
Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2016. Read them in this 8th Annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Lars Larsson, CEO, Varnish Software
2016 Prediction: The DIY CDN
At Varnish Software we predict that 2016 will be the year
that the "do-it-yourself" content delivery network (DIY CDN) moves into the
mainstream. In fact, we expect the number of DIY CDNs to grow to at least
10,000 by 2020.
What is driving companies to take over the management of
their CDN traffic themselves?
According to a Bloomberg interview with Akamai CEO Tom Leighton, the trend toward organizations going in-house
with building their own content delivery networks is gaining momentum.. Mr
Leighton says that he is not worried for the future, citing the fact that their
largest customers have already been using DIY CDNs for 10 years. That may be
true, but the world has changed quite a lot over that past 10 years and so have
the requirements for content distribution.
What worked ten years ago
Ten years ago it was fine to have CDNs caching content and
allowing an update time of 10-60 minutes before the organization could be sure
that all its servers had received updated content. Today it is not. If a
company wants to run a true online business, it must be able to update all
content in its CDN within milliseconds. Any technical limitations will hamper
both its ability to pursue business development opportunities and customer
expectations. And that will not fly in 2016.
Ten years ago launching an internal CDN was not something
anyone could do. It was rocket science. Today, most organizations are able to
launch their own CDN from scratch based on standard components and resources in
the cloud in a matter of days, or even hours if they have done some
preparation.
Ten years ago, in order to get as close to its customers as
possible, a company needed to be able to distribute all its static content out
to every corner of the world. With increasing traffic and the number of edge
CDN users who may get significant traffic to their origin servers, using this
traditional approach today can be very expensive.
The benefits of building an internal
CDN
Let's look at the three factors that will compel companies
to build their own CDN:
Cost: As traffic costs have plummeted, CDN pricing
hasn't quite been able to follow. This is especially true if a company wants
features, such as TLS (transport layer security) or WAF (web application
firewalls), in its distribution.
Control: With a
public CDN, organizations must rely on someone else's infrastructure to deliver
their content. At Varnish Software, we commonly see content that is very
proprietary in nature: internal training videos, car firmware, app content,
etc. Public CDNs are designed to distribute content to the public. Within a
private CDN architecture, the organization is free to set its own arbitrary
rules deciding who has access to the content and who doesn't.
Performance: An internal CDN will allow organizations to
dedicate the resources needed to deliver content in a high-performance manner,
such as guaranteeing that content always be served out of memory.
Disrupting the way companies manage
content distribution
In 2016, there will be many different scenarios for
organizations that want to tailor the way they distribute digital content.
Different requirements will continue to emerge, as we move into the next phase
of the digital revolution. Cost is, of course, a very important driver,
needless to say, and with an increasing number of transactions on the internet
combined with larger information objects being distributed, cost per
transaction will matter even more.
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About the Author
CEO,
Varnish Software, Norway
Lars Larsson is the CEO of Varnish Software,
the company behind the open source web accelerator Varnish Cache. Compared to
regular applications servers and content management systems, Varnish is often
thousands of times faster, and since Varnish is very flexible and completely
programmable it will allow you to have full control over the whole content
delivery process.
Lars has near
20 years of CxO experience developing business models and Professional Services
Concepts with a focus on bringing unique value to enterprise customers who base
their mission critical operations on Open Source Software.
Lars has been a
part of the Varnish Software Board and Management team since the company was
founded in 2010. Prior to that Lars co-founded the Scandinavia-based System
Integrator Redpill Linpro Group in 2003.