Streamzilla Unveils Updated Network, Products
With a population of 731 million, Europe is nearly one-third larger than North America. There are also some 230+ languages spoken in Europe, with 23 of these "official," while North America only runs to 165, with only eight of those spoken by more than 10000 people.
Its easy to think that every U.S. technology company is a global player, and pigeonhole European companies as purely regional players. The perception that follows, of course, is that a global player will provide better depth of coverage than a regional player.
And while there no European CDNs with significant CDN business in the U.S., there are few U.S. CDNs with any real foothold in Europe. Level3, Limelight, and Akamai are the only real exceptions to this.
Indeed, there are many others who have a single regional salesman in Europe reselling routes that are themselves running on leased infrastructure that is white labelled from a local ISP or telco. In other words, most CDNs that call themselves global "with a strong European presence" are simply not really European CDNs.
Then there are the telco delivery networks or TDNs (see my article in January) – the telcos that have leapt into the CDN space as they scramble to develop GB-based billing as a proof against gradually declining minute-based billing. Each of these has a physical footprint, usually a legacy of being the incumbent PTT, that they leverage to create their CDN model. However none of these physical foot prints has deep reach throughout more than their parent European countries.
There are ISPs that do offer interconnection to most of these Telcos as a turnkey solution. There are, however, few if any other CDNs that will ensure your content can be delivered to most, if not all, European telcos.
So if you are looking for a European solution spanning many of the European borders and offering deep penetration into that footprint you can quickly narrow the list down to include really just one provider: Streamzilla. Although it is hard to know exactly what the infrastructures of Level 3, Akamai, and Limelight are, with 18 points of presence in Europe alone Streamzilla is certainly "at scale" if not potentially larger than these competing global brands.
I have a tremendous respect for Streamzilla’s CEO, Stef van der Ziel. He is one of the leading figures in the sector, having started out with his first webcast in Europe just shortly before I did and shared the fanaticism for streaming ever since. He is passionate about the sector and a well-recognised figure on many of the industry forums. He maintains Streamzilla as a 100% privately owned company, giving him close quality control end to end, and under that lead they have more than reached critical mass and have become the "go to" home-grown CDN in Europe.
Streamzilla is dedicated to video delivery. While many of the CDNs have diverged into a range of services, van der Ziel has kept his eye firmly on the single sector that was always going to be the most demanding.
In the past year he and the Streamzilla team have overhauled their network to include new delivery possibilities within the video framework, including all the "new" adaptive bitrate technologies. They have doubled their capacity across the network in preparation for continued explosive growth in the demand for their customers content.
They have also spun off core technology elements into a productised format that is now being released to enterprises to enable them to build internal CDNs using the learning and experience gained by 15 years at the forefront of the sector. The company's CDN In a Box does what it says on the tin. I will be reviewing this technology myself later this year and will report back so watch this space.
In the meantime, check out Streamzilla's fresh and funky new website and take advantage of their trial to test them out. As far as "made in Europe" is concerned, Streamzilla is a flagship and goes to show that it's not only U.S. companies that can lead the market in this game.
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