The streaming media market can be heinously confusing when you're trying to evaluate all the different options, from core video technologies to streaming service providers.
But there aren't many markets whose customers are better served than by a flagship publication (and website and associated conferences) like Streaming Media.com, and by prolific and accessible experts like Jan Ozer on video technology, techniques, and tools (see previous post), and Dan Rayburn on the business and market of streaming media.
Rayburn is EVP for StreamingMedia.com, and again was the conference chairman for the recent Streaming Media Conference, with over 100 speakers in 30 sessions, and 50 exhibitors (see his personal DanRayburn.com site).
And there's more -- Rayburn not only keeps his fingers on the pulse of the streaming media market, he openly shares this information to help make the market much less opaque. This is the kind of material that you often can only find in expensive analyst reports in other market areas, but Rayburn instead has been reporting for years on areas including market metrics and size, companies and segmentation, and even pricing for different classes of services.
Again this year, Rayburn presented his session on CDN Data: Pricing, Contract, Volume and Market Sizing Trends at the Streaming Media East conference (see presentation PDF). This summarized Content Delivery Network market growth and pricing, along with his analysis of developing trends driving the industry (see post on last year's presentation).
Rayburn reports that 2010 looks to be a good year for CDN growth, based on stronger demand and less aggressive price drops from last year (the low-cost leader strategy has not been sustainable in this market).
- Pricing fell 40% for video delivery customers last year (average)
- Pricing should decline 20% in 2010
- Traffic grew 30% last year for video delivery customers (average)
- Traffic growth could be 45% in 2010
CDNs also are branching out into more value add services beyond commodity bit-pushing, including acceleration, security, and verticals.
Finally, Rayburn sees a bigger surge in the market more like 24 months out, driven particularly by focusing on application acceleration for specific needs. He is less enthusiastic about seeing big impacts from other hot trends including HD video, video advertizing, live events, and cloud computing.
You can follow Rayburn and get more detailed information on his Business of Video blog (hosted on the Streaming Media site).
He also provides an array of additional domains that link to specific topics on his blog, including regular reports on the CDN market and pricing:
www.ContentDeliveryBlog.com - Content Delivery
www.cdnList.com - List of CDNs, updated several times a year -
www.cdnPricing.com - Quarterly CDN pricing reports
www.cdnPatents.com - Patents & Legal Issues
UPDATE: The StreamingMedia.com team has launched a new site, OnlineVideo.net, which is designed to be "StreamingMedia for the rest of us” -- with how-to articles, case studies, buyer's guides, reviews, and more, targeted for those who are starting out, intermediate, and advanced.