Digital Island Expands Streaming Media Service

Brandweek, July 17, 2000 by Karl Greenberg

Digital Island, a global Internet distribution network looking to expand its streaming media business, has tapped FastForward Networks, a webcast technology company, to provide the global platform for its Footprint streaming content delivery service.

FastForward will install its technology into Digital Island's high-capacity network for global streaming of audio and video--its Global c-Business Delivery Network. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Two weeks ago, Digital Island, which has regional data centers in New York, San Jose, Calif., Honolulu, Hong Kong, London and Tokyo, and 1200 servers in 25 countries, announced a strategic relationship with Microsoft, Compaq and Intel. The companies will work to build a global streaming network capable of 7.5 million simultaneous media streams.

The scope of this streaming network is roughly comparable to a prime-time TV program's reach, according to Pat Greer, director of content delivery for Digital Island.

Abhay Perekh, president of the San Francisco-based FastForward, said that, among other things, its technology will help "lubricate" Digital Island's multi-casting of Internet streams. He said the company's products also insure uniform quality of streams and provides a real-time back end for monitoring audience size, advertising and e-commerce response.

Though multi-casting allows broadcasters to feed a single video or audio stream from a source to hundreds of edge servers near concentrated populations of viewers, Perekh explained that, hitherto, it hasn't been a good option since it meant having to reconfigure hardware, such as routers and switches. "The Internet is not multi-cast enabled," he said, "so currently you have to send a million copies of a webcast event--one copy for each viewer." That, he said, makes for an unstable and unreliable broadcast (ergo last year's Victoria's Secret fiasco).

"What FastForward does for our network is make the quality of the stream going out to our 'edge' delivery servers more reliable," said Greer. "We've got hundreds of machines around the world, and we've got to get the stream from the origin to the edge servers so they can be served effectively. FastForward does that."

FastForward will also provide broadcast management back-end technology that allows real-time measurement of audience statistics and quality of streams that allows for "ad-hoc" ad insertion, virtual branding, and real-time marketing opportunities during live webcasts.

According to New York-based Jupiter Communications, the global market for streaming-media content delivery will grow from $78 million in 2000 to $2.5 billion by 2004.