Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm not big on CDN company Limelight. Performance, management, reports from customers and IP issues make me cynical. But, you can't dispute pure stats and they're walking all over Akamai and the other incumbents at present thanks to an aggressive sales team as recent sales figures show. Their serving of the Olympics for NBC have also moved them on a notch after some live streaming disasters.
Part of Akamai's problems are its prissiness - an unwillingness to handle gambling outside of the US, and an unwillingness to be realistic about pricing, linked with a general arrogance about its service (which is generally superior imho) are really hitting its bottom line.
With the advent of technologies from companies like Edgeware and new pricing from network companies like Level 3 and AT&T, this market is due for a major shake up. If you're willing to invest £30k or so, expect prices of 5p/GB for sub 20TB and 4p/GB for higher bandwidths very soon - under a quarter of current rates....
However, at the moment, I'd still rather trust my major live event with Akamai over Limelight any day...
Part of Akamai's problems are its prissiness - an unwillingness to handle gambling outside of the US, and an unwillingness to be realistic about pricing, linked with a general arrogance about its service (which is generally superior imho) are really hitting its bottom line.
With the advent of technologies from companies like Edgeware and new pricing from network companies like Level 3 and AT&T, this market is due for a major shake up. If you're willing to invest £30k or so, expect prices of 5p/GB for sub 20TB and 4p/GB for higher bandwidths very soon - under a quarter of current rates....
However, at the moment, I'd still rather trust my major live event with Akamai over Limelight any day...
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