Today’s CDN vendors compete by offering adjacent services, specializing in functions that are important to distinct industries or in specific regions. Recently, we released the 2020 CDN Market Report, which covers trends and changes within the CDN market. While the report dives into many key insights of the CDN landscape, this post dives even further into how companies are making themselves stand out in this space.
Download the full report, or keep reading to learn about some of the latest trends in the CDN market.
By focusing on specific regions or offering bundled services—such as DDoS protection, load balancing and failover solutions—CDN providers increasingly act like Cloud vendors.
Buyers are increasingly using a multi-CDN approach to meet all their needs. All company sizes are expanding their use of multi-CDN. But the expansion is particularly fast among startups, who use multiple providers as a cost savings measure.
These providers must decide early on how they’ll differentiate what they have to offer from everything else already on the market. In many cases, they’ll do so by focusing on a particular location, heightened security, or bundled services.
Companies with users around the world may use multiple CDNs to ensure their internet content is delivered quickly to the regions they influence. With multiple CDNs specializing in different regions, companies can ensure consistent content delivery no matter where their audience is located.
CDN providers are competing globally, with regions that are increasing CDN usage, with different needs than North America. CDNetworks, for example, focuses on quality CDN services in countries or regions with restricted internet access, such as the Middle East, China, and Russia.
On average, it takes ten hours for a company to begin to resolve a DDoS attack. Each hour will cost the company, $100,000 on average. The money adds up—meaning that security concerns quickly become financial concerns as well.
Vendors that focus on making high-caliber security systems for their CDNs often cater to larger corporations and those that deal in personal or financial information, high-value content, and urgent industries (such as news) that need to minimize risk that content will lag or be sent slowly during an emergency.
Most recently, security has become a bigger concern for organizations whose employees need to access sensitive data while working from home.
“Previously, enterprises built their security software like a fortress around their data. With the rapid pivot to work-from-home due to Covid-19, tech environments became more susceptible, creating increased needs for CDN vendors to also deliver security,” explains Michael Pollack, co-founder and CEO of Intricately.
CDN providers distinguish themselves in the market by providing CDN services bundled with others. In some cases, the choice of a specific vendor for its CDN services is a byproduct of choosing them for a separate, bundled service. CDN buyers have many options when looking for the right provider.
For example, various CDN providers offer the following services bundled with their CDN:
Because CDN vendors today sell multiple products, it can be a challenge for marketers and sales teams to target buyers with the right message.
For example, a bundled package with heightened security is likely more expensive than a standard CDN. The vendor’s sales team is better equipped to approach a potential buyer when they can answer questions like: What is my prospects’ budget? Where do they operate? What other CDN services are they already using?
The diversification of available CDN plans or bundles means the sales team must know more about their buyers before making a pitch. CDN spending and usage intelligence from Intricately can help CDN vendors target their ideal accounts, at the right time and with data, to support their marketing and sales programs.
CDN vendors continue to compete on specializations and services.
To find the best fit customers, CDN providers will have to best understand their unique position in the marketplace and the shape, configuration, and unique needs of their ideal customers.
With Intricately’s Global Sensor Network, users can see how much prospects are spending on CDN services, and how much potential spend they possess in the future.
Whether it’s informing sales teams of their best approach towards potential buyers or helping marketing teams optimize handoff to sales, Intricately can help decision-makers stay informed, relevant, and up-to-date.
To learn more about CDN market trends, download the full 2020 CDN Market Report.
