[January 09, 2012]

EdgeCast Launches Licensed CDN Program Following Global Deployment of Two Major Carrier CDNs

After reaching major milestones with two top telecommunications carriers, EdgeCast Networks, the world's fastest and most reliable content delivery network (CDN), officially announced its licensed CDN program. Following two years of success and traction within the carrier community, EdgeCast is the first CDN provider to successfully build a production CDN on behalf of a tier one telecommunications carrier.

The company has reached the General Acceptance milestone in its design, development, and deployment of a licensed CDN for a tier one U.S. telecommunications carrier. This comes just three months after EdgeCast signed a licensing agreement with Pacnet - one of Asia's largest telecommunications carriers - to power Pacnet's CDN service.

For the last two years, a top tier U.S. carrier has reshaped its CDN strategy around the EdgeCast technology platform. Rather than building another CDN at a cost that could have easily exceeded $100 million, the carrier realized significant cost, time, and performance benefits by leveraging EdgeCast's proven CDN software to deploy a licensed CDN on their own infrastructure. The carrier's formal General Acceptance follows a 12-month phased adoption project, during which EdgCast met or exceeded each milestone and proved ongoing technical, operational, and business benefits.

Two weeks ago, EdgeCast transferred control to the U.S. carrier of its own fully functional, high-performance CDN with more than a dozen points of presence across the U.S. The EdgeCast software covers the entire CDN stack: content delivery for caching and streaming; load balancing; network and server management; reporting; customer and account provisioning; technical support; and other back office functionality.

"Handing a major carrier the keys to its own independent CDN is a major step for our carrier market strategy," said James Segil, president of EdgeCast Networks. "We're uniquely positioned to help carriers build a scalable, battle-tested CDN, because we first built our own - one that's now trusted by more than 4,000 of the world's busiest sites. This deal, alongside our successful, direct CDN business, will give millions of consumers turbo-charged access to high-demand content. This milestone is the proof that we're not just talking about helping carriers - we're actually doing it."

Another carrier, Pacnet (News - Alert) - one of the busiest carriers in Asia - is the second carrier to license and deploy a content delivery network powered by EdgeCast CDN software. Pacnet announced its deal with EdgeCast in September and began selling its Asian CDN service three weeks ago.

"We decided to work with EdgeCast because we were very impressed by the company's technology, performance, and deep CDN experience," said Bill Barney, CEO of Pacnet. "And our experience working with them has proven this out. In just three months, EdgeCast was able to take us from concept to live customer content delivery."

The next phase of deployment with these carriers - and additional licensed and managed carrier CDN deployments EdgeCast will announce shortly - is the federation of traffic across multiple CDNs to enable them to offer content delivery into markets where they do not have network infrastructure.

The EdgeCast carrier strategy has been to give carriers a phased CDN solution that provides flexibility, choice, and a fast time to market. "We offer carriers a solution for every possible scenario from reseller to managed CDN to licensed CDN," said Segil. "Since EdgeCast is both a CDN operator and a software provider, we can allow carriers to resell our network, we can manage their CDNs for them, or license them the software so they can run their own independent CDNs."

Carriers are working with EdgeCast in four ways:

1. Reselling EdgeCast CDN services via white-label offerings (e.g. Deutsche Telecom, TELUS (News - Alert), AAPT)
2. Building a managed CDN on the carrier's network, managed by EdgeCast (2 APAC carriers)
3. Licensing EdgeCast CDN software and services to deploy and manage a CDN on own networks (e.g. the large US carrier and Pacnet, discussed above)
4. Federation: buying and selling CDN capacity among one another on a wholesale basis (today, three CDNs are able to federate traffic with EdgeCast technology)

EdgeCast has partnered with more than 10 carriers worldwide and is currently building CDN points of presence for carriers in five countries.

About EdgeCast Networks

Delivering any data, anywhere, anytime, EdgeCast is the world's fastest and most reliable content delivery network. The EdgeCast network serves more than 1.5 billion objects per hour on behalf of its customers and carries approximately 4% of worldwide Internet traffic. The company's software licensing group helps network operators deploy proven CDN technology on their own IP networks. To learn more, visit www.edgecast.com.

[ Back To Contact Center Solutions Homepage's Homepage ]