Enterprise CDNs driven by streaming

SAN JOSE - If content delivery network technology is going to continue making inroads into corporate networks it will need to offer users more advanced features, such as better transactional support, management tools and improved storage capabilities.

That's the conclusion of many presenters and attendees at The Content Networking Event Fall 2001 last week.

CDNs emerged about two years ago with companies such as Akamai Technologies linking hundreds of caching servers that they deployed at the edge of dozens of public networks. The idea was to move content closer to end users, thereby improving performance.

CDNs are now being slowly adopted in corporations. However, instead of moving Web pages, the focus is on delivering bandwidth-intensive streaming media and business applications without sacrificing network performance or shelling out capital to add servers and bandwidth to support them.

The next step is to enable transaction processing and application delivery, analysts say. Web services, such as those based on Microsoft's .Net technology, will need a delivery mechanism, and CDN technology, because of its distributed architecture, will play an important role, says Michael Hoch, an analyst with Aberdeen Group.

Volera executives say they are seeing growing demand in the enterprise market and the company is adding to its sales team as a result. "The pickup in [enterprise] CDNs is there," says Simon Khalaf, Volera's president.

Indeed, there are companies that have deployed enterprise CDNs. For example, Dow Chemical uses Cisco's CDN technology for employee training and has reduced travel costs by 50%.

Separately, Siemens Medical Solutions Services has been able to reduce the number of servers needed to deliver a clinical and financial application to 50 healthcare facilities by using CDN technology, says Michael Alban, strategic manager for SMS. In addition, network performance has improved by almost 10%.

SMS, a division of Siemens that provides applications to more than 1,000 healthcare providers, is using Cisco content network gear to off-load demands on its Web servers and improve network performance. "Content networking is critical to our deployment of Web-based applications," Alban says.

But network-based applications are just one factor driving the adoption of enterprise CDNs. Experts say e-learning and other uses of streaming media are pushing companies to consider CDNs as a way to give their network a boost.

Many observers say corporations ultimately will use a hybrid CDN, where they install equipment behind their own firewalls and then link into a service provider to extend their global reach. Network service providers such as AT&T and Qwest Communications will make a bigger push into the CDN market in the next year, observers say.

Contact Senior Writer Jennifer Mears

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