| According to a recent report by Probe Research, Inc., the worldwide
market for content-delivery services is expected to grow from $25 million
in 1999 to as much as $50 billion by 2005. Probe's latest Global Internet
Service Provider Markets (ISPM) bulletin, Content Delivery Networks, attributes
this trend to the failure of connection capacity and router speeds to keep
pace with the increase in network backbone traffic, due to a continuously
expanding user population.
Liz McPhillips, Probe's network software analyst and author of this
latest ISPM bulletin, said: "Content-delivery networks have emerged to
alleviate the overload on parts of the network. Content-delivery networks
are essentially a geographically distributed system of intelligent storage
devices located at the edge of the network, which are used to allow quick
download of specific content from any location. The content-distribution
network pre-populates its servers rather than pulling content when it is
first requested. This way the content is always available locally and quickly
to the user."
McPhillips believes that demand for content-delivery networks will continuously
and substantially increase as more companies use the Internet to sell products
and services. "As the world edges toward e-commerce on a large scale, businesses
cannot afford to lose customers and transactions as a result of their Web
pages not downloading in a satisfactory time period," she said. "The average
Internet user gets bored waiting if a page has not loaded up in about 6
to 7 seconds, and tries another site. The threshold believed to be representative
of human scanning speeds is less than 1 second. Hence, the need to have
information downloaded quickly is important to those whose revenues depend
in some way on users seeing it."
The bulletin also reports that Web-hosting companies will become major
players in this area, making up approximately 65 percent of the market
within the next 5 years.
This most recent Internet Service Provider Markets bulletin (released
separately for the global and U.S. markets) examines the market for content-delivery
networks. It also explores the technology of content-delivery networks,
including system components, approaches, and comparisons of different types.
Challenges and threats to emerging content-distribution companies are also
discussed. A large portion of the bulletin analyzes the business issues
of this market in terms of growth drivers, competition, business models,
and market forecasts.
Source: Probe Research, Inc., Cedar Knolls, NJ, 973/285-1500; http://www.proberesearch.com. |
