Google has announced the launch of its Media Cloud Delivery Network (CDN) at the 2022 NAB Show Streaming Summit.
The digital media and entertainment industry continues to experience rapid growth and putting strain on existing infrastructure as audiences migrate to online experiences and content providers seek to deliver new and innovative content.
Media CDN will enable media and entertainment customers to efficiently deliver streaming experiences to viewers anywhere in the world.
Media CDN will enable media and entertainment customers to efficiently and intelligently deliver streaming experiences to viewers anywhere in the world. The same infrastructure that Google has built over the last decade to serve YouTube content to over 2 billion users is now being leveraged to deliver media at scale to Google Cloud customers.
Its foundational advantage is the Google network, which has decades of resources to build capacity and reach in over 200 countries and more than 1,300 cities around the world.
Modern video applications are sensitive to fluctuations in latency, so getting content closer to users enables higher bitrates and reduces rebuffers, resulting in a superior experience for the end user. Media CDN builds on the success of the existing Cloud CDN portfolio for web and API acceleration and complements it by enabling delivery of immersive media experiences.
Media CDN also achieves industry-leading offload rates. With multiple tiers of caching, we minimise calls to origin — even for infrequently accessed content. This alleviates performance or capacity stress in the content origin and saves costs. These features are built into the product and seamlessly support customer content hosted on Google Cloud, on-premises, or on a third-party cloud.
John Hogan, chief technology officer, Stan, said: “We are excited to leverage Media CDN to continue to deliver an exceptional streaming experience for Stan users across Australia. With Google’s massive network, and a deep reach into the ISPs, we are able to deliver the highest quality video for our users, no matter where they are.”
Rutong Li, chief technology officer, U-NEXT, said: “Our mission at U-NEXT is to deliver the highest quality and most entertaining content to our users. Google Cloud’s Media CDN helps us efficiently scale our infrastructure, which is challenging with a vast library of content. Media CDN offloaded 98.3% of requests from our origin server while delivering consistent great quality.”
Media CDN offers additional capabilities to enable this transformation – Ad insertion, ecosystem integrations and platform extensibility, and powerful AI/ML analytics for interactive experiences.
Streaming providers can improve monetisation through integrated ad serving via the Video Stitcher API, which allows manipulation of video content to dynamically insert ads.
Through extensible ecosystem integrations, Media CDN connects customers to key capabilities to simplify their operations. With built-in AI/ML that will give viewers more control over how they see, experience, and even interact with content.
Media CDN was built by developers, for developers, with automation and observability built in, giving media providers the speed and flexibility they need to integrate delivery provisioning and management into their content release processes.
It offers comprehensive APIs and automation tools such as Terraform. Detailed, pre-aggregated metrics and playback tracing make it easy to diagnose performance across the entire infrastructure stack.
Real-time visibility is provided via Google Cloud’s operations suite, and integrates with tools that developers already use such as Grafana and ElasticSearch.
Ghassan Abdo, research vice president, WW Telecom, Virtualisation and CDN, IDC, said: “Leveraging the same infrastructure as YouTube, Google Cloud’s Media CDN combines geographic reach, API-first architecture and integration with the Cloud operations suite.
“This is a transformative move that is aligned with the future of the CDN industry,” he added.
Juan Martin, founder and CTO, Firstlight Media, said: “Viewers around the world are demanding best-in-class video quality and performance across modes of consumption.
“A video-first delivery network can be a game changer in this space. We’re excited to partner with Google Cloud and to leverage Media CDN to enable premium video experiences and customer engagements,” he added.