Kontiki, the P2P content distribution company was purchased by VeriSign last year. Earlier this month I caught up with Jeff Richards, who runs the business as head of the digital distribution unit at VeriSign in Mountainview.
Jeff says that his company's "peer-assisted" technology can save content producers from 30 - 40 percent in costs -- and "even more."
Whether VeriSign's "peer-assisted" platform will take business away of the established content delivery networks (CDN) such as Akamai and Limelight Networks, remains to be seen. But, it appears that there is bit of a price war going on as Om Malik wrote a few days ago in GigaOM.
For an in-dept look into the CDN business, read this piece by Dan Rayburn.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
-- Andy Plesser
Grab the embed code of this interview with Jeff.
Update: 8/13 As we reported last week, VeriSign powers the distribution of the new BBC iPlayer. Seems the the new player getting a lot of use and is putting substantial bandwidth demands on ISP's in the U.K, according to today's FT. I assume that load will improve once more uses are using the P2P protocol. But as GigaOM says today, the ISP's in the U.K. and around the globe need to expand capacity. Over at NewTeeVee, Jackson West wonders if the ISP's in the U.S. are ready for Joost.
Jeff Richards
Kontiki
VeriSign
Online Video
