With the deployment of 4G LTE and the emergence of yet another enhancement to video compression in the form of HEVC, is mobile video now at a tipping point? At the Streaming Media West show, taking place Nov. 19-20 in Huntington Beach, operators and content owners will discuss how they see the technical and business aspects of media over LTE unfolding and how the different implementation options and their respective business models evolve over time.

Learn how wireless on demand content and broadcast delivery of linear content by conventional means can come together in a hybrid broadcast/streaming service. Confirmed speakers include:

• Moderator: Vera Kenehan, Strategic Product Manager, LTE Broadcast, Ericsson
• Jack Arky, Principal Member of Technical Staff, Product Development, Verizon Wireless
• Cedric Fernandes, CTO, MobiTV
• Norman Tyrrell, Director Technical Marketing, Qualcomm Labs
• Theodore May, SVP, Strategy and Business Affairs, Synacor

It’s not too late to get a pass to the show and readers of my blog can register using my own personal discount code of DR13, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595 and gives you access to 40 sessions and how-to presentations and 100+ speakers. You can also register for an exhibits only pass and get access to the show floor, both keynotes and all the networking events, at no charge. #smwest

Over the past year, Yahoo! has been making a big push into the video market, (licensing Saturday Night Live videos from NBC Entertainment) as well as creating and syndicating original content. So I’m very pleased to announced that Erin McPherson, VP and Head of Video at Yahoo!, will be the keynote speaker on day two (Nov. 20th) of the Streaming Media West conference. Come hear what Yahoo! sees as the future of online video consumption and learn more about their video licensing and content creation strategy.

Erin will be joined by more than 100 speakers from leading media, broadcast and MSO companies discussing the latest business, content and technology subjects around online video. You can register for an exhibits only pass and get access to the show floor, both keynotes and all the networking events, at no charge. And it’s not too late to get a full pass to the show, using my own personal discount code of DR13, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595. #smwest

The most recent video compression standard, HEVC / H.265, is expected to become the video standard of choice over the next decade. But as with each generation of video compression technology before it, there are key barriers to widespread adoption. At the Streaming Media West show, taking place Nov. 19-20 in Huntington Beach, encoding guru Jan Ozer will outline how H.265 promises to reduce the overall cost of delivering and storing video assets while maintaining or increasing the quality of experience delivered to the viewer. His presentation will address what H.265 is, how it differs from previous generations of compression technology including H.264, key barriers to widespread adoption, and thoughts on when H.265 is likely to be implemented.

It’s not too late to get a pass to the show and readers of my blog can register using my own personal discount code of DR13, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595 and gives you access to 40 sessions and how-to presentations and 100+ speakers. You can also register for an exhibits only pass and get access to the show floor, both keynotes and all the networking events, at no charge. #smwest

At the Streaming Media West show, taking place Nov. 19-20 in Huntington Beach, we have a session that will discuss tips and tricks, best practices, and lessons learned regarding the technical setup of live streaming production. Learn how to stream multiple formats, use social networking overlays and leverage adaptive bitrate streaming. Hear how live streaming is now largely being fueled by businesses using live video as a socially-fueled communications platform. Speakers in this session are the ones in the trenches, producing some of the largest live events you see on the web today. Confirmed speakers include:

• Moderator: Jon Orlin, Executive Producer, TechCrunch
• Alden Fertig, Sr. Manager, Product Marketing, Ustream
• Bill McCandless, VP, Video Programming and Production, Bleacher Report
• Jack Ferry, Independent Director & Producer
• Chris Mangum, Sr. Digital Media Manager, Live & On-Demand Video Streaming, Yahoo!

It’s not too late to get a pass to the show and readers of my blog can register using my own personal discount code of DR13, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595 and gives you access to 40 sessions and how-to presentations and 100+ speakers. You can also register for an exhibits only pass and get access to the show floor, both keynotes and all the networking events, at no charge. #smwest

The Internet has disrupted nearly every facet of the TV industry, from programming to distribution to audience viewing. And while the networks still rule the living room, many of them are working to find their footing online. At the Streaming Media West show, taking place Nov. 19-20 in Huntington Beach, we have a session entitled, “Online Distribution and Monetization Strategies for the TV Industry“. In this session, we’ll explore some of the distribution options for those that want to bring their content to online audiences. The panelists will delve into the pros and cons of sharing content with YouTube, subscription-based services and syndication networks. They’ll also explore what kind of content—short form vs. long form—makes sense for each outlet. Confirmed speakers include:

• Moderator: Peter Csathy, CEO, Manatt Digital Media
• Mara Winokur, SVP, Starz Digital Media
• Jessica Sutherland, VP, Content Development, USA Network
• Paul Cochrane, Head of Entertainment and Lifestyles, Yahoo! Studios
• David Tochterman, Head of Digital Media, Innovative Artists

It’s not too late to get a pass to the show and readers of my blog can register using my own personal discount code of DR13, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595 and gives you access to 40 sessions and how-to presentations and 100+ speakers. You can also register for an exhibits only pass and get access to the show floor, both keynotes and all the networking events, at no charge. #smwest

Late in 2010, Level 3 announced on their earnings call that they would generate about $60M in revenue for the year, from their CDN services. Since then, the company hasn’t broken out CDN revenue from the rest of their products but on a call with them last week, they gave me more insight into the growth of their CDN business. Since 2010, Level 3 has said they are growing at more than double the average industry rate of 15% a year. This means that Level 3’s CDN business has grown by at least 30% each year, for the past three years.

Based on a 35% growth number, Level 3’s CDN revenue was $71M in 2011, $96M in 2012 and is on a run rate of at least $130M for 2013. These numbers do not include the Vyvx portion of their business, which separately does more than $100M a year. While Limelight has not given out guidance for yearly revenue, the consensus from many on Wall Street is that Limelight will do about $177M in revenue for 2013. Last quarter, 36% of Limelight’s revenue was coming from what they call “value added services”, which is revenue outside of traditional CDN services. If that 36% number stays true for the remainder of the year and Limelight does $177M in revenue for 2013, Limelight’s CDN revenue for 2013 will be $113M.

A lot of vendors tend to call themselves the “largest” based on things like network capacity and number of customers, but the only real metrics that matter are revenue and profitability. Level 3 does not disclose the profitability of their CDN business, but being they own and operate their own network, they have a better shot at having a profitable CDN business than anyone else. Also, when the Comcast and Level 3 dispute was taking place, Level 3 went on record to say that they were making money on their Netflix CDN business, even with the added port costs from Comcast. So if they can make money on someone like Netflix, who has a very low price point, surely they are making money from customers that aren’t getting the lowest price in the market. Level 3 has had a lot of success in the media and broadcast markets, signing up customers like Apple, and with their Vyvx platform, they have the ability to control the customers content from creation to distribution.

Based on the revenue numbers disclosed by Akamai, Limelight, EdgeCast and now Level 3, it’s easy to call Level 3 the #2 CDN in the market, out of those four providers, based solely on revenue. But throwing Amazon into the mix makes things a bit cloudy. Amazon won’t give out any details on CloudFront’s revenue and it is possible they are generating more CDN revenue than Level 3. In 2011, Amazon announced they had more than 20,000 active (paying) customers, but customer count alone does not equal a lot of revenue. The vast majority of those customers aren’t the size or type of customers Level 3 has for CDN services, so even if they have more CDN revenue than Level 3, the amount of revenue they get from each customer per month is pretty low.

As an example, I am one of their 22,000 paying customers, but I spend less than $100 a year and use their service for small projects. So the real question about Amazon business is how much of their CDN revenue is similar to Level 3’s in size and scope. By my guess, less than 20% of Amazon’s CDN business could be compared to Level 3 in a true apples-to-apples comparison. Amazon has been doing a great job growing their CDN business and product capabilities, but I still don’t see them being involved in 8 out of 10 large RFPs I see in the market. Amazon still has a lot of work to do to improve their sales presence going after larger customers.

If 25,000 customers pay Amazon an average of $500 a month, Amazon would do $150M in CDN revenue this year and be larger than Level 3. But there are plenty of customers not paying that much each month, as well as customers paying a lot more. When I say CDN I don’t just mean video and there are all different kinds of streaming, downloads and small object delivery taking place across the CDNs. At some point, Amazon’s going to have to disclose some aspect of their CDN business, but until we know more, among the other four major CDNs, Level 3 has now taken over Limelight’s position as the number two CDN in the market.

On Tuesday Amazon announced they had added more functionality to CloudFront in a demand from commerce and retail customers. CloudFront has added support for five additional HTTP methods, including POST, PUT, DELETE, OPTIONS and PATCH. This means customers can not only download content using Amazon CloudFront, they can now also upload content to origin servers via Amazon CloudFront edge locations. This helps customers improve the performance of the dynamic and interactive portions of their websites for things like web forms, comment and login boxes, “add to cart” buttons or other features that upload data from end users. Customers have been asking Amazon for these additional HTTP methods for a variety of reasons:

• To be able to serve their entire website through Amazon CloudFront, including the dynamic and interactive portions of their site (web forms, comments, login boxes, add to cart buttons, etc.) for which they use the GET, HEAD and POST methods.
• Use an Amazon CloudFront edge location to upload/delete files in Amazon S3 (or another origin server) using the PUT and DELETE methods.
• Deliver their API endpoints via Amazon CloudFront for which they use all the methods including PATCH and OPTIONS.

Amazon said they heard from many customers that they don’t currently use a CDN for uploads and thus need to manage multiple domain names for their web application plus suffer from slow performance when uploading content. Customers who do use a CDN for content uploads do so at premium dynamic content delivery rates and have to negotiate long-term contracts with other providers. Now with Amazon CloudFront, customers can use a single domain name to accelerate both downloads and uploads and data transfer prices for uploaded content are lower than the price for content downloads (unlike many of the other CDNs that charge premium rates for uploads).

Websites that need this functionality are typically in the shopping, travel, and financial services segments, but also news, media, advertising, gaming, and other customer segments. Over the past few quarters Amazon has been very busy adding a lot of new features and functionality to their CloudFront offering, especially for dynamic content. In addition to this week’s announcement, Amazon recently added support for custom error pages, configurable error cache duration, wildcard CNAME support, as well as new edge locations in Seoul, Mumbai and Chennai.

These recent additions, along with the ability to now upload content via CloudFront will help even more customers accelerate their entire website – static, dynamic, and streaming content – using CloudFront. Some in the industry still don’t give Amazon enough credit for what they are building with CloudFront as they think the service is only for “developers” or “small” customers. While Amazon does have a lot of those types of customers, it’s not the only ones they have. The company has a dedicated sales force targeting large customers for CDN and other AWS services. While other CDNs still have more functionality than CloudFront, every quarter that goes by, Amazon closes that gap by announcing the addition of more features. You can’t underestimate the impact Amazon can and does have, on any market they are in, and that’s only going to grow as Amazon’s CloudFront service continues to expand.