Tata Communications Launches CDN, Invests $11.5 Million In BitGravity

This morning, Tata Communications announced the launch of their new global CDN service using BitGravity’s technology. In addition, Tata announced it had made a $11.5 million investment in BitGravity, bringing BitGravity’s total money raised to date to just over $14 million. BitGravity says it will use the money to increase their sales and marketing efforts and that none of the money invested by Tata is needed to support their licensing of BitGravity’s technology.

With the size and reach of Tata’s IP network, over 200 countries and across 300 POPs, adding a CDN offering for their enterprise customers is a no brainer. Initially, their new CDN offering will deliver content from about 20 locations in the U.S., Asia and Europe. While some classified this as a reseller arrangement when Tata and BitGravity announced the initial partnership in March, Tata is not reselling BitGravity and has spent the past six months building out CDN capabilities on their own network. That being said, to be a true CDN player in the market, you have to do more than just deliver bits and I’m interested to see what product feature set Tata’s CDN offering will have.

While it is too early to know how successful Tata’s new CDN offering can be, it fits nicely into their core business. Tata won’t be the last IP carrier to enter the market and I know of some additional carriers who want to launch CDN offerings in the next few quarters.