CDN Featured Article

Content – it’s more than just the words on a page. It’s the fuel that drives so many organizations as they strive to better collaboration among team members, greater market recognition and an overall focus on the competitive advantage. This drives the demand for next generation content delivery networks (CDNs) to support this activity.

Traditionally speaking, proxy servers were used to assist with the rapid delivery of content. But the constant increase in demand for Internet-based business and communications services is driving the need for accuracy, speech and availability of content delivered over the network. Next gen CDN bridges the gap, providing the necessary overlay networks that can delivery higher performance in that content delivery.

As highlighted in this piece on IT Web, next gen CDN models have proven to be incredibly successfully for companies like Limelight, Akamai (News - Alert), Level 3 and more. This success has inspired many an organization to follow suit in an effort to assist in the delivery of business-critical applications over the same network. The only problem with this approach is that it rarely works well? Why? Business applications tend to be dynamic content that changes by design in real-time; next gen CDN is great at managing static content.

Consider the application of next gen CDN in remote locations such as Brazil or Africa. Users gain access to popular content, movies, software, etc. at speeds that are 40 times faster than what they had access to before. Plus, service providers saved millions through load reduction and use of expensive international links. CDNs are designed to cache content (business applications cannot be cached) that can be repeatedly accessed from the Internet as a copy of that content is kept on the CDN in-country. Download speeds increase and the content is not in real-time and is not specific to the user.

Fortunately, not all is lost in the business world. There is a new breed of next gen CDN provider focused on developing solutions to address the increasing demand for enterprise application delivery. The underlying network has been developed in these cases to address the requirements of the applications. With such capabilities, the next gen CDN that can support business applications will cost more, but the benefits in the long-run are worth it.

Teridion is making waves in this space with a cloud-based approach to next gen CDN that is capable of supporting network demand for content via business applications. The key is whether or not what your organization is trying to achieve matches with what they have designed. If performance and latency continue to be a challenge that keeps you from reaching your goals, it may be one solution to consider.