Yesterday, Accenture announced that it will acquire NJ based and privately held Origin Digital in a deal that is expected to close within the next 30 days. While terms of buyout were not disclosed, I’m sure we’ll read about the price at some point in one of Accenture’s future public filings.

For the past few years, Origin Digital has been working primarily with broadcast clients to streamline the content workflow problem of signal acquisition, ingestion, transcoding, management, syndication and delivery of live and on-demand video assets through their web-based management tools. Their system is pretty robust and many of the major CDNs work with or use them for some of these services that the CDNs don’t do themselves. With Accenture taking Origin Digital’s products in-house it will be interesting to see if these services are still going to be available to the CDNs and whether or not they will continue to be able to re-sell them.

While I never thought of Accenture as one who would be in the digital media services business, acquiring Origin Digital gives them a real offering in the market with the types of customers Accenture does business with. Origin Digital’s products work as advertised, they are a small nimble company with some smart technology folks and more importantly, Accenture looks like they plan to focus on the bigger pain point with video owners, that being the workflow. We should know more about Accenture’s offering in the market when they officially launch the digital media portion of their website this summer.

We keep hearing and reading a lot about the content delivery market, but it’s all the other pieces around delivering video that’s the real complex part. Since no standards exist when it comes to video over IP, content owners need to figure out how to get their content in the right format for all the syndication services and devices, while at the same time figuring out how to scale their business and keep costs down with that growth. The workflow for Internet based video is going to be the biggest problem the industry as a whole is going to face 24 months from now. Sure, we’ll always need delivery, but as the business for online video content on the web really begins to take off, and there is money to be made, content owners are going to be struggling to figure out how to put their content in all of the necessary formats, for all the different devices, for all the different players and with different levels of protection. Not to mention if you need to do this around the clock for live content as well. Many are already struggling with this today and it’s only going to get more complex as we move forward.

I’m happy to announce that in addition to my current role at StreamingMedia.com, I have joined Frost & Sullivan as a principal analyst for their digital media practice. Joining Frost is a nice fit for me as they are working on a lot of custom research for clients and also will be putting out many research reports this year that have to do with many different segments of the entire ecosystem for online video. Frost already has a large team of digital media analysts and my goal is to strengthen their coverage and expertise specifically in the online video market.

My new role will also give me more exposure and insight into the video market as it pertains to cable head-ends, hardware manufactures and traditional broadcast products and services which I have not previously covered in detail. In addition, Frost and StreamingMedia.com will be teaming up to generate more research data for the industry and we are already working on our first report on the CDN market. StreamingMedia.com has the ability to collect a lot of market data but we don’t have the resources to compile and analyze all the data, which is where Frost comes in.

Apart from the reports below that Frost is scheduled to deliver this year, they will also be publishing Market Insights on CDN issues and Web 2.0 related topics.

• World Video Server Market
• World Video Encoding Market
• World Streaming Platforms Market
• World Content Delivery Network Market
• World Nonlinear Editing Systems Market
• World Dynamic Publishing Market Insight
• World Animation Software Market
• World Enterprise Content Management Market
• World Dynamic Publishing Market
• World Digital Asset Management Market
• World Digital Rights Management Market
• World Digital Media Storage Market
• World Marketing Process Optimization Market
• World Broadcast Switcher Market
• World Broadcast Server Market
• World Cable Sever Market
• World IPTV Server Market
• World Presentation Assembly and Management Solutions Market

As anyone who has been reading my blog for a while knows, I think we need a lot more data on many, many segments of the online video market. For an industry that is now over ten years old, there are still too many questions pertaining to market sizes, opportunities and revenue across so many different products and services in the ecosystem. My goal is to help Frost to be the leader in generating reliable data and metrics that our industry can rely on to help this industry grow.

At the Streaming Media East show on Tuesday May 20th, Marty Lafferty from the DCIA will be leading a session entitled "Will P2P Become a Legitimate Means of Delivering Video?". Controversy now surrounds the role P2P will play especially in high-quality video delivery on the Net. Does P2P have a legitimate shot at becoming a mass-market distribution model or will networks block the traffic before it has the chance?

Confirmed speakers include:

• Moderator: Marty Lafferty, CEO, DCIA
• Doug Pasko, PMTS, Network and Technology Group, Verizon
• Barry Tishgart, VP, Internet Services, Comcast 
• Patty Perkins, VP, Special Projects Manager, Wachovia 

Have a topic or question for any of the speakers you want to see
addressed? Submit it in the comments section and we’ll add it to the
Q&A portion of the session.

Registration is still open
and you can see all the various pricing packages, including a one-day
ticket on our website. Six years since we took over the
StreamingMedia.com business and we’ve still managed to keep the
conference very affordable for everyone to attend. A full two-day
conference ticket is only $895.

Back in January, I posted a list of CDN providers for video delivery and since that post, more providers continue to enter the market. Today, the list of video delivery networks continues to grow with the number pushing past 40 providers. To make the list easier to find on my blog, all you have to do is go to www.cdnlist.com for the latest update.

Each time I update this list I get a lot of angry comments on who should or should not be considered a content delivery network. My purpose in making this list is to make it easier to keep track of all the companies in the industry. The term "CDN" is so generic these days, that there is no right or wrong answer on what makes a CDN. Everyone seems to have different opinions. That being said, take a look at what companies analysts and the media write about in the market and see who they do and do not reference as a CDN. Some may not agree with them, but that’s reality. The market defines what they think a CDN is.

To use this list to make comparisons of one provider over another without looking at a company’s size, products offered, revenue generated, geographic reach of network, number of formats
supported etc.. would simply be inaccurate. Some of those companies listed are in beta with their offering and some literally have no customers as they have just launched in the market.

To make things a bit simpler, those on this list are what I would call "video delivery networks", meaning they have some servers they own and operate to deliver video content. I did break out those solutions that are P2P based as I think those need to be listed separately. I also listed those providers who I consider to be regional service providers, classified as those who primarily have a presence in only one geographic location like the U.S. or Europe and who tend to focus on small and medium sized customers. If you think someone from this list is missing, add it in the comments section.

In alphabetical order these are the video delivery networks that I am currently tracking in the industry:

• Accelia
• Advection.NET
• Akamai
• Aflexi (added 7/15)
• Amazon Web Services
• AT&T
• BitGravity
• Broadmedia
• CacheFly
• ChinaCache
• CDNetworks
• Conviva (formerly Rinera Networks)
• Digital Fountain
• EdgeCast
• EdgeStream
• Highwinds
• Internap
• Level 3
• Limelight Networks
• Mirror Image
• Move Networks
• NaviSite
• NTT Communications (added 8/7)
• Panther Express
• PCCW
• PEER1
• RBN
• SimpleCDN
• Swarmcast
• Tata Communications
• Technicolor
• Velocix (formerly CacheLogic)
• Voxel.net
• Vusion (formerly Jittr Networks)

P2P Based Video Delivery Networks

• Abacast
• BitTorrent
• Grid Networks
• Ignite Technologies
• Itiva
• Kontiki
• Pando Networks
• Rawflow
• Solid State Networks
• Octoshape

Regional Service Providers

When it comes to regional service providers in the U.S, Europe and Asia, there are literally hundreds of providers. Below is just a partial list of providers from those regions that I know or have dealt with in the past. This list is far from complete and if you look at the StreamingMedia.com industry directory, here and here, there are close to 200 companies listed for video delivery services. This list below could go on forever and for the most complete list of regional services providers, you should use the StreamingMedia.com industry directory.

• Arco Stream
• Arkena
• Astream
• AudioVideoWeb
• CTN
• EC Suite
• Fastweb Technology
• FlyOnTheWall
• Groovy Gecko
• Ipercast
• Influxis
• J-Stream
• PowerStream
• Qbrick
• Severn Stream
• StreamCity
• Stream Guys
• StreamUK
• Stream The World
• StreamingMediaHosting
• Twofour Digital
• UpStreamNetworks
• Weebo
• Westminster Digital
• World Television

Next week at Streaming Media East, I’ll be interviewing George Kliavkoff, Chief Digital Officer of NBC Universal for the keynote spot on Tuesday, May 20th, starting at 9am. While I have a whole list of question of my own and will be opening up much of the keynote for questions from the audience, I’d also like to find out what topics you want to hear George discuss.

George has nicely agreed to answer as many questions as possible from those submitted and cover as many topics that we have time for during his hour-long interview session. Now is your chance to get your questions in so they can be included. Even if you can’t make it to the show, add your question to the  comments section. We’ll be recording and archiving the keynote and ever other conference session in video and will make it free for viewing after the event.

While George has done a lot of interviews with the media, spoken at events and has talked about a lot of facets of NBC Universal’s business, there is so much more to cover. Please send in all questions via the comments section. 

Last December, at AT&T’s analyst day, their presentation included a few slides about their content delivery build out and capacity planning in 2008 to handle web acceleration, software downloads and streaming based services.

Since December, AT&T has been busy working on the build out and expects to spend between $70-$80 million on infrastructure this year. By the end of 2008, AT&T is aiming to have 400Gbps of capacity online, for all their content delivery services, which would increase their capacity by 4x what they have now. When completed, their content delivery services will be delivered from 32 nodes in 7 countries and they will be Adobe Flash Certified by year’s end and will be supporting live and on-demand delivery for all the major formats.

Currently, some customers of AT&T’s are still having their content delivered via Akamai, who AT&T has been re-selling and using as one of it’s partners for some time. But moving forward, AT&T expects to deliver more content across its own network and rely less on partners for delivery. AT&T has been busy training their direct sales force and re-sellers to sell their CDN services and in the third quarter, AT&T expects to aggressively push into the market.

While AT&T won’t have some of the additional CDN services in the content ecosystem like content management, transcoding, DRM etc… like most CDNs, they will probably partner with others in the industry who provide these services. Their content delivery services already support some additional functionality like authentication, pulling content from customers origin storage and reporting via their customer portal. While AT&T will not say how many customers they have for their CDN services today, or how much revenue they want to generate from CDN services in 2008, they have listed Forbes.com, AccuWeather.com and the U.S. Golf Association (USGA) as current customers.

While many analysts who cover Akamai were worried when AT&T talked about their CDN plans during their analyst day, AT&T still has a lot of work to do in order to become a major player in the content delivery industry. They do have some advantages going for them, most notable of which is that they are not a startup and not relying on content delivery services alone for their revenue. They won’t go out of business in 18 months when the VC money dries up, like some of the other CDNs will, and AT&T has an enormous marketing budget, re-seller channel and plenty of R&D resources. That’s not to say those advantages will guarantee AT&T success, as we saw Qwest, MCI and other telcos in the market fail with these same advantages years ago. But with Level 3 now becoming a major player in the CDN market, AT&T making a bigger push, it’s only a matter of time before the telcos once again try to dominate this market. 

Some will say that since AT&T, Level 3 and other telcos own the network, that gives them a competitive advantage over CDNs who’s don’t own the pipe. Others say that owning the pipe is too expensive, requires too much capex and does not allow the telco to deliver traffic from multiple "best of breed" networks. At this stage, the verdict is still out on who is right, but one thing is for sure. The telcos are entering the content delivery market and things are going to get very interesting in 2009 when outsourced CDN services for video alone become a billion dollar market in the U.S.

While the East show is next week, I am already in the planning stages for the Streaming Media West show, which takes place a bit earlier than usual this year. Still located at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, this year’s show will be from September 23-25, with pre-conference workshops on Monday September 22nd.

My early planning thoughts are that I will have four-six keynote spots available at the West show. As always, I am looking for customers, end users and those who are creating, producing and delivering online video content over the web. Ideal keynotes are those who are from well-known companies, are considered thought leaders in their field or are considered a really hot company that is getting a lot of media attention. While I may have one vendor keynote, I am not looking for vendor submissions, but am looking for vendor customers. So if you have a customer who would be a good fit, send me an e-mail ASAP.

I’m also interested in getting introductions to Amazon’s Web Services group and Endemol USA as well as all ad agencies.