Akamai Unveils Solutions at IBC 2018 Designed to Mitigate the Challenges and Costs of Cloud Computing and Streaming TV for Broadcasters

Akamai Cloud Wrapper caches content from the cloud; Akamai Direct Connect provides a dedicated, private connection to Akamai’s Edge network

Akamai, the intelligent edge platform for securing and delivering digital experiences, today introduced two new solutions for television broadcasters and distributors designed to mitigate challenges associated with cloud computing and ensure high-quality origin delivery to the Akamai network. Akamai Cloud Wrapper and Akamai Direct Connect demonstrate how the Akamai Edge can help reduce costs while offering broadcast-quality streaming performance and enable broadcasters to implement emerging technology strategies, such as cloud computing.

Akamai Cloud Wrapper optimizes connectivity between public cloud infrastructures and the Akamai Intelligent Edge to eliminate common barriers to over-the-top (OTT) delivery in cloud environments without requiring changes to existing workflows. Specifically, Cloud Wrapper provides customers with a dedicated cache footprint within Akamai’s delivery network that wraps around centralized cloud infrastructures in a manner designed to maximize origin offload and reduce origin requests, while minimizing egress fees for streaming TV.

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Akamai Direct Connect provides customers that manage their own origin infrastructure with a dedicated, private connection to the Akamai Edge network, eliminating the traditional and often unreliable step of delivering content from the origin over the internet. Both solutions are part of Akamai’s live and on-demand streaming media service, Adaptive Media Delivery, and will be showcased at IBC 2018 in Amsterdam (September 14-18, 2018) at booth 1.D35.

Driving Sustainable Streaming Economics & Supporting Cloud Migrations 

More and more broadcasters and OTT providers are moving to centralized cloud platforms to realize compute and storage efficiencies. However, as their content libraries continue to grow, they often face several challenges related to cloud delivery of that content. For example, too many viewer stream requests reach the content’s origin in cloud deployments, impacting performance. Broadcasters and distributors pay an egress fee for each request that is not offloaded; specifically those requests that are fulfilled from the origin instead of from the Akamai Edge.

Built on Akamai’s distributed Edge network, Cloud Wrapper caches, or stores, OTT content outside of a customer’s cloud environment, boosting origin offload by reducing the frequency of user requests that reach the origin. Higher offload means broadcasters and distributors pay cloud providers less for access to the origin content. Since Cloud Wrapper works seamlessly with other Akamai Edge delivery solutions, such as Adaptive Media Delivery, Download Delivery and Object Delivery, Akamai can help broadcasters offer consumers an exceptional viewing experience.

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Improving Reliability at the First Mile 

Akamai Broadcast customers that operate their own origin infrastructure typically deliver TV content over the public internet before it reaches the Akamai Edge. Internet congestion interferes with the “first-mile,” impacting streaming efficacy and driving up IP transit and origin costs.

By connecting their infrastructure directly to the Akamai Edge network with Akamai Direct Connect, customers benefit from the consistent and reliable first-mile performance required to deliver a broadcast quality viewing experience, reduced origin IP transit costs, and the ability to protect their origin infrastructure by limiting public connectivity. Once connected to Akamai’s network via Direct Connect, broadcasters have access to Adaptive Media Delivery, as well as Media Services Live – Akamai’s leading 24/7 live linear service.

“Akamai broke and rebroke live TV streaming volume records this year, and we believe we are only at the early part of the meteoric rise in streaming popularity for live, linear and on-demand television,” said Campbell Foster, Vice President, Media Industry and Product Marketing, Akamai. “Through innovative solutions such as Cloud Wrapper and Direct Connect, Akamai is striving to stay well ahead of the adoption curve. Our customers’ streaming services are evolving into increasingly significant parts of their business operations, and Akamai is committed to helping them fully realize the vital role of the Akamai Edge in their efforts.”

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IBC Activity & Booth-Side Demonstrations

At IBC 2018, Akamai is showing new edge technology innovations designed to help television broadcasters and distributors deliver higher performing and more secure services at IBC 2018 on booth 1.D35. Akamai is showcasing its commitment to helping broadcasters transition to OTT with edge services that provide the highest levels of fidelity, agility, intelligence and security.

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