The problem with transferring large files such as movies over mobile networks really boils down to distance and congestion. As Alexander explained, even a 300-kilobit web site can take a long time to load because it might involve 30 different requests that each must make the roundtrip from phone to mobile network to the internet and back. Right now, he said, web pages for major companies that take 3 seconds to load over the web take 9 seconds to load on a mobile device, which is a huge problem if companies don’t want users abandoning their sites.

Aspera’s Simu pointed to congestion as a major inhibitor of rich mobile experiences. Although 4G networks can boost performance of his company’s file-transfer tool by three to four times over 3G networks, Simu said, it’s a volatile medium on which performance is inconsistent, in large part because a network can become congested in just fractions of a second.

One part of the solution will come from carriers, device manufacturers, and middlemen such as Aspera and Akamai that can make data transfer that much more efficient. Referencing those 30 roundtrips to load a standard web site, Alexander asked, “What if I could do it in two or three? What if i could do it in one?”

Or if devices and servers were both speaking the same language, he added, perhaps they could intelligently decide to take shortcuts that deliver content in a manner that accounts for the chatty nature of TCP/IP networks. Akamai, he noted, it working on all sorts of tactics for improving the performance of mobile data networks, and it plans to make them available industry-wide.

Simu suggested the idea of caching data on devices themselves, noting that a standard device can easily hold enough properly encoded HD video to let someone stream episodes of a television series and keep only the data that’s needed to watch what’s coming next.

But the real trick is for app developers to get smart about programming. They can’t rely on bandwidth to improve, and even tools like what Aspera and Akamai are doing can only improve certain aspects of a mobile app’s performance. A beautiful UI is great, Simu said, but maybe not as important as reducing those 50 REST calls down to 1, or figuring out whether the amount of data an app has to send in order to be useful is even feasible at all.

Check out the rest of our Mobilize 2012 coverage here, and the live stream can be found here.

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Akamai CEO Paul Sagan at GigaOM Structure

Akamai’s latest product launch lets network operators take over their own content delivery networks, using Akamai’s software but not its boxes. The Aura network solutions business is a huge change in Akamai’s business, given that it has spent more than a decade pushing its proprietary boxes located inside carrier networks. The shift, and the reason for it, offers a lot of clues about the evolution and domestication of the worldwide web.

Akamai, which was founded in 1998, was created with the radical business plan that by caching web content close to the end user, it could deliver movies, videos and websites faster for its customers. Part of the idea was that the content wouldn’t have as far to travel once a user requested it, but another benefit was that by caching content at the edge, content providers and ISPs won because fat files didn’t travel repeatedly across the network. Akamai has tens of thousands of servers at operators around the world and generated sales of $1.16 billion in 2011. The model worked.

A changing web and more competition

But two things happened that have led to Akamai’s shift in strategy. The content sent over the network started changing. Websites turned to downloaded video and then downloads turned to streaming video. And with the advent of apps and widgets, websites became more dynamic, forcing content delivery networks to update their caches faster and from a variety of sources. And still sites bogged down.

Akamai has been on a buying spree, trying to address these issues and the spread of content that blossomed on the web unrelated to delivering video and fat web pages, such as social commenting tools or dynamic ads. It has ventured into mobile advertising, transactional optimization and security.

At the core, though, was Akamai’s EdgePlatform of more than 100,000 servers. But operators, concerned about their bottom lines and the growth of traffic coming from video and monetized by companies that were earning a premium on their pipes, began experimenting with their own CDNs. In both wireline and wireless, ISPs were trying to push Akamai out so they could control their own destiny. (Seriously, I’ve had an executive at an ISP explain its CDN efforts that way.)

With today’s Aura product launch, which offers operators a chance to license Akamai’s software or lets them buy blade servers from network equipment vendor Ericsson that will run Akamai’s software, Akamai has given in to operators’ concerns and the reality of the web. Sure, it was once a huge advantage to have a network of servers at the edge, but plenty of CDNs work very differently now, from Akamai’s rival LimeLight to newer companies such as EdgeCast, which already licenses its software.

Plus, Akamai spends a lot of money on servers, which adds to its bottom line in a business where the price of the base service is decreasing.

Did Akamai just take sides in the taming of the web?

I also see this as an admission that in order to deliver content at a large scale, you’re going to have to get in bed with the carriers. That could be bad news for the likes of Netflix (and the Internet at large). This move takes what used to be a third-party content delivery system and gives carriers the option to control it. Frank Childs, a director of product marketing for the networks business at Akamai, explained that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Hypothetically speaking, he explained that Netflix might benefit under this sort of arrangement because it could work with particular ISPs to ensure its content arrives using the most efficient route for the ISPs, giving Netflix users a better experience and perhaps saving Netflix some bandwidth costs. Childs also suggested the ISP would benefit because it could route the traffic most efficiently for it and possibly monetize traffic it previously hadn’t been able to earn money from.

But Childs also acknowledged that in some cases the product will cause channel conflict for some customers. For example, if you are Disney, do you work with Akamai as your CDN or with carriers? What if you negotiate CDN rates along with the retransmission fees you are already discussing with the pay TV side of the house at many ISPs?

At the same time, if you are Netflix, do you want to work with two or three CDNs, or do you want to negotiate with dozens of carriers in the markets where you want to deliver content? Consider also that those CDNs are willing to fight some pretty public battles with ISPs to protect your and their business.

As for Akamai’s product, it will be followed up with more announcements from Akamai throughout this year as the company seeks to continue adapting its business to the needs of the web. Call it realpolitik, or maybe just business.

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Look ma! It's all so rich and dynamic.

Akamai said it purchased Canadian web site optimization company Blaze Wednesday, ahead of its financial results call. In acquiring Blaze, content-delivery network leader Akamai offers an excellent example of how the web is changing as we access it from more devices and as the nature of the web sites we visit changes. This small deal illustrates some big changes in the web.

Blaze, which was formed in 2010, offers a service that helps web sites load faster by optimizing the scripts running on the site. It also recommends clients add a content delivery network and complements the software and CDN mix with consulting services for folks that want to go further. The optimization happens on the backend on Blaze’s servers, so the consumer’s front end experience was faster and fitted to the device he was on at the time. Other companies in this space include Aptimize.

In buying Blaze, Akamai is acknowledging that web sites today are accessed in more places, something anyone who’s been in a Starbucks lately can tell you, but also that the sites themselves are different. They use richer media and offer links back to more applications. Things like sharing something on Twitter or liking it on Facebook via a simple button add seconds to load times and complexity to the overall site. Complicated CSS scripts and lagging ad networks don’t help either.

Blaze was a natural fit for Akamai in many ways as Akamai tries to take its CDN beyond the old days of static content delivery to delivering optimized advertising, helping bring content to mobile devices, and otherwise adapt to the application-heavy and real-time nature of the web. Where web sites were once comprised of fairly simple code optimized for one or two browsers, they’re now a mash up of many applications from different places being viewed on as many as 10 different browsers and platforms. Akamai is just trying to keep up.

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While Warner Bros. has spearheaded the launch of UltraViolet-enabled movie titles through the launch of its Flixster applications, the promise of allowing viewers to buy a movie once and stream or download it from multiple retailer websites or applications has yet to fully catch on. That’s why Akamai, which provides content distribution services to a number of different studios and media companies, believes it is well positioned to offer up a solution that provides an easier way to make UltraViolet movies available. Ahead of CES, Akamai is announcing that it has integrated with the UltraViolet Coordinator, which controls access to the digital rights locker and manages entitlements and other information around which movies consumers have bought.

The Akamai for UltraViolet product is designed to connect with the digital rights locker and offer up storage, security and delivery of UltraViolet-enabled digital assets. The idea is to create a common reference point that studios and retailers can point to whenever a consumer tries to access an UltraViolet title. Akamai is pitching the studios first, since they are moving quickly to make these services available.

But as time goes on, and digital storefronts from the likes of Walmart’s Vudu, Best Buy’s CinemaNow or Amazon Prime Video begin supporting the digital rights initiative, having a unified storage and delivery point will simplify access to, and distribution of, UltraViolet movies. That’s because those retailers won’t necessarily have to duplicate the process by storing and managing their own copies of the files — they’ll be able to point to those already under Akamai’s control. That could make things a lot more efficient for everyone involved.

Akamai is also announcing that it’s adding new security features to its HD network to ensure that content owners and retailers can distribute video assets to multiple devices. Akamai’s SecureHD offering provides four layers of protection, including token authorization, player verification, media encryption and content targeting. With those features in place, media customers will be able to optimize their security protection based on the capabilities of the device, while providing the best playback experience regardless of whatever tablet, mobile handset or connected TV that viewers are watching a piece of content on.

Finally, the content delivery network is simplifying the process of streaming on its HD Network by selecting HTTP as its default delivery method and integrating Adobe’s HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) functionality into its product offering. As a result, customers can take advantage of HTTP streaming without having to make changes to their existing Adobe Flash workflow. The Akamai HD Network also supports Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) and Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming protocols.

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Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai is the great-granddaddy of CDNs, while Cotendo, of Sunnyvale, Calif., was seen as a leaner, younger competitor that leveraged outside data centers so it could concentrate on building and delivering web content acceleration services. Akamai fields 95,000 servers worldwide and delivers between 15 percent and 30 percent of all Internet traffic. But the CDN landscape is changing as more players — including some of the world’s largest telcos — enter the arena.

The news wasn’t totally shocking — there had been rumors that Cotendo was in play with Akamai on a list of several possible suitors that also included Juniper Networks and AT&T  – two of Cotendo’s partners.

In the statement announcing the deal, Akamai CEO Paul Sagan said:

As we look to accelerate growth across the dynamic landscapes of cloud and mobile optimization, we are excited to be joining forces with Cotendo. Cotendo’s technology, partnerships and people are a strong complement to Akamai. Together, we believe there is tremendous opportunity for our combined technologies as enterprises embrace the move to the cloud and seek solutions for an increasingly mobile world.

The world of CDN is definitely changing with the proliferation of connected devices and sensors.

Feature photo courtesy of Flickr user 401K

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