State of CDN Services

Report Now Available

In an effort to gauge the State of CDN Services, Streaming Media magazine and Unisphere Research recently conducted a survey and wrote a report based on the results - Akamai sponsored this project. Survey respondents were asked to provide details of both their viewing habits as well as their assessment of CDN services, both in terms of expected terabytes served and CDN features.

The research centered on industry experts, media engineers and executive management, who were asked questions that provided insight into both the actual and intended uses of CDN services. The survey found three primary results: survey takers tend to be fragmented when it comes to primary media consumption devices, tend to work for companies that either deliver less than 1TB or more than 100TB of online content per month, and are very concerned about the need to maintain multi-screen delivery to existing and emerging media consumption devices.

Some key results of the study include:

  • Laptops are still the most dominant form-factor for primary online media consumption, and the combination of desktops and laptops still make up 46% of primary media consumption for our survey takers. Tablets (19%) barely eke out third place against the oldest media consumption device on the list: television ($18%).
  • A full 92% of respondents said that content quality is important or very important to their overall online viewing experience.
  • Multi-screen/multi-device delivery is far and away the number-one functionality that survey respondents look to their CDN provider to deliver on.