Introduction
Cable has been leading content delivery for years. However, with the rise of broadband internet, things have changed over the past few decades. Today, individuals look for better interactive websites, apps, and sound digital infrastructure for online content streaming. Together this gave birth to the platforms like OTT.
OTT stands for over-the-top. It is a media service that is provided to viewers directly through the internet. Unlike, traditional cables for video and media streaming, an OTT bypasses broadcast, cable, and satellite television. Some of the popular OTT platforms include Hulu, YouTube, and Netflix, which offer streaming media as a standalone product.
The only thing that can drive away people from OTT is slow streaming speed and high buffering time. And, therefore it is essential to minimize these two factors with CDN.
In this article today, we will explain, what an OTT is, and why is the CDN a key to the success of your OTT platform.
Why OTT
The choice and diversity of content on this platform are much greater than traditional live streaming. According to research, OTT platforms have been continuously incorporating CDNs and it is expected that it will rise by 12.6% CAGR by 2032.
With the rising demand for video content on-demand, there have been delays in content delivery. It has been witnessed particularly in the entertainment sector, and gaming industry.
Study shows that the behavioral shift in video streaming will result in the deployment of the latest technologies such as Ultra HD and 4K.
What is a Content Delivery Network?
A CDN is a geographically distributed data center that consists of local proxy servers that store, and cache content assets including video, audio, javascript, or a CSS file, image, captions, etc which are located nearest to end users. Due to the significant number of OTT platforms, there is a high demand for CDN providers.
The CDNVideo delivers content fast and without any delays thus reducing buffering time and latency. As a result, it improves the overall user experience. It also minimizes instant traffic surges which are either genuine or due to cyber attacks. A master shield is added between the proxy servers and origin servers, which acts as an additional protection layer.
An OTT relies heavily on the content delivery network for its operation, and successful content delivery.
So what CDN does do for the OTT? A CDN caches data on the nearest server as a result it minimizes latency and buffering time of content. This gives the user a great viewing experience.
Smart Data Management is Required
With the rise of gaming and escalating demand for media transmission, VOD, and OTT, CDNs are helping companies to SAVE huge amounts of money, IT resources, and labor. Since data is accessed worldwide through smart devices and the internet, therefore E.G. Smart Load balancing is required.
So what are the growth drivers of smart management?
- In the global market, the rise of smart tv expects the market to reach US$ 358.6 Billion by 2027;
- The demand for content delivery systems will also increase due to the rise in video content and improved experience with OTT platforms.
Why is CDNs key to OTT Success?
CDN is the key to OTT’s success because:
- Using CDN for OTT platforms comes with a lot of benefits including scalability, security, empowering the OTT, better performance, etc. In recent years, higher demand for OTT has created revenue-generating opportunities for OTT content providers. Therefore, performance and content delivery have to be scaled efficiently.
- Alternatively, poor quality of OTT streaming will badly impact the customer experience and the user churn rates would be higher. Users expect low buffering, low latency, and high speed. For the CDN providers, it’s a big technological challenge to manage the high expectations at a scale for user groups in various locations across geographies as users today are used to binge-watching television shows, movies, and documentaries. If the whole infrastructure of OTT is not optimized and fails to handle the large queries, it will be lost in budget, money, and time.
Any type of project, such as OTT should use CDN, no matter of size, because a huge influx of viewers can occur. It will ensure high-speed content delivery from a distance service. CDNVideo provides an easy way to speed up an OTT platform performance while lowering latency.
Benefits of Using a Content Delivery Network for OTT Platforms
There are several benefits of CDN for OTT platforms, let’s look into each of them.
1. CDNs for Empowering OTT Streaming
CDN benefits OTT of any size. Study shows that the global OTT market size is projected to be valued at $1,039.03 billion by 2027. It has exponentially increased the demand of the CDN market for better speed and delivery content without any delays. In 2022, the CDN demand stood at US$ 18.8 Billion which is expected to reach US$ 61.2 Billion by the end of 2032.
Speed is crucial for a great customer experience. End users hate to stream content on OTT. Therefore investing in a great CDN for your OTT platform is a great decision. It always caches the data and video content to a closer proxy server. Even if the dedicated server crashes, it delivers content from the nearby server in the same geography.
Here’s how CDN empowers OTT streaming:
- It improves the speed and performance of video content delivery;
- CDN enables broadcasters to deliver high-quality content by caching data deep in their network. Unlike the general internet, the data doesn’t have to travel long distances, the data delivery is efficient and reliable;
- Users can have an uninterrupted and seamless experience;
- CDN is a reliable way for OTT streaming for an enjoyable and smoother experience.
2. Improved User Experience
The three elements of CDN for seamless OTT streaming that provide an improved user experience are increased speed, minimal buffering, and better bandwidth. They provide a great streaming experience irrespective of geographical location. CDN ensures that your OTT platform is up and running. In case of a spike of traffic to a certain server, it shifts the load to the nearest server to keep up with the buffering speed and streaming.
CDN caches data to the nearest server including dynamic, static, dynamic, and interactive content. And, in modern servers, it also caches viewing history, so that it is instantly accessed. As a result, it gives a seamless user experience.
3. Enhanced Security
OTT platforms are at a high risk of cyber attacks today. Using a CDN for your OTT platform can minimize the risks. CDN protects OTT from major cyber attacks by providing DDoS protection to their solutions to facilitate load balancing. The modern age content security issues like request limiting, bot detection, and malware protection are minimized by CDN.
CDN provides an extra layer to your OTT. Even if OTT is under attack, the CDN ensures that only the proxy servers get affected through load balancing. Load balancing ensures not a single server is overloaded or overwhelmed with requests. It distributes the whole traffic evenly to all the servers. Thus, the attackers can’t overload a single server, and therefore it’s impossible to DDoS CDN. And, even if a single server is attacked, the others can still handle the traffic. As a result, it minimizes the risk of DDoS attacks, improves reliability, and improves performance.
4. Better OTT Performance
Since CDN improves the scalability, reliability, and security of OTT, it results in improving overall performance. CDNVideo ensures that CDN will be up and running with SLA, but it is not responsible for the customers clusters of servers outside of their scope of work.
A CDN decreases the load on the original server and allows it to have a consistently high uptime ratio. This means, if customer storage is temporary down, content could still be accessed because it will be stored in CACHE on the CDN side
With its great security features, the CDN ensures your OTT platform is efficient and running around the clock. As a result, the subscriber churn rate can be significantly decreased.
5. CDNs for OTT platforms for guaranteed scalability
CDNs allow OTT to cope with scalability during the times when the server has to face high traffic, particularly during live events when the viewership escalates. Plus, CDN also good for low-traffic platforms.
Since you do not need a very high bandwidth outside the peak hours, it’s not a good decision to invest in your own CDN server. However, you can choose to have additional sources like add-on proxy servers in time of need. The add-on proxy servers can help you cope with the traffic surge. As a result, it will be hassle-free and budget-friendly.
But if you choose to build your own OTT, here’s what an estimated cost would look like,
Servers cost DELL R640 – 15000$
Rack renting – 3 000$
Internet – 10 000$
Storage – 5 000$
Platform building cost 200 000$
Conclusion
CDN is essential for building a top-notch OTT platform because high-quality content is not the only thing that your users look for. It is also the user experience that matters. A seamless, high-speed video streaming service can help you minimize the viewer’s churn rate and contributes to the overall efficiency of the OTT platform.
Your OTT platform will be reliable, scalable, and secure with CDN. The downtime and delays in buffering will be minimized so that the user doesn’t lose interest in your platform. Contact us today if you planning to build an OTT platform with CDN.
