A few weeks ago, I posted on the topic of content delivery providers with a post entitled "Comprehensive List Of Stream Hosting Providers". I put an asterisk next to Level 3 as I had not heard much from them as to where they stand in the CDN market since their acquisition of the SAVVIS CDN assets about four months ago.

This week I got an opportunity to speak to Level 3 at length and got an overview of what they plan on doing with regards to their content delivery product offering. As anyone who follows this industry knows, it’s a good time to get into the content delivery market due to the high demand for delivery services and the fact that there are only about half a dozen providers or less who truly provide global delivery via streaming and progressive download.

After hearing Level 3 give their take on the what they want to accomplish, they are an interesting one to watch for a few reasons and should have a few unique advantages when they bring their product to market:

• They own and operate their own network and data centers. I know this model well from my days at Globix where we owned and operated our own network and data centers and use to sell to customers that "we can control your content from creation to distribution". It’s a different value proposition and one that resonated well with our customers at the time and I expect still does with many content creators today.

• They own the Vyvx business which allows them to be able to ingest content directly into the Level 3 network. Add a few encoding studios, and customers have the ability to ingest, encode, host and deliver their content through one provider. That’s something that no other delivery network has the ability to offer today.

• They have contracts with many of the big media companies already for other services like data and networking that gives them an immediate sales pipeline for a content delivery offering or any new product for that matter. In addition, they can provide customers with the build out of smaller networks for some of the content creators who are building out their own private delivery networks.

That’s not to say they can do all of this tomorrow or that they will automatically be successful, but I think they have a good shot at being a serious player in the industry if they put the right pieces in place and move fast enough. They are going to have to roll out functionality of the network in phases and I expect they will start to talk about what they have to offer very shortly, if not next week at the Streaming Media East show where they are exhibiting.

When it comes to the CDN business and assets that they bought from SAVVIS, the only real value there was the assets for the delivery of static content, not video. Anyone who knew the SAVVIS streaming network knows how old and outdated it was since it was mostly the legacy infrastructure from the Cable & Wireless days which is who SAVVIS acquired it from. So Level 3 has a lot of work to do building out basically a new CDN for streaming as well as adding all of the services that goes along with it like reporting, storage, content ingestion etc…. not to mention all of the internal work that needs to be done to sell and support such a service. But done correctly, with all of the right pieces, it will be a valuable offering in the market.

While it won’t put the other content delivery networks out of business (there is enough business out there for everyone) they do have the opportunity to be a serious player in the game with an offering that talks to more than just the delivery of bits. For the most part, it’s a different kind of offering where they can sell the service to full-fill more of an entire ecosystem need to content creators, as opposed to just selling the delivery aspect. This is a trend we are seeing all of the CDNs move to as they begin to add more services to their offering like content management and transcoding.

In my opinion, the biggest competitor to Level 3 will be themselves. Many big companies never really get a product off the ground to mass market adoption because they move too slowly, have too much internal politics and red tape and take too long to decide on anything. For the most part, the smaller content delivery networks have been able to grab market share by staying quick and nimble. If Level 3 can combine the advantages of being a big company with the ability to move fast like a small company, then this can be the real deal. We’ll be watching.

On Monday May 14th, the night before the start of the Streaming Media East show, I will be hosting an informal gathering at the Bridges Bar at 7pm, located in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in NYC. (1335 6th Avenue at 54th Street)

Thanks to CacheLogic and Microsoft, they will be providing some free drink tickets. This is a great chance to meet some of the speakers and others before the show. No passes are required and all speakers and friends are invited. We’ve also extended the invite to those from the industry who may be local to the area.

We always get a great cross section of attendees from the media and entertainment, broadcast, enterprise and advertising industries. No need to RSVP – just come on by and feel free to pass this along to others.

Thanks again to CacheLogic and Microsoft for providing free drinks will they last.         

That’s the focus of one of the sessions at the Streaming Media East show next week. We have a couple of sessions dedicated to the online video advertising subject and this panel discusses how as video advertising evolves in the coming months and years, technologies and business models will naturally extend beyond those in practice today.

Moderated by Jeff Marcus, former CTO of 24/7 Real Media, this session
discusses the challenges and opportunities that face the online advertising industry in 2007 as it establishes a foundation for video advertising that will help shape the future of the broader consumer advertising industry.

The panelists include:

• Jeremy Lockhorn, Director of Emerging Media and Video Innovation, Avenue A / Razorfish
• Aleck Schleider, Senior Director, Product Sales, Advertising.com
• Richard Glosser, Executive Director of Emerging Media and Partner Integration, CondeNet
• Christian Anthony, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder, Special Ops Media

Register for the show
and come hear about what’s next for online video advertising. Are there any topics or points would you like to see discussed at this
session? If so, please include them in the comments section.

We’re not even halfway  through the month and already there have been a bunch of funding deals.

• Today, Joost announced that five selected parties have collectively invested approximately $45 million in the company including Sequoia Capital, Viacom and CBS amongst others. They don’t say exactly what they plan to do with the money but I think it’s a safe bet to say that a good chunk of it will go to expanding their delivery capacity

• This morning, ROO announced that it had completed a private equity financing with gross proceeds of $25 million in a stock transaction involving mostly existing investors. ROO will use the money for ongoing operations, expansion of their video platform and "to pursue previously announced acquisitions."

• Last week, Itiva Networks announced it has secured $7 million in private funding. The company said it plans to use the money for working capital and to expand it’s sales and marketing efforts.

In addition, I know of a few more deals that should also be announced this month. Will be a successful month for companies in this space raising money.

Yesterday, NPR’s show "All Things Considered" focused on the topic of Internet television and what is taking place on the web today with video. The piece is a pretty good overview of how both content creators and distributors are approaching the online video market. Myself, Brightcove and the founders of Joost all got some air time.

I would of liked to have seen them talk a little bit more to the business models taking place today, but you can only cover so many details in such a short piece. I would not want to be the editor who has to take a topic like Internet TV and condense the entire business down to a ten minute story.

Newsweek just posted an article by Steven Levy where he got to do a sit down Q&A session with the founders of Joost. Nothing revolutionary in the article, but I do enjoy one of Niklas Zennström quotes as it is dead on, "New technologies very seldom completely replace things—they’re usually complementary."

We have some great sessions at the Streaming Media East show next week talking about what consumers want when it comes to rich media. One of the sessions on May 16th is entitled "The Streaming Disconnect Between Consumers and the Major Media"

Moderated by Tejpaul Bhatia, formerly of ESPN, this session discusses current consumer demands for video and new content platforms, as well as the new media efforts being taken by the major media companies.

The panelists include:

• Ron Berryman, Senior V.P., GM Television Stations, Fox Interactive Media
• Jeff Kaufman, VP, Content and Programming, >nbbc
• John Jurgensen, Digital Entertainment Reporter, WALL STREET JOURNAL
• Jim Sexton, SVP, Interactive Brands, Scripps Networks
• Mariana Danilovic, VP, Business Development, MediaZone

Register for the show and come hear the steps that content creators and major media companies need to take to adapt to consumer behavior and the benefits they can get from diversifying their content offering across multiple platforms. Are there any topics or points would you like to see discussed at this session? If so, please include them in the comments section.