The CDN has become a standard part of web content delivery, designed to make performance more reliable and scalable. For much of the life of the web, a lot of this content has been static and didn’t face big delivery challenges. As the web has grown and content of all types, particularly video, has proliferated, this has changed, as have the challenges.

Both live and VoD streaming pose challenges ranging from latency to uptime - these issues pose no surprise but are also opportunities for getting creative in taking control of your own streaming infrastructure. At the heart of your solution is your CDN.

Smooth, uninterrupted streaming is the norm, the expectation – users automatically expect their online viewing experiences to be more fulfilling, curated, personal – and more on-demand – than anything the traditional broadcast TV experience provides. Streaming performance (whether live or VoD) and quality of experience are also baked into the expectation. The number of users and devices streaming video continues to grow exponentially as demands on network resources are bursting at the seams.

Content delivery is still a major focus of what most companies do online. Whether it’s streaming video or making sure an e-commerce or media site is operating with the freshest content, delivered in the fastest way possible, the fundamentals remain. Content delivery needs to be fast, reliable, resilient across all geographies, networks and devices. While you can’t control all of these things, the trend in recent years has been to take control of content delivery by bringing content delivery networks (CDNs) in-house. In that sense, it’s not a new trend but is a trend that is picking up speed as more organizations realize the need for a customized approach to their content delivery.