How You Can Prepare Your CDN Systems for the Future

CDN Systems for the Future

The strain on content delivery networks is greater than ever. Why? Streaming content has exploded, and current trends indicate that it will only continue to grow. Most major media companies are already exploring or using the direct-to-consumer business model, with many making major investments in original content. Additionally, live streaming events are becoming increasingly popular, and companies require new strategies to help deliver a consistent viewing experience to their customers. Another factor pushing the need for a more robust CDN infrastructure is the size of digital content. Companies are continually trying to provide customers with richer, more immersive experiences and applications that need network connectivity for full functionality. How can CDN providers prepare their infrastructure for the future?

The Challenge to Ensuring Your CDN Provides Great User Experiences

Today, users are connecting from more locations than ever before, and content is heavier as its filled with interactive features and higher resolutions. This makes it increasingly vital to ensure that edge infrastructure is positioned close enough to users — even rural users — to provide a consistently great user experience. At the same time, the way we perform routine activities like work and school is evolving, making metrics like latency even more important. To future-proof your network infrastructure, it’s important to think about how growth in the areas we’ve mentioned so far will impact your hardware. By starting to plan and enhance your CDN systems early, it’s possible to stay ahead of the curve. Three characteristics that can help with planning include scalability, automation, and connectivity. Built to scale. By planning out your edge strategy early, you’ll be able to make design and software choices that improve scalability. For example, CDN infrastructure can be deployed in modular, containerized packages to your edge PoPs or edge nodes. This will keep performance predictable and ensure hardware setup is repeatable and efficient. Designed for automation. CDN hardware, by its very nature, is distributed to multiple regions and locations. Automation is key to keeping infrastructure up and running and enabling it to adapt to abrupt changes like cyber attacks, influxes in traffic, and hardware failure. Made to connect. Partnerships are essential to combatting the geographic and latency challenges that come with delivering content to users on a global scale. The key to fostering these business relationships is ensuring your CDN systems are built with open API technology that facilitates connection. Your CDN is a core component of customer experience and usability. Making your content delivery network future-proof is key to keeping customers happy and loyal. And, like any technology, it’s only as good as the hardware it runs on.

Leverage Intequus for Better Performance and Reliability at the Edge

In addition to offering their main services, CDN providers face the challenge of sourcing, maintaining, and supporting distributed hardware. Intequus helps lighten the load by caring for and optimizing your edge hardware. Our team can help you design edge equipment that can be deployed consistently and help you maintain that hardware throughout its entire lifecycle. If you’re looking to simplify your edge infrastructure management, let’s talk.