This study examines the market of CDN vendors, including commercial CDN providers (those caching content in their own or partnering networks of servers), telco CDN providers (telecommunications operators using their transit and server infrastructure), and value-adding resellers. While each vendor defines its portfolio differently, this study classifies the range of services into three proximate segments: delivery, edge, and security.

CDN providers are no longer just single-service vendors; they are evolving into multifaceted hybrid businesses serving a variety of industries. The initial goal of the CDN environment was to accelerate the delivery of static content. However, over the last 10 years, vendors have expanded their portfolios with complementary and parallel offerings. The functional use cases increasingly demand resources and features from each segment, blending all three at the same time. CDN vendors are transitioning into edge platform providers, and while this brings them into the territory of major cloud providers and other specialized service providers, they differentiate themselves by accelerating content and application performance with a large and distributed network of points of presence and reaching into the networks of global communication service providers (CSPs).

The recent growth in the CDN market is mainly attributable to rising consumer demand for content (especially video), heightened expectations for performance, and a broadened perspective of what is important for reliable service. The CDN space will see steady revenue growth with increasing traffic and rising performance expectations, although each segment will be contributing at differing degrees and with differing dynamics.

The study examines the key factors driving and restraining the growth of this market, provides revenue forecasts and revenue share analyses, delineates the competitive environment, and concludes by identifying the growth opportunities emerging from the developments of this space that market players can leverage.

Author: Nick Baugh