content delivery networks

Google’s YouTube automated captioning: Making video searchable

Google has launched an automated captioning system for some of its partner channels, based on speech recognition algorithms. The move is aimed at making content more searchable and supporting access for the hearing-impaired, but it also could be the start of a system to textually index a lot of content to create the metadata need to categorize and cross-link complex video libraries.

Enterprises have wanted video indexing for some time and MPEG4 provides a metadata standard to store the information but there’s still the question of how it could be collected. Google may now have the answer, and if so there could be a new enterprise service coming out of the technology since the enterprise users list captioning and cross-linking as a major requirement for their own content and private content delivery networks (CDNs).

Qwest to go for delivery conduit, not content broker

Qwest suggested during its second-quarter earnings call that the company would be pursuing a video strategy that would make it less a content broker and more a delivery conduit. Just what the technology might be like is still up in the air.

We’re hearing that there are two approaches being considered. One would rely on a partnership with a satellite player (Qwest has a DirecTV deal now) for broadcast channels and use the Qwest network for video on demand (VoD). The other would be a pure play on OTT-like video based on Qwest CDN assets and local priority content distribution to the access network. We don’t think these two options are very far apart, and thus we believe something CDN-ish is going to happen at Qwest.

Velocix purchase positions Alcatel-Lucent in CDN market

The growing interest of telcos in content delivery networks (CDNs) is the driver behind the acquisition of CDN specialist Velocix by Alcatel-Lucent. We’ve noted both here and in our Netwatcher newsletter that operators like CDNs because it gives them a paying role in over-the-top content distribution, as well as a means of providing their own video-on-demand content services.

Obviously what’s interesting to carriers is interesting to carrier-focused equipment vendors. Velocix has been popular with carriers; the company has deep packet inspection (DPI) and content node assets that Alcatel-Lucent can use in gaining traction in the emerging CDN deals, which in turn may be critical to the emerging content plans of the carriers.

From a strategic perspective, Alcatel-Lucent is also interested in projects like CDNs because they represent both equipment and service revenue opportunities, and they’re likely early examples of the growing trend toward operators letting integration/management contracts for new service-driven infrastructure projects.

Net neutrality breakdown?

There are strong indications that the “net neutrality” coalition of portal giants is breaking down. Microsoft and Yahoo have withdrawn from a cooperative agreement to support net neutrality and Google has been in discussion with access providers to come to some deal on “fast lane” content expediting for a fee.

The truth is that there has always been a level of dialog on this issue, and the portal players are now realizing that they need an alliance with the telcos. We believe this is linked to the Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco announcements on supporting the “ecosystem” of web developers and telco service features that were made last week.

We also believe this might be the signal of a major shift in Internet direction. The likely cause is the increased interest by access providers in content delivery networks (CDNs) to substitute caching for core bandwidth and earn money from the substitution. Lack of settlement has been the bane of the Internet for a decade.

Verizon is latest tier 1 to launch CDN

Verizon will be launching its own CDN for its FiOS network and other network properties, building it based on equipment from Velocix. The move is the latest in a round of CDN and cloud computing announcements by Tier One carriers, and we believe that most Tier Ones will be launching both these services in 2009 or 2010. One reason is that the operators are likely to be major consumers of both types of services as their own offerings to customers evolve, and another is the fact that the massive data center deployments and storage farms associated with video provide significant economies of scale in IT that can be leveraged by both CDNs and cloud computing. Clearly this does not bode well for current players in the space.