InfoLibria touts do-it-yourself CDNs
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WALTHAM, MASS. - New hardware and upgraded software from InfoLibria is designed to let companies set up their own content-delivery networks rather than outsource the duties to a service provider.
InfoLibria, which up until now has sold CDN products almost exclusively to service providers, says companies willing to build and manage their own CDNs will gain more control over the content they distribute and should be able to save money vs. going with a service provider.
CDNs are aimed at making network content, from text files to streaming video, more readily accessible to end users while saving bandwidth costs for the content generator. In general, the idea is to put more of the content closer to the end users, especially when it comes to bandwidth-intensive content such as video.
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InfoLibria's new offerings include its E-Class appliances, which typically sit behind firewalls and in front of Web servers. Upgraded versions of software for the appliances gives companies a Web-based view of all devices on a CDN and provides for remote setup and management. The software can be used to track network usage and bill for it within a company, and to set end-user access policies.
The offerings compete with products from companies such as CacheFlow, Cisco, Network Appliance and Volera, and setting up corporate CDNs provides an alternative to services from companies such as Akamai Technologies, Digital Island and Speedera Networks, observers say.
Building a CDN can be a better fit than using a CDN service for companies that don't need to constantly have their content distributed, says Greg Howard, an analyst with HTRC Group. A homegrown CDN can make it easier to control how certain content is pushed out to end users. "Transferring one copy of a file vs. 150 copies or more is dramatically less expensive," he says.
One reason homegrown CDNs could catch on is that streaming is gaining momentum for use in online training and other applications. HTRC research indicates that the 35% of companies do streaming and that 42% of them will in 2002. Of those companies doing streaming, more than half will choose to build their own CDNs rather than outsource, the study concludes. And that streaming will take up more network bandwidth: Companies expect that 12% of their network capacity will be taken up by streaming applications this year and increase to 19% in 2002.
InfoLibria's new appliances include the E100, which features 36G bytes of disk storage, 512M bytes of RAM, dual 10/100M-bit/sec Ethernet ports and a 1,000-MHz Pentium III processor. The E100 can accommodate 90M bit/sec on-demand streaming or 170M bit/sec live streaming. The box costs $11,000.
The more powerful E200 comes with a 54G- or 108G-byte disk-storage capacity, 1G byte of RAM, dual 10/100M-bit/sec Ethernet ports and a Gigabit Ethernet uplink. This device, which sports two 1,000MHz Pentium II processors, features 160M- to 200M-bit/sec on-demand streaming or 250M- to 300M-bit/sec live streaming. It costs $17,000.
Appliances packaged with Content Commander 5.0, the upgraded management software, start at $25,000.
The E-Class appliances are not InfoLibria's first enterprise network offerings. The company already offers caching appliances for enterprises and service providers under the DynaCache brand.
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