Redesigning the content delivery model

Emerging technologies are dramatically improving the content delivery network making them scalable, fast, secure, and cost-efficient

Content is king. Businesses that deliver content such as applications, video, or software downloads in an effective and optimised way, will have a greater impact than those who lag. However, organisations can benefit from the content-led business strategy only if they have the delivery infrastructure in place. A content delivery network or CDN is a smart network of inter-connected servers that caches the requested content and delivers it to consumers in an efficient and accelerated manner. These high-performing CDNs are capable of delivering content across almost all industry verticals, including e-commerce and streaming platforms, as well as online gaming and social media networks.

No point guessing that globally the expectations from the CDN have been rising with the increase in the demand for these services. Fortunately, the CDN landscape is shaping up for some exciting transformations.

A booming trajectory

According to a study conducted by Mordor Intelligence, the CDN market was valued at USD 11.76 billion in 2020. It is growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.30% and is projected to reach USD 49.61 billion by 2026. The study attributes much of its growth to a huge spike in demand for rich video content during COVID-19, the trend of digitalisation of businesses, and the increased use of social media.

The growth drivers

One of the largest drivers of this growth is rising levels of over-the-top (OTT) video streaming consumption. Several factors such as improved and localised content as well as the improvements in supporting infrastructure like the adoption of 5G, and faster computing power of smartphones are worth mentioning.

The rising adoption and implementation of IoT and an ever-increasing number of connected devices on the network have led to a higher demand for CDNs.

India has an additional advantage on this front in terms of the largest youth population in the world, which is a key demographic for OTT services. The renewed push for online gaming, which has taken a cue from its increasing popularity globally, is also driving the growth of the CDN market. Besides, the rising adoption and implementation of the Internet of Things (IoT) and an ever-increasing number of connected devices on the network have also led to a higher demand for CDNs. Together the factors like OTT streaming, online gaming, and IoT are pushing for faster, more efficient and consistent delivery of high-quality content in a reliable and scalable manner.

Technologies steering the market

The emergence of newer technologies and advancements in others is not only making content delivery faster and improving the user experience, but they are also facilitating valuable insights into consumer behaviour and network conditions, helping organisations take informed strategic decisions. These technologies are also enabling organisations to reach a global audience, reduce the cost and resource requirements for hosting and delivering content, and drive higher user engagement and conversion.

Software-defined networking: Traditional networks use dedicated hardware such as switches and routers to communicate with each other and direct traffic. However, an SDN architecture primarily uses the software or application programming interfaces (APIs) installed on the hardware infrastructure to direct traffic. This approach offers several benefits such as enhanced speed while allowing greater flexibility and control over the network using the software.

Network function virtualisation: In NFV, the software is used to replicate the networking functions of hardware components by creating virtual machines. Thus, a varying range of network functionalities can be configured using the software. While NFV sounds similar to SDN, there is a significant difference between them. For instance, SDN allows flexible and faster routing of traffic through the network, whilst NFV is the instrumental technology that allows communication between the underlying hardware and the software.

Security add-ons: CDN operators design and perfect their network services to withstand distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on networks and sometimes genuinely unanticipated levels of website traffic. In an emerging trend, several major CDN operators are throwing in security add-ons to their customers. Some of these add-ons include DNS protection, bot mitigation and firewall services amongst others. As cloud networks continue to face risk from data breaches, hackers and malware, cloud security is further expected to evolve into more tailored solutions integrated into CDNs.

CDN switching: The basic premise of CDN switching is the ability to switch between CDNs to manage capacities efficiently. New software in the market allows enterprises to switch between CDNs whenever there is a requirement such as an unprecedented ISP capacity crunch or if the content requires to be switched to another bandwidth.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: With content cached across the network, CDNs route the traffic through global servers to deliver the content by identifying servers closest to the user. However, CDNs need to ensure minimum latency while doing so. Hence, the operational challenge is finding such servers that will reduce latency to the minimum. AI and ML are being deployed to continuously optimise the networks for identifying speedy network patterns in the SDNs. They can also predict traffic bottlenecks and reroute traffic to prevent such scenarios.

Future of the CDN market

Globally, North America holds the largest share of the CDN market. However, with increasing infrastructure improvements and demographic advantages, India is well-positioned to see growth in its CDN market. The increasing digital push in healthcare, the growth of the fintech industry, and increased demand for video and gaming content are expected to grow the CDN space in the country. However, there are several pressing challenges to be resolved for this growth story to become a success story. For one, the biggest challenge that CDN operators currently face is not from efficiency or technology adoption, but security. For example, in 2020, the number of cyber security attacks faced by India increased almost threefold in a year to reach 11.5 lakhs. Globally, cyber-attacks are on the rise, targeting enterprises.

CDNs must evolve to overcome the security risks posed by malware, DDoS attacks, hackers and bots, through the employment of technology and partnerships within the industry. It will be exciting to see how the CDN market will innovate in the future to overcome these challenges.

By Arjun Kallawar

Arjun is the Head of Solutions Engineering for India at Edgio

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