CDN Landscape in 2015

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The CDN landscape in 2015 will be somewhat different than 2014, where general based services give way to service specialties that solve specific problems, whether it relates to wireless last mile delivery, security, microsecond application delivery, and so on. At the present time there are approximately nineteen CDNs in the US, with about a half dozen more internationally. Akamai has the most extensive feature set, followed by EdgeCast. All other CDNs specialize in a subset of CDN services. In 2014 a variety of CDN business models popped up, showing us things we haven’t seen before. New technologies like SDN, virtualization, security and big data are making this possible. Although the CDN market is competitive, no two CDNs are exactly alike. However, we can group CDNs into categories, based on the similar like services they offer.

Our research indicates that four CDN categories, at the minimum, are emerging for 2015. The mass scale CDNs have tens of thousands of servers in deployment, and massive bandwidth capacity exceeding a few Tbps. Then we have our CDN followers, in the sense that they are not leading the charge in creating any kind of innovative feature sets. Next, we have the security based CDNs that offer in-depth protection against multi-vector DDoS attacks. Finally, we have the CDN innovators. The innovators are the most exciting bunch, creating new features and services that are outside of the CDN mindset. Here is a snapshot.

Emerging Areas in CDN
  • CyberSecurity – Strong emphasis on DDoS Mitigation Services and Web Application Protection against Layer 7 threats
  • Mass Scale – CDNs that have 10k+ serves in deployment and several Tbps of capacity
  • Innovators – CDNs that are leading the charge in developing new features and services that solve specific problems
  • Followers – General based CDNs that offer a wide range of CDN services, but no focus on any subset of services
Emerging Categories in 2015
CDN Ecosystem 2015
CDN Ecosystem 2015
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