CDN Featured Article

We all know that content is king. It's used to inform, entertain, and of course, market. Producing and providing content, therefore, is key to keeping users coming back, and that means the market for content delivery network (CDN) capability is likewise poised for growth. A recent study from Future Market Insights shows just how much, and offers explanation behind the projections.

The numbers are impressive in their own right; the entire market is projected to see a year-to-year growth rate of 19.9 percent just this year alone, hitting a combined total of $5.899 billion in total revenues. The delivery / distribution segment is expected to hit 21 percent growth this year alone, and website caching is expected to have nearly identical growth at 19.8 percent.

In terms of markets, North America is set to be the biggest market, a trend which has been going on for, now, multiple years. Total revenues for North American CDN are projected to grow 21.3 percent, better than the global average, thanks to increased knowledge of the direct end-user benefits of CDN. Other trends benefiting CDN growth in not just North America but also worldwide include an increased overall investment in broadband infrastructure, a general increase in Internet of Things (IoT) operations, the continued growth and retention of connected devices and an overall increased demand for rich media content.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)) is expected to control the market in terms of service type, taking 54.2 percent of all revenue in that time frame. As for end-use segments, the clear winner is the media and entertainment market, as new innovations in the field provide further growth. Geographically, while North America is the clear winner, the Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) market is primed for big gains as well, posting a respectable 21.8 percent projected gain for 2016.

Content has a lot of applications. Whether it's used as a way to get people coming back to read it and be exposed to advertising in the process, as a way to keep subscribers happy, or as a way to get people interested in a product or a market segment, content does the job in the way little else can. So investing in a means to get content out in front of users is just as vital as actually having content; it's not that far removed from the hardware / software concept. One isn't much good without the other.

Thus, the investments projected probably aren't all that pie-in-the-sky, and if there is a lack, it probably won't be by a particularly broad factor. The projected numbers will likely end up close to the mark, because there are simply too many uses for content for its delivery networks to go without investment.