1. Executive Summary
Online video files are among the largest pieces of data that most companies will ever have to deal with, a fact
compounded many times over by the iterations and versions (of different sizes, quality levels, formats, languages, and
more) that video delivery over the Internet demands. Storing these files in-house demands enormous server capacity
which in turn requires real estate, power, and the IT know-how to manage complex private media servers and data
centers. The emergence of high-speed broadband connectivity and remote data centers has given media and video
companies a new way to store rich content while ensuring availability, redundancy, and performance.
Online Cloud Storage
The Case for Our Business
The Challenge
Internet video has grown from a novelty to one of the
primary methods of online engagement. Companies
around the world are creating more and more video
content, and this explosion in options for online video
consumption has driven audiences to expect fast, high-
quality content every time. In many cases this calls for
adaptive bitrate streams that, depending on available
resources and bandwidth, can deliver up to 1080p video
quality. This means that the video creators must have
their files available in a number of bitrate renditions (eight
or more), streaming formats (Adobe’s HTTP Dynamic
Streaming, Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming, etc.), and more.
All of this requires a huge amount of media storage
capacity, which means an expensive and complex hardware
investment for companies that keep storage for web video
and content in-house.
The Opportunity
The emergence of reliable,high-quality broadband
Internet and cloud providers with huge data centers is
changing the way media companies approach online
video file storage. Cloud storage with multi-geographic
replication capabilities ensures greater resiliency and
the best media delivery performance. Cloud storage is
scalable and can accommodate growth without spiraling
capital expenses, which is essential given the viral nature
of Internet publicity. As file sizes are only set to grow,
particularly with the introduction of 4K/UHD, your company
will have more to gain from switching to cloud media
storage than ever before.
The Solutions
As online media storage demands grow to match the pace
of audience expectations and overall video consumption,
your business needs to develop a web media storage
strategy. A geographically-distributed cloud storage
network can ensure that you always have the capacity
you need without expensive and complex hardware
solutions. Dynamic routing should then allow your users
to fetch content from whichever servers provide them
with the best performance, thereby keeping latency
and congestion to a minimum. Look for a cloud storage
provider that integrates well with your overall media
workflow, from storage to transcoding and packaging to
delivery. By automating the entire process within the cloud
you can minimize maintenance time and focus on creating
great content and ensuring great performance.
4G
HD
Cisco estimates that online video will make up
79%
of consumer
Internet traffic
by 2018.
Akamai Media Content Delivery Services
Akamai Media Content Delivery services provide high-performance online media delivery to address the broad variety of
network types - fixed or mobile, at varying connection speeds. Built on the Akamai Intelligent Platform™, Akamai’s Media
Delivery solution provides superior scalability, reliability, availability and reach.

2. Executive Summary
More than ever, your company’s relationship to your customers and their satisfaction depends on the quality of your online
streaming media. Today, even a single delay or buffering issue in your site’s streaming media can endanger audience
engagement and, as a result, your overall brand. A feature this essential requires a media delivery service that can provide
flawless and high-quality live, as well as on-demand streaming. Protection of your monetized content is an equally important
consideration: as more and more streaming media is delivered online, the appropriate protections must be in place in order
to shield your company’s valuable content from theft.
The Challenge
If the cloud has taken a central role as your company’s
platform of choice for monetized media streaming, your
IT department must contend with providing high-quality
and secured streaming media to a myriad of devices
worldwide. There is a direct cause-and-effect relationship
between inferior online media streaming and customer
satisfaction, and so your company requires an online
media delivery solution that will guarantee that your
online content will rapidly and efficiently reach your
consumers all over the globe and protect your content
from damaging hacks that could interrupt streaming,
regardless of the type of device your consumers are using
or their network’s conditions.
The Opportunity
Your company’s online content will directly benefit
from optimized delivery services that utilize the latest
technology and will push your streaming media through
a widely-distributed, global network of servers. A wide
server network enables consistent delivery of your content
to a global customer base, while services such as Video on
Demand (VoD) Transcoding simplify your media delivery
workflow. Additional security options such as Digital
Rights Management (DRM) and products like SecureHD
provide encryption, business-logic, and license-delivery to
protect the value of both on-demand and live streaming
content. With these features, your company can protect
its online content from unauthorized viewers and support
your subscription-based business models, as well as
reduce the types of disruptions to your online media
that lead to user abandonment.
Media Services for Live and On-Demand
The Case for Our Business
The Solutions
By leveraging the largest, geographically-distributed
network available worldwide with the most foolproof
streaming technology on the market, your business can
count on the reliable and seamless delivery of both Live
and On-Demand streaming content. Transferring media
content and dynamically routing multiple copies to servers
that are located closest to your end users ensures that
On-Demand streaming is available to your customers at
their whim, and allows Live streams to avoid the packet
loss responsible for poor playback quality. Incorporating
Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) streaming capabilities into your
services ensures that your streaming content can adapt
instantly to varying network performance conditions and
end user devices. SecureHD and DRM are the keys to
protecting your business’ monetized streaming content
and downloads. By combining these cloud-based services
into your business’s infrastructure, you can count on quality
online content output and increased customer engagement
that will keep your business competitive in today’s market.
Akamai Media Content Delivery Services
Akamai Media Content Delivery services provide high-performance online media delivery to address the broad variety of
network types - fixed or mobile, at varying connection speeds. Built on the Akamai Intelligent Platform™, Akamai’s Media
Delivery solution provides superior scalability, reliability, availability and reach.
Media & Entertainment companies reported that their video
consumption grew 25%-75%,
while their spending was cut by
10%-20%
since adopting Akamai.
200%
video consumption
has grown
by more than

3. Executive Summary
After going through the process of creating media content, it’s vital that your company considers the manner in which
your videos make it to their audience. Simply posting a video and expecting it to make its way through the Internet from
origin to end-user is insufficient and likely to result in less than acceptable data integrity and performance degradation.
Consequently, a trusted, widely distributed Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a vital partner to companies whose
audiences and livelihoods demand quality media delivery.
Consistent Content Quality
The Case for Our Business
The Challenge
Your audience expects their online media to load instantly
and play at HD (or higher) quality. At the same time, your
company is expected to deliver content that can scale
to changing network conditions and adjust to different
devices without experiencing the common performance
issues that drive viewers away: both expectations are
outpacing your current media delivery solutions. Content
that exists in a single server configuration or cloud data
center is susceptible to high latency and packet loss when
it’s too far from your end users. Sudden traffic influxes can
also strain bandwidth capacity, especially during large or
viral events (and this year’s peak traffic spike may well be
next year’s average streaming bitrate). Without widely
distributed storage and optimized delivery solutions,
network lags, malicious attacks, and hardware outages
can irreparably damage your audience engagement,
and your brand.
The Opportunity
A widely distributed CDN that stores content as close
to end-users and your audience as possible – even
from within the user’s own ISP – can deliver dramatic
improvements to your audience’s viewing experience.
As a distributed network within the larger Internet,
CDNs can also take advantage of content caching and
predictive analytics techniques to accelerate the rate at
which content is delivered from servers to device and
back again. These CDN media delivery solutions use
their huge network of servers to scale rapidly and handle
any amount of traffic without performance degradation.
Their intelligent routing techniques can adjust delivery
on the fly to take advantage of available servers and the
least-congested routes to your audience, opening your
company up to the possibility of offering formats all the
way up to bleeding edge 4K/UHD.
Akamai Media Content Delivery Services
Akamai Media Content Delivery services provide high-performance online media delivery to address the broad variety of
network types - fixed or mobile, at varying connection speeds. Built on the Akamai Intelligent Platform™, Akamai’s Media
Delivery solution provides superior scalability, reliability, availability and reach.
A 2 second delay is enough for viewers
to begin to abandon the session; for every
additional second of delay approximately
6% of your audience exits
Re-buffering — when the video stream must pause
to load more content — is equally disruptive and for
every percent of a video’s duration in which it occurs,
viewers will watch 5% less of the video.
Visitors are 37% more likely to return to a site within the first day
if they have a positive experience with the site’s online video content.
The Solutions
The first step to ensuring consistent content quality is
getting your files closer to their audience. Take advantage
of a CDN to get your media into servers widely distributed
near your end-users to tackle congestion and latency issues
head on. You’ll need to make sure that your chosen media
delivery partner has the capability to dynamically route your
media based on real-time analysis of network conditions
in order to lower buffering time and increase quality,
and ascertain that they have the industry expertise and
technical resources to keep up with rapid growth.

4. Executive Summary
Understanding your audience is one of the keys to a successful media product, and if monitored properly, the Internet
provides valuable insight into how, where, and even why your audience is connecting. Media analytics solutions and tools
from online content delivery providers keep companies informed on audience engagement and expectations regarding
their content as well as on the cold, hard facts of the playback experience itself.
Video Analytics
The Case for Our Business
The Challenge
Online video is quickly becoming one of the most
important ways in which people interact with and
understand the Internet. Companies everywhere are
trying to respond to this strong demand in an evolving
digital landscape, from viral sensations to internal
enterprise training videos. With such a plethora of options
for viewing and consuming media available online,
audiences will not settle for anything less than instant,
high quality video. As data must typically travel through
a number of networks from origin to end-user, it can be
difficult for companies to mine through the huge amounts
of data that they receive and understand exactly how
to deliver the highest quality web viewing experiences.
Without this knowledge, it can be difficult to find out what
aspects of your online videos are drawing views, and which
aspects are keeping them away
The Opportunity
The right Internet delivery partner can provide granular
feedback metrics that no other medium can match.
Detailed web media analytics let you take advantage of
key data points beyond the sheer size of your audience
– the devices your audience uses, the bitrates associated
with their requests, how long it took for your media to
begin playing, and more – to empower your technical
and creative teams to understand and improve the entire
experience from an audience member’s standpoint.
The Solutions
The most clever and exciting online videos in the cloud
won’t engage your audience if they’re driven by a subpar
media delivery solution. Finding the right web media
delivery solution is a vital task for any company delivering
video over the Internet, but understanding exactly what
needs improving is equally as vital. Make sure that you
consider all the media analytics tools that different delivery
solutions offer, as the information that they provide will help
your company stay informed and continue to create
engaging, successful Internet video content.
Enterprises are predicted to more than triple their
spending on web video to $35.6 billion by 2018.
In March 187.8 million
Americans watched 46.6 billion
online videos.
The 2014 FIFA World Cup set live
streaming traffic records, approaching
7 trillion bits per second
Akamai Media Content Delivery Services
Akamai Media Content Delivery services provide high-performance online media delivery to address the broad variety of
network types - fixed or mobile, at varying connection speeds. Built on the Akamai Intelligent Platform™, Akamai’s Media
Delivery solution provides superior scalability, reliability, availability and reach.