, one of the largest video distribution platforms of international television content is a blue chip client using the Akamai / Apsera solution. The timing is also interesting in that Akamai introduced this content exchange solution just a couple of months after Level 3 introduced their content exchange solution.
However, Akamai’s solution is further ahead at this point. There are three large markets for the Akamai / Aspera service: VOD platforms, studios and broadcasters. If Akamai plans on capturing a large slice of the studio / broadcaster market, it’s going to need to do something disruptive like, acquire Signiant. Will Akamai acquire Signiant? I say they don’t even though it would be a good fit.