US content delivery services
revenues will grow about 20%, in 2003, from the estimated level of $186
million in 2002, according to In-Stat/MDR. The
high-tech market research firm reports that growth will come from both
existing customers expanding their use of content delivery services, and
from new customers subscribing to these services. “Content delivery
services are one of the key forces shaping the next-generation Internet
and corporate Intranets,” says Henry Goldberg, a Senior Analyst with
In-Stat/MDR. “They improve the speed of Web site delivery, provide
high-quality video/audio streaming, rapidly download files, and are
beginning to extend into distributed computing of Web-based
applications.”
Recently, In-Stat/MDR conducted a survey of 485 end-user organizations
on the adoption of content delivery services or in-house CDNs (where
organizations purchase and manage a CDN themselves). About 23% currently
use a content delivery itself (either by itself or as a hybrid solution
with an in-house CDN), but almost twice as many currently use an
in-house CDN. According to Goldberg, “Converting in-house CDN users to
outsourced content delivery services should be a key goal of content
delivery service providers, because this would greatly increase the
market for these services”