Do More Deals Increase Costs ?

So, the CDNs and VMSes continue to dance around handbags - the latest announcement is that Brightcove will now be working with Akamai as well as Limelight - both the CDNs already have their own VMS solutions - Stream OS and Delve respectively.

A nice little oligopoly is appearing in the industry as some of the major players begin to dominate.

For my part, I cannot see why a client should be tied into any particular CDN - especially when the bandwidth costs become obfuscated with the platform costs. TV Everywhere's VidZapper platform can work with video served from any CDN - indeed, you can combine clips from various CDNs or any valid web resource into the same channel.

Making an online TV service is tough enough, so ensuring that costs are transparent and can be flexibly kept under control is essential. These big deals suit the people who make them, not necessarily their clients.