Content Delivery Summit 09 Schedule - May 11, 2009

This presentation will present the latest data on the current revenues for the video content delivery market as well as expected growth forecasts relevant to both a poor and robust economy. Attendees will also learn the current pricing points for video delivery services and hear about the market drivers and trends that will determine what customers pay for video delivery services in the future. There will also be an extensive Q&A session, so this is your chance to ask any questions pertaining to your CDN contract and pricing terms.

Many enterprise corporations reply on their own internal CDN for essential video business communications. But with that comes various unique challenges deploying and managing video inside the firewall. A host of IT considerations—such as network capacity, access control, tracking, and myriad hardware and software issues—can make the integration complex. In this session you'll hear directly from some enterprises who are having success today and learn what video applications are being delivered across their network. Hear how can you leverage your existing infrastructure and learn some of the pros and cons of a “build versus buy” strategy.

In the past twelve months we've seen additional telcos like Deutsche Telekom, TeliaSonera, Pacnet and others enter the CDN market. What used to be a service only offered by pure-play CDNs is now starting to see a serious push by the major carriers with varying CDN strategies. But with the size of the video delivery market still small, what's in it for them? Can they truly achieve cost savings and pass them along to customers if they own the network? Can they focus enough to understand what it takes to run a CDN that does more than just push bits? Hear answers to these questions directly from the carriers and learn whether or not they plan to acquire smaller CDN players to speed their time to market.

As IP-based video traffic grows, the cost, quality, and operational issues associated with maintaining effective delivery continue to present a challenge to content owners. This session will discuss some of the nuts and bolts best practices for managing video content delivery today, and how best to handle it going forward in a world of traffic growth, changing vendor landscapes, and new consumer viewing platforms. Learn how to evaluate the total cost of ownership, the ways in which media formats affect cost, and how operations and contracts can be best structured to suit the customer.

With all the new and existing CDN technology in the market, which new features and functionality should you take advantage of? What's the value of multi-bitrate delivery, and what impact can it have on your content business? Will new services like HTTP-based Smooth Streaming reduce your bandwidth costs and enable live events to scale to larger audiences? What exactly constitutes HD video, and what's the total cost of ownership for deployment? These and other questions will be answered as we break down when these technologies should be used and what real impact they can have on your online video business.

For all the buzz about online video advertising, most content owners have yet to be able to turn their online video from cost center to profit center. Still, strong signals suggest that video monetization is around the corner, provided content owners don't pull back in today's tight economy. When will we reach that tipping point, and what direct cost and revenue impact will it have on the CDNs?

One of the most frequent complaints by content owners is that most CDNs' reporting and analytics packages simply don't provide the data they really need. Many times these web-based reporting tools don't give out enough details on video consumption and typically don't provide the customer with much flexibility and opportunity for customization. Every CDN offers some degree of web-based reporting, but some offerings are clearly better than others. This special session will feature demos from different CDNs showcasing their reporting and analytics offerings and will conclude with a Q&A session surrounding the topic of online video reporting.

Analysts have widely speculated that we're going to soon see merger and acquisition activity grow in the CDN space, but to date, little has taken place. CDNs continue to raise large amounts of VC money, and each quarter more CDNs enter the market. What are the current valuations for CDN companies, and where will VC money be directed in the future? What types of deals are being pitched to bankers, which ones are they having the most success selling, and what are the characteristics of the ones they are searching for. Come hear speakers discuss the current M&A and VC environment  and assess whether the economics of the CDN industry make it ripe for rapid consolidation.

Content owners are now demanding that delivery networks do more than simply push bits across the Internet. Other pieces of the content ecosystem that enable the capture, transcoding, and management of video are the true solutions that allow for the monetization of content. But today, far too many CDN vendors simply try to sell a technical service at the lowest price, and three or four vendors still own most of the market share. This session will discuss how the CDN market needs to evolve to address customer demands and will offer thoughts on how CDNs are working to address this demand.

This wrap-up session will be an open discussion highlighting some of the growing trends in the CDN market and examining how the business of content delivery will change over the coming years. Does cloud computing have any real impact? Will all video delivery eventually become commoditized? Will enough applications be built in the ecosystem to support rapid monetization? Come debate where the market is going, where the real opportunities are and what the disruptors will be, good and bad, for the CDN industry moving forward.