[See my follow up post here: Inside The Akamai and AT&T Deal and Why Akamai May Have Paid Too Much] In August I reported that AT&T was planning to shut down their in-house CDN and re-sell CDN services from Akamai or Limelight Networks and that Akamai would probably win the deal since they were willing to guarantee AT&T more business than Limelight would. This morning, AT&T and Akamai made the deal official with an announcement saying the two companies will work to jointly sell CDN services in North America to start, expanding to outside the U.S. in twelve months. For AT&T, this signals what is almost a thirteen year effort to try to get their CDN business off the ground, dating back to 2000 when they launched their ICDS platform (Intelligent Content Distribution Service).

While today’s announcement is good for Akamai, there’s not a lot of revenue attached to it. AT&T will do less than $20M in total CDN revenue this year and it will take them and Akamai a long time to sell a joint solution in the market, let alone one that can handle content delivery outside the U.S. I don’t expect today’s announcement to affect AT&T’s wholesale CDN services and federation model, so I would expect AT&T would still manage that portion of their CDN business with EdgeCast’s platform. Customers who are currently buying this solution from AT&T purchase it from a wholesale division of the company, not from an enterprise sales team, so the new re-seller deal with Akamai should not impact AT&T’s wholesale CDN business, which continues to grow.

While enterprise customers could also go direct to Akamai, most of AT&T’s large enterprise contracts are for multiple products, including things like co-location, transit and managed services, which are services Akamai does not offer. So AT&T isn’t trying to get CDN only business with a re-seller deal like this, but rather want to use CDN to keep or get them more of the non-CDN business they already have. It will be interesting to watch how both companies manage channel conflicts, since a very large percentage of enterprise customers are already taking services from Akamai, but one would assume that’s something they have already worked out with this deal.

At the time of this post, Akamai’s shares are up $3.20, which makes no sense since the revenue associated with this deal is so small to start. I’ve seen more than a dozen articles taking about the deal and about Akamai’s shares being up, but none of them discuss what the value of this contract could be worth to Akamai, or what AT&T’s current CDN revenue is.

Thursday at 2pm ET I’ll be moderating another StreamingMedia.com webinar, on the topic of, “Making Transparent Caching a Reality“. Telcos, mobile and cable operators face increasing costs of bandwidth delivery needed to meet the demand for online video and a quality viewing experience, while being forced to invest heavily into maintaining their network infrastructure. As a result, a growing number of operators are turning to transparent caching solutions to reduce the adverse impact of OTT video traffic in their environment.

Several vendors have developed various technologies to address the video traffic challenges. But, as analysts, have observed, some solutions are more adept than others. Join us for an informative and entertaining webinar in which our speakers will discuss the video caching issues that matter, as well as looking at some of the solutions available in the marketplace. Along the way you’ll also learn about what makes Qwilt’s own Universal Video Delivery technology tick.

During this 60-minute webinar you will learn:

• why transparent caching is rapidly being adopted amongst operators worldwide
• different caching network architectures and their impact on operator networks
• which technology considerations matter the most

Register here and bring your questions for the presenters for the live Q&A portion of the event.

Four days ago I bought one of the new 21″ Apple iMac’s in the store and when I tried to purchase another today, they were all sold out. None of the Apple stores around me have them in stock and each store said they did not know exactly when they would get them back in, with one employee saying it would be “at least a few weeks”. My local Apple store said they didn’t get very many in to begin with and while they didn’t give me an exact number they did say they received “less than 50”.

Trying to buy one via Apple.com and the wait is 10 business days before it ships. When I called Apple, they said it takes 7 business days to be delivered after it ships. So if it takes a total of 17 business days to get delivered, the delivery date would be December 27th. And that’s if they ship on time, which the person I spoke to at Apple saying that was a “best case scenario”. Trying to get one of the new iPad mini’s is no better with the shipping time being 14 business days. So that puts the iPad mini delivery date at January 2nd. And if you want the new 27″ iMac, realistically that’s not going to get delivered until the end of January.

I know Apple has acknowledged that they are having some supply chain problems, but one had to imagine this is really going to impact their sales during the holidays. No one wants to get someone a gift that won’t show up until weeks after the holiday.

I don’t know if Hulu has more of these, but in Century City California, Hulu has taken over part of the retail space of a restaurant that’s been boarded up and has opened a pop-up store. You can get hands-on with Hulu’s streaming service and check out how it works on multiple devices. Not sure if this going to be a permanent mini-store or was setup just for the holidays, but it’s a great idea for letting consumers test out Hulu’s service. Click on the image to see a higher-res copy of the photo.

Now in its fifth year, my special Content Delivery Summit is a one-day conference designed to bring together telecom carriers, service providers, content owners, and industry vendors for a detailed look at CDN platforms for the delivery of video and content acceleration. The Content Delivery Summit (#cdnsummit) is the most focused show in the industry on the topic of CDN and the one all the others try to copy.

The 2013 show will take place on Monday, May 20th at the Hilton hotel in NYC and will include case studies on real-world deployments, demos of new technology platforms and discussions on business model considerations for web acceleration and media delivery. The call for speakers is now open and here’s some of the topic that will be covered at the show:

If you are interested in speaking at the event, please fill out the speaking request form. I’m looking for moderators who want to lead sessions, stand-alone presenters who can share deployment data, case studies from customers who are implementing various CDN technologies and I will also be selecting a few vendors to demo new products and services being launched around the show.

We get a great mix of speakers and attendees to the show from MSOs, ISPs, Telcos, Carriers and major content owners such as:

• BT, Telus, Korea Telecom, Vodafone, Netflix, Cablevision, Bell, Google, Comcast, Telefonica, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Pacnet, AT&T, Global Crossing, Yahoo!, Xbox, Telecom Argentina, Deutsche Telekom, Cox and Orange as well as all of the leading vendors and suppliers in the market including the newest startups.

To help me in creating the program for the Content Delivery Summit, I do dozens of calls with CDN customers and vendors to hear what they think should be covered in the agenda and I reach out to past attendees asking them what additional topics they want to see discussed. If you’d like to be involved in the show, have a customer that is interested in doing a case study, or want to give me feedback on anything pertaining to the CDN industry, please reach out to me. Unlike last year where I didn’t start working on the agenda until January, I will be placing speaking much earlier this year, so DO NOT wait until the submission deadline to submit. I am also looking for some good end-users for potential keynote opportunities.

If you are interested in sponsoring the CDN Summit, please contact Joel Unickow.

If you are looking to access your full linear TV lineup wherever you go from your computer or mobile device, then the Slingbox is the only way to go. I’ve still got one brand new Slingbox 350 left over the Streaming Media West show last month and will give it away to one lucky reader of my blog.

To enter the drawing, just leave one comment on this post with your full name and submit the comment using a valid email address. I’ll pick one lucky winner at random next month. You must have a U.S. postal address as I will not ship it overseas outside the United States. Good luck!

Thursday at 2pm ET I’ll be moderating another StreamingMedia.com webinar, this time on the topic of, “Understanding The Business & Technical Challenges of MPEG-DASH“. Learn about MPEG DASH transcoding for adaptive bit rate applications optimizing image quality: bit-rate, resolution and video processing; factors to consider when making a stream selection; dealing with large files when a single video stream has multiple language streams; and sharing segmented files using manifests of differing standards.

Join Telestream, Sovee, Sorenson Media and RealNetworks in an interactive webinar and learn about:

• MPEG DASH transcoding for adaptive bit rate applications
• Optimizing image quality: bit-rate, resolution and video processing
• Factors to consider when making a stream selection
• Dealing with large files when a single video stream has multiple language streams.
• Sharing segmented files using manifests of differing standards

Register here and bring your questions for the presenters for the live Q&A portion of the event.