What Happened to the CDN Market?
Over the last few weeks I think I may have been asked 107 times "what just happened to the CDN market?"
It's a pretty good question. Noted market leaders Akamai and Limelight had difficult times in the public market (somewhat for reasons that don't really tie to the market overall), and out of the woodwork came analysts and media reports that the CDN market was collapsing before our very eyes - a little more than a month after many agreed it was booming following Limelight's IPO.
I happen to have a different opinion - the stock market drops had more to do with tactical issues than the market at large (we are still talking about 50%+ growth rates here) - but do agree there are major questions to be raised around business models, pricing and competition. I also agree that the market will look very different 18 months from now, when video advertising has taken hold (noted in previous post and today's WSJ/paid link after today), P2P is making an impact, and users have figured out how to connect their PC's to their TV's.
As usual Dan Rayburn has taken the time to write extensively about these subjects on his site, and I'd encourage you to read his posts. a) He has more time to write than I do, b) I agree with most of what he says, and c) Dan's clearly pretty tapped into the CDN scene.
Apologies for lack of more original thinking here. It's late. And I didn't want my only post of the day to be about a book on wine...
