I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about it, but what exactly is Content Acceleration? It is the combination of traditional content delivery network services such as image caching and streaming with newer services that optimize the performance of web-based applications. You might naturally ask how the “magic happens” next. What makes it work? How are applications optimized and accelerated?

This is part 2 of the blog post, "8 Ways the Online Video Management Platform (OVMP) Surpasses Free Video Sites". For part 1, click here.

Video Quality

Over the past several years, people have turned to online video in a big way as video is more intuitive and, let’s face it, more interesting and engaging than the printed word.  This increased interest is reflected in the massive amounts of video being shared on free video sites every day. These sites are where people upload, watch and share their end-user created videos.

Well, the day has finally arrived. We at Concentric are excited to launch a new product vehicle to help our customers succeed in managing and monetizing their online videos! As most of you are aware, online video continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Internet video now makes up 40 percent of consumer traffic and, according to Cisco, is expected to reach 62 percent by the end of 2015.

Due to outdated http 1.1 issues that involve issues and difficulties in handling fast web content, market players have been looking for a more advanced and functional http protocol, namely http 2.0. The idea behind http 2.0 is to support faster websites, allow for interactivity, and support mobile devices with now soaring demand for web app and mobile interaction.

Last year, CDN’s started to change their business focus from "Middle Mile" to "Last Mile" optimization. With this change comes a new CDN market focused on browser experience optimization. I have just finished a series of meetings with accounts that all use CDN’s to deliver static content. These companies believe they have used all available optimizations in the market. It seems that a large number of current CDN customers have never considered ways to improve site experience with these technologies.

Should companies consider employing a dual CDN vendor strategy? The short answer to this question is...it depends. Some important factors to consider when evaluating this strategy are the amount of content delivered, your tolerance for CDN downtime, geographic delivery coverage, capacity required and the type of traffic (video, files images or transactions). Is it worth the hassle of managing two vendors? If your goal is 100% uptime, controlling costs and utilizing the special benefits of different providers, than the answer is yes.

Well, the London 2012 Olympics are here! I’m looking forward to watching a lot of it. Already one of most exciting sports events in the world, this one promises to be unprecedented in terms of the way it’s delivered and consumed by the public. 

Cloud Computing? Cloud storage? What does it all mean? 

Following up on my last post, here are the options you can use to set up your http Cache-Control based upon the needs of your business: