Cedexis Announces New Video Service For Improving QoS
Cedexis, long known for its multi-CDN/multi-cloud solutions for general purpose HTTP and HTTPS traffic, has announced a product called “Cedexis Buffer Killer“, that is specifically aimed at the online video space. The Cedexis video solution allows content owners that use multiple CDNs to shift traffic, in real-time, based on QoS metrics. Cedexis new offering will directly compete with Conviva’s Precision product line.
According to Cedexis its initial set of beta customers have experienced on average a 56% improvement in buffering; 18% improvement in video start-time; and a decrease in video failures of up to 66%. These performance benefits have been realized by a growing list of OTT video customers who are using Cedexis to make real-time load balancing decisions between multiple CDNs and/or origins, avoiding congestion and outages, be they related to CDN, data center or ISP performance issues.
The critical competitive edge to this solution is the real-time performance monitoring provided by the free Cedexis Radar community of 800+ enterprises and every major Cloud and CDN provider in the world. Collecting billions of Internet performance metrics a day provides a real-time map of where the Internet is humming along nicely, and where interconnections between ISPs and cloud service providers, who host and distribute the world’s content, are congested or disrupted. Importantly, this crowd-sourced approach let’s companies who may not have a suitable density of audience in a specific geography or on a particular ISP, take advantage of QoS measurements made by other Radar community members like LinkedIn, Tumblr, Microsoft, Vidme or LeMonde.
Realizing that player integrations take time and money, Cedexis provides a range of deployment options for this new product. Any player can be pointed at the Openmix platform via existing DNS flows to select optimum CDNs or origins, optimum being defined by the OTT video provider as highest availability or throughput, lowest latency, best costs or any combination.
For customers who want to make calls via HTTP, which ensures every player gets the freshest decision data outside of DNS resolver TTLs, Openmix can be called directly from the video player or from the content management system itself. CMS integration is emerging as a preferred method by early customers, as modifying a CMS can be done more quickly costs-effectively than updating a range of video players.
Combining the DNS and HTTP services from Cedexis allows customers to optimize the entire end-user experience, including, website and ad delivery, player downloads and video streaming. Cedexis states that usage from the two services can be aggregated for better volume pricing. Importantly, Cedexis has a simple utility-based pricing model based on the number of monthly queries made to their platform. Cedexis already has a group of interesting customers using it’s services for OTT video delivery such as PBS, Viaplay (division of Viasat/MTG) , ViewLift (Snagfilms and other OTT properties), Ora.tv and MassMotionMedia amongst others.
This emerging market in the video space is interesting because it shows that OTT has evolved into a principle delivery vehicle for corporate value, and the growing realization that single sourcing the delivery of that value represents an unacceptable corporate risk. Further, as shown by technology leaders on the Web, end-user experience is quickly emerging as the end-game for defining success, and real-time optimization solutions like Cedexis provide the visibility and control needed to build the real-time feedback loop between end-user QoS and networks.
If you have not seen the Cedexis Radar community data in action, you can see what their billions of daily measurements reveals via their newest free public map on CDN, cloud and ISP performance at Radar Live.