On January 1, 2014, I made my case why Brightcove should build its own CDN. Then on January 7, 2014, I recommended that Kaltura build a CDN. Low and behold, six months later, Kaltura builds a CDN. Recently, Kaltura formed a strategic relationship with Wowza, deploying Wowza streaming servers in it’s infrastructure. The Wowza infrastructure enables Kaltura to stream live and VOD content. Also, Kaltura built a product called the eCDN, which is a CDN-in-a-box solution that works on the corporate LAN behind the firewall. The eCDN product helps enterprises improve congestion problems on the corporate LAN when using Kaltura for any kind of video broadcast.
Although the eCDN and Wowza server deployment don’t officially make Kaltura a traditional CDN in the sense, it is the first step in creating a full blow media specific CDN. It’s a natural progression, and one sure way of reducing content delivery cost. In the industry, it is widely reported that a big chunk of the cost in deploying an OVP solution in the enterprise is the cost of CDN services. The cost for the OVP platform is a fixed cost. However, the CDN cost is a variable cost that can dwarf the cost of the OVP platform when there are lots of viewers.
What happens when NBC or whomever, embeds a popular video program on its website that’s seen by hundreds of thousands of viewers for a few hours over several weeks? The CDN cost is likely to surpass the cost of the OVP platform. Even if Kaltura is able to pay a per GB cost in the low single digits by using a CDN, building and deploying a CDN can reduce the bandwidth cost in half. Brightcove is now in the hot seat, and they must figure out a way to build some sort of CDN, because if they don’t, they will be at a cost disadvantage when competing against Kaltura. Its nice to see the OVP market heating up a little bit.