Last week, Twin Prime came out of stealth announcing their new mobile app acceleration service and Series A funding of $9.5M. While some might be quick to classify Twin Prime as a CDN provider, they actually preserve existing investments in CDNs and other content engineering based solutions. Twin Prime picks up where other CDNs leave off by focusing on acceleration content across the last mile, for all kinds of mobile content including images, videos, text, and HTTPS over both Wi-Fi and cellular networks.

Twin Prime does not host, cache or distribute content. They also do not modify content or resize images or videos. As such, CDNs continue to be the place to distribute content and any other content engineering technology appears complementary to Twin Prime. When the bits and bytes for a particular piece of content is available, Twin Prime finds the most efficient way to request and deliver that data. In mobile almost 70% of end-to-end latency is spent in the wireless last mile, the link between the cell tower and the handset, where the company’s technology is focused. The following diagram illustrates how Twin Prime solution gets deployed with existing solutions like CDNs in tow.
Twin Prime’s technology solves the infinite variations in wireless networks by utilizing something they call an Automated Hypothesis Testing (AHT) framework, to achieve real-time selection and deployment of optimization strategies for each mobile session. Each optimization is customized to the specific wireless network characteristics and operating conditions including device, application architecture, network type, quality and location. The biggest insight I gained from them is the need for contextual optimizations, understanding how and where the mobile app is being used, and selecting and executing the right optimizations for that context. However, this is easier said than done. Mobile’s diversity throws up infinite contexts for which performance strategies have to be discovered and selected, which Twin Prime solves by using their AHT infrastructure.

Some might think this what traditional CDNs already offer, but most modern CDN performance solutions have been focused on the first mile latency challenges and helping organizations with content distribution, staging and scaling challenges. These technologies were shaped by the consistent nature of wireline Internet. These are solutions are static in nature and can be widely used without needing to how and where the app is being used. While these optimizations worked well for desktop, they fall short in the mobile world because of dynamic mobile operating conditions. CDN solutions continue to be valuable to enterprises today but do not solve the mobile performance problem.

Industry data shows that consumers spend more than three hours a day on their mobile devices, 90% of it on apps, and the apps are 3X slower than websites experienced on PC/desktops. Yet almost all these apps already use a CDN today, but the mobile slowness persists. This surely means that the root of the mobile performance problem lies elsewhere, which most current solutions don’t address.

What’s unique about mobile is its last mile with its ubiquitous volatility and diversity. The physics of the wireless link implies volatile and continually changing operating conditions including latency, bandwidth, losses, etc. Today there is enormous diversity in how we access data over mobile with 20,000+ device types, 1200+ different operators offering at least 25 different access technologies for 3G, LTE, Wi-Fi etc. The fact that we are mobile means that there are millions more factors tied to location and environment that come into play. The end result, in mobile almost 70% of the end-to-end latency is spent in the cellular last mile. That means, any solution to mobile performance has to start with a focus on last mile, which is where Twin Prime excels.

From spending some time with the Twin Prime team it’s clear they have a deep understanding of the constraints of the last mile, and the diversity in devices, carriers, locations in which mobile apps operate. They have built a mobile app acceleration solution that works for all kinds of mobile content and are laser focused on targeting a specific performance problem in the mobile market. Twin Prime says app developers and content owners can use their SDK to optimize their apps in a matter of minutes and already has paying customers. The company provider me with customer names already using their solution, but couldn’t disclose their names publicly as of yet.

Twin Prime is the kind of company I like keeping an eye on as they appear to have interesting technology, aren’t trying to replace or displace CDNs and are looking to solve a specific performance problem. Such focussed optimization solutions tend to get quick traction and awareness since content owners can see the immediate value proposition they provide. If you want to learn more about Twin Prime’s technology, they will be doing a presentation entitled “Optimizing And Customizing Content Delivery To Mobile Devices“, at the Content Delivery Summit in NYC on May 11th.

I’m doing my yearly survey on video CDN pricing from customers who used third-party content delivery networks. (ie: Akamai, Level 3, Limelight, Amazon, EdgeCast etc.) All results will be shared, free of charge, if you include your email at the end of the survey. I will also present the results in-person on May 11th at the Content Delivery Summit in NYC. Last year’s pricing survey data can be found at www.cdnpricing.com.

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Here’s a recap of all the announcements from streaming media vendors that I saw for the week of March 23rd. Lots of news leading up to NAB. A note to vendors, please stop with the silly “world’s first” langauge. Four releases this week used that phrase which is nothing more than marketing language. It’s not a term that customers care about or one that resonates with them.

• Quickplay Raises $57 Million CAD to Accelerate Growth
• Microsoft Announces The Release of Their New Azure App Service
• CloudFront Reporting Update – New Device Report, CSV, Integration, and More
• Conviva Report: OTT Consumers’ Patience, Loyalty Tightly Tied to Viewing Experience
• Kaltura among the first to allow customers to share video natively on Facebook through the platform’s updated Video API
• iStreamPlanet Demonstrates Live Multiscreen OTT Workflow at NAB 2015
• Akamai Releases Fourth Quarter 2014 ‘State of the Internet’ Report
• Highlights from Adobe Digital Index’s U.S. Digital Video 2014 Inaugural Report
• Anvato Featured as Launch Partner for New Facebook Video API
• comScore’s Latest Whitepaper 2015 U.S. Digital Future in Focus Available for Download
• Harmonic Introduces World’s First Integrated Receiver-Decoder With HEVC Support
• Elemental Announces Expansion Of Its Product Line To Support Statistical Multiplexing and Enhanced Management Operations
• AOL Bolsters Programmatic TV Targeting With FourthWall Media
• HEVC Advance Launches to Rally Critical Mass of Stakeholders to Deliver Next Generation Video Experiences
• VITEC to Unveil World’s First Portable HEVC Encoder and IPTV Solutions at 2015 NAB Show
• AuriQ and Mirror Image Collaborate to Simplify Online and Mobile Data Collection and Reporting
• EdgeConneX’s Internet of Everywhere Expands with Three New Edge Data Centers in Florida
• With CDNetworks global network, Calameo increased downloading capacity while decreasing bandwidth required
• StreamGuys SGrecast Platform Automates Side Channels for Broadcast Streams
• CogoHD.com sets out to smash encoding limits with new encoding solutions
• Aveco Announces ASTRA Studio 3, the Most Advanced Way to Get Newscasts to Air with the Highest Production Values
• Kollective Continues Strong Momentum, Fueled by SDN and Enterprise Video Solutions
• ScaleArc Improves Web and Application Performance with Cross-Platform Database Caching Mechanism
• Brandlive Launches Advanced Social Media Integration for Live Online Video Platform
• TVU Networks Delivers Enhanced Transmission and Distribution Functionality For TVUPack and TVU Grid IP Video Solutions

A new consumer survey report from Conviva titled “How Consumers Judge Their Viewing Experience: The Business Implications of Sub-Par OTT Service” highlights the importance of video experience now that OTT has become a part of everyone’s everyday life. The report, which is based on the responses of 750 viewers ages 26-34, shows that 75% will abandon a sub-par video experience in 4 minutes or less. The worse news for content owners is that one in three are willing to jump amongst content owners if they’re not getting what they came for. Data also shows that 29% of users will close the video and try a different app/platform/website when they encounter a poor video experience.

Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, the report shows that these viewers are more sophisticated in their judgments than we might be inclined to give them credit for. They clearly understand that a good experience isn’t just about avoiding buffering, but that it also includes a quick start to the content (what we call frustration time), and demands a good-looking picture.  For cord-cutters especially – and this particular survey sample is looking at a generation that almost certainly were watching on their parents’ cable subscription very recently – this is important, because they’re comparing what they watch both to other Internet services, and to the TV itself.

The survey says that nearly half of them lose brand loyalty as soon as they get a bad experience. Whether that really plays out in real-time is debatable, but if it’s even half as bad as that, it’s a wake-up call for everyone: the quality of your video experience better compare favorably to the competition, or trouble could quickly ensue.

If there’s one big takeaway, it’s that holding the interest of today’s OTT viewers is hard, and getting harder. The proliferation of devices and platforms to be supported continues to accelerate, and the variation in quality between ISPs and CDNs is undeniable – and may be indecipherable, as it shifts and changes on practically a minute-to-minute basis. The survey shows respondents placing blame across the whole ecosystem when they get a lousy experience, but that’s small comfort to a provider whose expensive content is being abandoned.

Note: Conviva also publishes a very detailed report that measures the technical problems with streaming video when it comes to re-buffering, slow video startup, low-resolution and their impact on the viewer experience.

I’m pleased to announce that Steve Ginsberg, CIO at Pandora has been added to the speaker lineup at our Content Delivery Summit, taking place May 11th in NYC. Partnering with Product Engineering, the Technical Operations team at Pandora has built and extended an efficient, resilient, high-volume architecture to keep the music playing, scaling it 50X in eight years. As our keynote speaker, Steve will share elements of design and insights from building the platform that brings music to millions. He’ll join Mike Dunkle from Valve’s network operations and infrastructure group as our two confirmed keynote speakers for the event.

Now in its seventh year, the Content Delivery Summit is the place to meet those who are building out some of the largest public and private CDN deployments to date. The summit also covers other web acceleration technologies including dynamic content delivery, transparent caching, app acceleration, QoS measurement, front-end optimization, mobile content acceleration and more. You can register for the event using the discount code of DR100 and get an all access ticket for only $395 if you register before April 11th.

Ustream has developed a reputation for its ability to host some of the world’s largest streaming events via their HD broadcast video platform. The company hosted more than 1 million concurrent viewers and 8 million total viewers during the launch of Sony’s Playstation 4 and regularly hosts 70 million viewers per month. And, while it is enough of a challenge to scale to accommodate a large audience when the size is predictable, it is even more difficult to scale fast when the audience size is unpredictable.

As a result of these problems, Ustream decided to create a unique solution that is the result of seven years of development – a technology Ustream calls Software Defined CDN or SD-CDN. If Ustream takes what they have built and offers it to anyone, as a stand-alone service, customers would then be able to buy live delivery services from what is essentially a bandwidth exchange. This would be a very interesting model because to date, there is no easy way for large content owners to buy from multiple CDNs, without going and doing a contract with each CDN individually.

One proven aspect of Ustream’s platform is that it can scale for audiences that start quickly, accelerate quickly and then leave once the live event is over. Large audiences like these bring several challenges:

• The sheer amount of bandwidth needed often requires using more than one CDN provider to cover all viewers in all parts of the globe
• It’s important to ensuring a high-quality stream with as little buffering as possible and HD quality playback for each viewer no matter what device they are on or where they are globally
• Handle the bandwidth and quality needs in the most cost-efficient way possible. While it is always possible to add additional servers or CDN capacity to accommodate the peak usage pattern, this often means during times of lower usage that extra capacity is wasted.

Ustream’s SD-CDN includes the following properties:

• Ability to scale automatically without manual provisioning of resources, dynamically adding and removing edges and providers on the fly as needed.
• Ability to leverage a combination of edge resources, which include: CDN providers, transit lines, peering and ad-hoc edges, including those located inside an ISP’s network on inside a private network (for example an enterprise network). A new edge resource can be registered and serving traffic in less than a minute.
• Ability to flexibility and instantly route traffic amongst any of the above listed sources based on a combination of rules to maximize resiliency, quality and cost.
• Built-in monitoring to evaluate the performance of and efficacy of the competing sources on a global scale or down to the individual viewer.
• Ability to tweak business logic in real time if scale, quality or cost are jeopardized by changing conditions.

Ustream’s SD-CDN works by deploying a software layer that transmits, receives and processes metadata between the sources of video content (streaming servers, CDN edges, transit lines, ad-hoc edges) and the destination of the video content – end user viewing devices. Each Ustream player that is deployed has a connection called the Ustream Media Server connection (UMS) which sends back real-time data each second. This creates an enormous amount of data, as each connected player (even if they are not yet playing or have already stopped playing video content) is sending back real-time data about the status of that client. This connection is a two-way connection, so it is used to deliver messages in both directions. For example, the player reports back to the SD-CDN its IP address and logic can be triggered based on that, such as whether a viewer is in a restricted country or not.

This same connection can be used to carry data about whether or not that player is buffering. This data is all processed at a few geographically distributed locations to ensure redundancy and analyzed in real-time using proprietary algorithms so that it can be interpreted. The algorithms contained in the SD-CDN central servers look at things like if a player is buffering, is it just a single viewing client, or is there a pattern of buffering in a specific region? Since switching between sources can occur on the level of a single client, then an isolated issue can be addressed in a client side switch, thanks to the SD-CDN. But if a large number of client-side switches are being reported back to the SD-CDN, then the SD-CDN can make a large-scale switch to completely disable a certain CDN provider or an ad-hoc edge if necessary.

Since the SD-CDN includes monitoring capabilities, the automatic logic can always be overridden or augmented by real-time monitoring at Ustream’s NOC. A network operations expert can spot a pattern not picked up automatically by the algorithms and use the interface of the SD-CDN to have instant control of the entire system. Over time, as new patterns emerge, they are added to automatic recognition algorithms of the SD-CDN.

The SD-CDN is particularly interesting and useful when looked at in concert with Ustream’s other streaming technologies. Ustream offers a cloud transcoding service so you can send a single high-bitrate HD stream and Ustream generates the lower bitrate and resolution versions of the stream from the original stream. When these versions are created, there are time synchronization markers added as metadata in the stream. This is important for switching between bitrates on a single player from a single source to ensure the stream content does not jump or skip back in time, but these markers also become relevant so that via the SD-CDN, the Ustream player can actually perform a seamless switch between streams coming from two completely different sources.

Ustream’s delivery platform can adapt to provide the best possible quality for each viewer or to make changes on a larger scale to pre-empt an issue before the viewing client reports it. In addition, a major function of the SD-CDN is the ability to manage traffic across a network of CDN providers, transit lines, peering and ad-hoc edges based on the cost considerations of carrying traffic of a given volume at any given time.

For those familiar with CDN pricing and contracts (www.cdnpricing.com) a typical situation is that a content provider is expected to predict in advance the amount of usage they will have on a monthly basis and to sign a long-term contract based on that. It is typically a use it or lose it proposition, whereby overestimating usage will result in sunk cost with no ROI, and underestimating usage can lead to steep overage fees. In addition, the provider is incentivized by way of scaled discounts to commit to a larger package because the unit economics become more appealing by buying in bulk.

The rules of this game make it a tricky proposition for any content provider wanting to maximize the value of their investment in a third-party CDN service. This is one of the key advantages that Ustream’s SD-CDN can provide. For several months, Ustream has been able to utilize third-party CDN services at a flat 95/5 usage pattern. This results in an optimal ROI in the contracts Ustream has with third-party CDN and transit providers. This cost savings can then be passed on to viewers, which is one of the reasons Ustream can offer the same scale and quality of delivery as many leading CDNs, even at lower costs.

While Ustream has used this solution extensively for delivery of video content, the company says what they have built is content-type agnostic and can be put to work for any kind of HTTP traffic, such as gaming or any Web-based application acceleration. Ustream is currently using their Software-Defined CDN to control all of its video content and is considering offering the solution as a stand-alone service for others with similar needs. If Ustream starts selling their platform as a stand-alone delivery service, it would be an interesting disruption in the market.

Most third-party CDNs aren’t experts when it comes to the entire ecosystem of live events. They can handle the delivery, but a lot more goes into a live event than just delivering the bits. This is why companies like Ustream, Livestream, Twitch and others who specialize in live broadcasting have all built their own live broadcast platforms. If Ustream can take what they have built and offer it to anyone, customers would then be able to buy live delivery services from what is essentially a brokerage exchange. This would be a new way of buying live delivery services, from multiple CDNs, all based on a specific quality of delivery tied to the time of day. The company hasn’t officially said they will offer it as a product yet, but did tell me they are looking into it. If they launch it as a stand-alone service in the market, it’s a very unique proposition and one I think they could have success at.

Here’s a recap of all the announcements from streaming media vendors that I saw for the week of March 16th. I’ll try to do a better job of regurally creating this list at the end of each week:

• Elemental Chosen for Tata Sky’s Latest 4K Video Service
• BrightRoll Brings Exclusive Yahoo Demographic and Behavioral Data to Programmatic Video Market
• Wowza Media Systems and Adobe Systems Settle Patent Cases
• Ooyala Partners With TubeMogul to Build Premium Programmatic Marketplace for Top Global Brands and Broadcasters
• IBM Delivers First Cloud Data Services with Twitter Built-In for Business Professionals and Developers
• NGSN Selects iStreamPlanet’s Aventus to Launch Live Multiscreen Streaming of Over 3000 Soccer Matches
• Piksel Unveils Digital Enterprise 6.0 to Simplify Online Video for Businesses
• MPEG LA Expands HEVC License Coverage
• Condé Nast Entertainment Partners with Rapt Media to Take World-Class Content to Next Level Using Interactive Video Experience
• Amazon EC2 Users Get Unified Access to Multi-Platform Cloud Services via OnApp Cloud Providers in 93 Countries
• DataArt Releases Open-Source Video Player Using MPEG-DASH
• Deluxe OnDemand enhances capabilities to support CENC, MPEG DASH, and 4K UHD
• Imagine Communications Introduces Industry’s First End-to-End Cloud Platform for Video Distribution and Monetization
• BTI Systems Demonstrates Interoperability with Industry-First Optical Transport Platform with Converged MPLS Core Routing
• bitcodin.com Launches the World’s Fastest Cloud-Transcoding Service, moving beyond the limits of real-time transcoding
• Twin Prime Launches with Oversubscribed $9.5M Series A to Solve Mobile Data Delivery Challenges