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3人 Attempts to Aggregate Aggregators

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3人, a company that came out of stealth mode just a few months ago, 正在尝试一个伟大的想法:聚合内容交付网络(CDN)服务提供商的交付服务.

Having raised $6.6 million from Canaan Partners and Storm Ventures, 该公司发布了CrowdDirector产品,试图改变视频传输的动态.

"With CrowdMonitor and CrowdDirector, 我们只是让世界对我们正在建立的使新型内容交付系统成为可能的基础有一个很小的了解,在CrowdDirector上市前几周,该公司在博客上宣布. “我们正在使用群体或群体外包的理念来利用多个可以监控的cdn, 管理, and deployed as one single service."

The company prices a basic CDN load-balancer service, CrowdDirector Basic, at a contract price of $150 per month.

In order to change the way CDN delivery is done, the company needed to attract more than just funding. In late July, the company announced three executive hires in product management, 操作, 和金融. The three new hires join co-founders Chris Wallace and Barrett Lyon, the latter known already in the industry as co-founder of BitGravity.

Bill Shetti来自Storm Ventures (3人的投资者),担任产品总监.  

“比尔在领先公司的职位上有丰富的产品管理经验, including Cisco," a company blog post revealed. "His role will be to engineer and shape 3人's unique product offerings."

Nathan Hickson, 他被任命为3人的运营总监,是YouTube和facebook的资深人士, more recently, 谷歌, which 3人 notes as experience that will benefit its customers.

“内森在可扩展内容交付和网络基础设施的发展中发挥了重要作用," the company stated. “我们相信,内森将在创造力方面推动我们的运营成功, 效率, and execution."

就连该公司的财务主管史蒂文•马查多(Steven Machado)也有很强的交付技术背景, 3人的新任财务副总裁曾是Exodus Communications的创始团队成员, and had worked with 3人's co-founder Chris Wallace in executive roles.

如果该公司清除了聚合多个内容交付网络服务的技术障碍, will that be enough to compel use of 3人's services?

该公司认为这是一种双管齐下的方法,将灵活性和经济效益结合起来.

“(这些服务)将对性能和供应商的灵活性产生重大影响," the company notes, and will "not only impact the business of current content providers, 但也要重新定位经济,并邀请新一代的供应商参与市场."

除了负载平衡的灵活性和基于业务规则的各种cdn的使用之外, 3人还认为围绕CDN交付的商业模式需要修正, 因为它们落后于围绕YouTube病毒式传播内容革命而出现的技术创新.

“随着视频的爆炸式增长,内容提供商在分类账上没有同样的创新," the company notes. "As a result, 许多在线视频开发者现在都在努力在制作优质内容和向消费者提供内容的成本之间找到一个有利可图的平衡."

该公司希望解决一个主要的财务障碍:在固定价格的产品植入费和让视频作为一种网络病毒现象继续不受限制地增长之间取得平衡. With traditional broadcast, 固定交付成本公式可以帮助内容创作者选择合适的固定成本植入费用, 这在在线视频领域还没有流行起来,主要是因为配送成本.

"If a video with a fixed product placement fee of $1,000 goes viral and costs $10,000 to deliver, the content creator just lost $9,000," the company stated. “cdn和运营商都是为了让这种情况发生而设计的,因此内容创作者将更少的视频放到网上, put lower quality video online, and are severely held back from creating their visions. . . . If we do our job right, 互联网流媒体将比传统的广播系统更实惠,两者都将取得成功."

The biggest issue, 似乎, 公司是否有能力让cdn与其元负载平衡方案合作, 因为除了最简单的泛cdn实现之外,所有实现都需要访问cdn提供给客户的“钩子”或sdk(软件开发工具包),以便更好地集成到软件应用程序中. While this may be less of an issue for online video platforms, or even Amazon's S3, it may prove an issue for coordination with the legacy CDNs.

“我们的愿景是提供服务,帮助整个互联网内容行业蓬勃发展——这是一个非常雄心勃勃的目标," said Barrett Lyon, co-founder and CEO of 3人 Technologies. “但我们认为,随着我们不断推出新的创新和技术,我们将帮助每个人跟上在线视频和全球影响力的爆炸式需求.  我们的一些客户使用CrowdDirector来利用cdn的优势,避免其弱点."

To that end, 3人 recently announced that certification of CDNs is forthcoming, CDNetworks和Edgecast是首批参与认证过程的cdn.

3人 will base its certification on three criteria that play into 3人's approach: performance and bandwidth use; implementation of security features including URL signing and tokenized URLs, token authentication, and blocking parameters; and rich-media delivery capabilities including HTTP seeking, progressive download, 和HTML5.

里昂说:“将我们的客户与CDN合作伙伴顺利地联系起来,可以帮助所有参与其中的人. “这个项目让cdn在拥挤的市场中脱颖而出,同时确保客户获得出色的服务. 我们致力于与cdn集成,使他们成为按需服务提供商社区的一部分, as well as exposing CDNs to potential new leads and revenue streams."

首批参与该计划的cdn包括:CDNetworks和Edgecast. 

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