With the rise in the consumption of on-line mobile content, in particular rich media files such as videos, the Content Delivery Network (CDN) is becoming a central component within the digital content segment as well as a key infrastructure element within networks serving huge volumes of such content.
AccuStream Research, which conducts research across various digital content technologies and delivery platforms, including CDNs and online advertising, projects that the CDN revenue will touch $3.36 billion this year, an increase of 19% from last year.
The report, CDN 2014 – 2017: Operations and Analytics, also projects a steady growth in the CDN market from now to 2017, reaching almost $5.5 billion by then. The report covers various sub-segments within the CDN market including the providers, solutions, geographies, media and publishing verticals and others. According to AccuStream, the rapid growth is sustained by a number of factors including the following:
Bandwidth pricing stability expanding topline while lowering COGS;
Marginal performance paybacks;
Value added services addressing tech complexities--accounts requiring quality, reach and security at scale--deciphering media formats, device fragmentation and monetization tools that improve MRR; and
Virtual video (including "live" steaming, VOD, TV Everywhere deployment and the enterprise)
AccuStream also stated that the total 2013 commercial value of media and entertainment video (views and advertising), movie/TV files, music listening and downloads (including self-hosting entities such as Google and Amazon) stood at $3.35 billion, of which $1.05 billion (31.3%) was delivered through CDN contracts. Video viewing and advertising (combining self-hosted networks), TV/movies and music alone accounted for 2.4+ billion gigabytes of data transfer, worth $1.6 billion in commercial market value. CDNs enlisted include Akamai Technologies, Limelight Networks, CDNetworks, ChinaCache, Mirror Image, Level 3, Highwinds, Cloudflare, Tata Communications and MaxCDN, among others.