EdgeCast Partners With Platforms

Written by Ryan Lawler

Tuesday, July 28. 2009 at 04:15 PM EDT Post a comment

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Akamai Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM) isn't the only content delivery network (CDN) that has captured some business from the video management platform community. Apparently EdgeCast Networks Inc. is also doing a good job of partnering up with online video platforms.

The company issued a press release yesterday that linked it to big wins with online video platform providers Castfire Inc., PermissionTV Inc. , and Twistage.

The press release comes at an interesting time in the market, as a number of video platform providers have recently begun to strike partnerships with certain CDNs. In recent months, Akamai has won the favor of providers like Ooyala Inc., Kit Digital , and VMIX Media Inc. , all of which have named it as their preferred CDN.

Meanwhile, Brightcove Inc. has partnered up with Limelight Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: LLNW), and Magnify.net has chosen Highwinds Network Group Inc. as its default CDN provider.

For video management platforms moving to EdgeCast, the CDN's key value proposition seems to be a flexible network that they can plug into with application programming interfaces (APIs).

"What these folks want to do is to automate everything. With us, they can autoprovision all their accounts through an API," says EdgeCast president James Segil.

Another key difference is EdgeCast's decision to listen to partners and work with them on integrating for customer accounts. For Twistage, that included opening up its network and working together on an authentication process for one of its customer.

While Twistage has not picked EdgeCast as its primary delivery provider -- the platform provider prefers to remain CDN agnostic, according to CEO David Wadler -- the company's ability to integrate more deeply into EdgeCast's network was something no other CDN was willing to do.