As a lumberjack once said, “There She Goes”. The EdgeCast thing was a hell of ride. At one time, the name EdgeCast struck fear in hearts of the adversary. When Akamai and Limelight were fighting in accounts, and EdgeCast entered the foray, everyone involved knew it was going to be a bloodbath. At one point, Highwinds got so tired of losing to EdgeCast that they started referring prospects to Limelight Networks. Just imagine that, you’re Cisco and you’re referring prospects to HP instead of Arista, because you know you’re going down. EdgeCast is now “Verizon Digital Media Services” or VDMS. Bob Toohey, the President of VDMS has a big mountain to climb in trying to make VDMS into a killer cash flow machine. For reference, they can look to the two CEO’s of Limelight Networks. The previous CEO pretty much sunk the Limelight ship, and lost badly to Akamai in the process. The current CEO has stabilized the sinking ship, and is slowly turning it around.
What is the Impact to the CDN Ecosystem?
One of two things can happen to VDMS. First, VDMS can win away an insane amount of CDN business from the competition. Or two, VDMS can fight nail and tooth to maintain the business it already has. Based on CDN history, it looks like the latter, but we can be proven wrong. Now let’s cut through the chase and state the obvious – at one time EdgeCast was the #2 CDN in the Ecosystem that could challenge Akamai in a head-to-head feature-set competition. VDMS is no longer capable of that because pure-plays dominate the innovation part of the CDN business. The #2 spot is wide open, and there is one CDN that can fill the spot, and its not CloudFront, Level 3 or Limelight. But for now lets keep it to ourselves, because this particular CDN has a heck of a mountain to climb before it gets there.