Randall Crockett of DRM Networks told seminar attendees that trying to handle distribution in-house often leads to frustration, failure and ultimately, lost revenue.
“If you’re busy trying to watch your company and manage your company like you should, the last thing you need to be doing is spending 16 hours a day watching computers churn encoded content,” Crockett said. “The less you do yourself, the quicker you’ll get [your product] online and the sooner you’re going to start making money.”
“Regardless of what business you’re in, you have to rely on your core competencies,” added Stephen Bugbee, vice president of GigaCash. “If it’s traffic or running a program, stick with that and find the right partner to help you with distribution.”
Lou Grecko, national sales director of Limelight Networks, said many companies believe they have distribution under control — until their products start to gain buzz, and they realize too late that they don’t have the bandwidth necessary to keep up with demand.
“You have to plan for success,” Grecko said, adding that outsourcing to a company that specializes in content delivery allows a content provider to leverage the third-party’s advanced equipment, expertise and bandwidth connectivity.
“[By outsourcing], you’re getting the biggest, largest, fattest pipes to give you the most available routes on the Internet; and at the end of the day, that means optimum performance,” Grecko said. “You’re going to be able to take advantage of the shortest paths, less hops, less buffer time and better video quality for the user experience.”
Randall recalled one instance in which a content provider launched a site using a shared server. Thanks to advanced publicity, the site was flooded with traffic. But the heavy traffic did more harm than good because it caused the site to constantly time-out on users. The problem quickly became a hot topic on message boards, effectively killing the site on the same day it launched.
Panelists also addressed the benefits of content delivery networks and digital rights management, as well as pricing issues.
