With over 30 CDN and P2P providers in the market today (www.cdnlist.com), you’d think the VC money would stop flowing to content distribution networks, but it’s not. Over the first half of this I expect we’ll see at least three more companies who are expected to announce funding. Looking at my list of 30+ providers, there is almost no company left on the list that hasn’t raised money. I can’t remember a time in the CDN market, even dating back to 1999, when nearly every company in the CDN industry all raised capital within nearly 12 months of each other.

We’ve seen Limelight Networks go public and EdgeCast, CacheLogic, CDNetworks, Grid Networks, BitTorrent, ChinaCache, Move Networks, Itivia, Rawflow and Rinera Networks all raise money within about the past 12 months. I expect the next round of funding announcements this year to come from Panther Express, Pando Networks and BitGravity and if that happens, nearly every company on the list will have raised money or is a publicly traded company.

This worries me. While it is great for the industry right now, over time, the market can’t sustain 30+ providers. I fear that 18-24 months from now we’re going to see quite a consolidation in the CDN market and only about half the providers will be left standing. The CDN market keeps going in the same cycle every couple of years. In 1998 there were about half a dozen CDNs. In 2001 that number surged to a few dozen. Then in 2004 we were back down to about six providers, and three years later, back up to a few dozen. It’s a roller coaster ride for the CDN market and I really hope that the CDN and P2P providers are taking note of why companies failed in the past, where they went wrong and are aware of how not to repeat the same mistakes made in the market in years past.

The advance program for the Streaming Media East conference and exhibition taking place May 19-21st in NYC is now available for download.

We’ll have over 100 speakers and 30 sessions, many of which will be interactive with live demos, presentations and how-to sessions. Many shows put six or seven speakers on a session or fill the agenda with vendor sales pitches. At Streaming Media East, nearly 75% of our speakers are customers who are buying and deploying these services and products today.

Here is the list of all the session names and full descriptions of each session can be found in the PDF:

• How Old Media Is Embracing Online Video and New Media
• Reinventing The Ad Model Through Discovery And Targeting
• Using Adobe Media Server To Deliver Live And On-Demand Video
• Mergers and Acquisitions: Wall Street’s View
• Monetizing And Aggregating Niche Video Content
• Live Broadcasting Over Mobile And Wi-Fi Networks
• The H.264 Convergence
• Comparing and Using Online Video Codecs
• Online Video: Should Content Creators Get a Cut?
• Effective Advertising Models For Short-form Video Marketing
• Codec Comparison: VP6, H.264, And Windows Media
• CDN Pricing: The Going Rate For Video Delivery
• Lifecasting: The New Broadcasting Platform
• Planning, Building, and Launching a Successful Podcast
• P2Ps Role In Delivering Online Video
• New Advertising Platforms and Networks
• Creating And Promoting Amateur And Viral Videos
• Best Practices in Enterprise Streaming for Communications and Learning
• Ad Networks Vs. Branded Video Sites
• Deploying On-Demand and Live Media Experiences with Microsoft Silverlight
• Entertainment Devices: How TiVo, Xbox, and iPhone’s Are Changing Content Consumption
• Adobe Media Player: Creating, Delivering, and Monetizing Branded Video
• User-Generated Video in Education
• Delivering Media For Microsoft Silverlight With Windows Server 2008
• Tools And Best Practices For The Enterprise Streaming Media Department
• Beyond The Classroom: Reaching A Global And Mobile Audience With Elearning
• Independent Content: Creating New Revenue Streams
• Planning & Executing Successful Webcasts
• Evaluating and Choosing The Right Methods Of Video Delivery

Nearly 65% of the speakers have already been confirmed and will begin going on the website next week. While the call for speakers closed last month, over the coming weeks I will be posting some open speaking spots I have for some very specific sessions. Your best way to stay up to date is to sign up to the blog in your RSS reader so you don’t miss out on potential speaking opportunities.

As I’m sure you’ve read by now, Yahoo! announced earlier in the week it had acquired Maven Networks for approximately $160 million. While I see some of the synergy of the deal, I think Yahoo! paid too much. Based on the price tag, Yahoo! paid about 11x the sales revenue that Maven had in 2007. It’s a good deal for Maven shareholders, but for Yahoo!, that’s a high evaluation in my eyes in today’s market.

Clearly, Yahoo! bought Maven for their technology platform and IP, but at some point, you have to also look at the buy vs. build numbers. Acquiring Maven gives Yahoo! a platform today, as opposed to them having to build one themselves, but at what cost? Considering the state of the rest of Yahoo! business, selling a software video platform is very different than the way Yahoo! has sold everything else for years. And not really knowing what Yahoo! strategy is as a whole moving forward casts doubt on what will truly become of a Maven/Yahoo! integration.

While it sounds like the product will still be branded under the Maven name, Yahoo! should re-brand this immediately and bring it under the Yahoo! brand. With the sate of flux that Yahoo! is in as a company, I think it needs to do everything it can to put forth one clear brand, strategy and core set of products. I think over time the Maven platform could be a good core product for Yahoo!, but only time will tell how successful the integration will be and whether or not Yahoo! sticks to the set of current products offerings they have in the market today. In my eyes, it’s hard to for Yahoo! to say to the market that it is dedicated to any product platform, while at the same time laying off 1,000 employees. How much will Yahoo! truly support the Maven platform with additional dev work and new products features and functionality?

It’s been one year to the day since I started this blog and put up my first post. Nearly 400 posts later it’s amazing how many topics the industry is talking about, what the hot topics are today and how much of what we were taking about a year ago, or eight years ago, is once again coming full-circle.

My thanks to the loyal readers and subscribers of the blog and all the sponsors who enable me to be able to sit down and write something nearly everyday. Support from sponsors has been overwhelming and I hope that in their eyes I am providing some good thought-provoking content via the blog for discussion.

My thanks to some of the newest blog sponsors: EdgeCast, Skytide, Microsoft, Internap, Adobe and to my long running sponsors of Limelight Networks, Tremor Media, Ignite Technologies, Ortiva Wireless and many of the other companies who have sponsored the blog.

Next month, I’ll be doing some re-design of the blog layout to make things a bit easier to read, less clutter, and will be moving over to standard ad sizes.

Thanks again for everyone’s support and as always, if you have ideas for the blog, if there are topics you want me to write more about, I am always open to feedback, good or bad.

I’ve been taking a look at some of the preliminary data that we have been collecting from our CDN survey and we’ve already got some great data points. While I expect a few thousand respondents over the course of a month, after a few days we already have over five hundred customers who have filled it out.

As Akamai’s Q4 earnings from last night showed, much of the "pricing war" talk in the industry by analysts is overblown. Yes, there is some competition, especially when it comes to the largest customers, but for the most part, the "price war" is not as bad as analysts make it out to be and this data point below seems to reinforce that idea.

One of the questions in the survey is: How would you assess the pricing of your current CDN contract(s) versus your last CDN contract?

62% of those who have been surveyed stated their pricing was flat year over year. That point by itself is not enough as you really need to know what kind of volume those who fill out the survey are doing, but we’re collecting that data as well and nearly half of those surveyed are doing over 50TB of transfer a month, so it’s good sized customers.

The point is that not every customer is getting rock-bottom pricing and not every customer knows what price they should be asking for. If they did, we’d be seeing lower prices in the market more than we are, but in many cases, customers who already think they are getting a good price aren’t trying to get the CDNs to lower pricing even more, unless the customer is willing to commit to more traffic, more revenue, or more services.

Take A 2-Minute CDN Survey: Win A Free iPhone!

This evening, UK based content delivery network CacheLogic re-launched their company website and changed their name to Velocix. Some may be familiar with the Velocix name already as it was previously used by the company as part of their product offering branding. This comes hot on the heels of the company closing $25 million last month.

While I don’t have all the details yet, within the past hour, the court has issued a preliminary ruling throwing out two of the three patents named in the Akamai suit. I’m being told that only the 703 patent will be going to court. I’ll post more details as I get them. I expect we’ll see an announcement tonight.

Limelight put out a press release a few hours after this post. You can read it here.