Fastly Introduces Two Solutions to Answer the Demand for Quality
Online consumption of both video on demand and live events has grown dramatically over the past few years — but 2020 kicked that consumption into overdrive. Year over year, live streaming is up a whopping 99% in 2020, and the number of people streaming video-on-demand is projected to be up by nearly 50 million at the end of this year — and those trends are expected to continue.
With two new solutions, we’re addressing this accelerated streaming-at-scale challenge head on — helping companies power large scale events with low latency and powerful features. Let’s dive into what they entail.
Low-latency, large-scale live events
For companies streaming live events — sport matches, debates, performances, and more — Live Event Services helps deliver large-scale, low-latency streams and provides insights into your live streaming performance. Real-time visibility gives you the ability to troubleshoot immediately and reduce trips to the origin.
Other features, customized for live events and aimed at increasing resiliency and capacity, include:
Real-time observability means end-to-end visibility of every request and response (even if you’re using a multi-CDN strategy), so you can head off any issues before they impact your delivery — all to ensure a quality live experience for your viewers.
Live Event Monitoring Services gives you the expertise of Fastly’s own Mission Control team. With insight into what’s happening around the global internet, they can identify issues specific to your traffic or the internet as a whole.
Media Shield allows you to optimize multi-CDN deployments and regain observability while reducing the total cost of ownership of video streaming. Our platform features like origin shielding and request collapsing significantly reduce your origin traffic and boosts performance. Plus, with Origin Insights, real-time analytics give engineers visibility into the egress data coming from their origin infrastructure to the Fastly Edge Cloud.
Capacity reservations make it easier to reserve bandwidth for large events, removing the guesswork for the day of.
Powerful features for quality user experiences
Video on demand saw huge gains in March 2020, with some subscription services growing 40% in that month alone, year over year. This kind of growth — that was forecasted to happen over the course of years — is now a challenge video engineers need to face today.
We’re no stranger to supporting video on demand, with companies like A&E, Vimeo, and more trusting our services — which are now even more robust with today’s enhancements:
Device detection means video engineers can write VCL code to present the right content for the right device, enhancing the overall quality of the delivery.
VPN/proxy detection enables media companies to detect if their users are using VPNs or proxies to circumvent content protection.
The Fastly on-the-fly packager (OTFP) has many new enhancements now in beta, including new DRM integrations, support for multi-language audio, and additional DASH functionality.
What’s next?
As more media and video companies move into the live and on-demand space, we expect this type of comprehensive offering to be paramount in content delivery strategies. Whether you’re bringing your delivery in house or working with multiple CDNs, the right partner can help you deliver the low-latency, high-quality experience users demand.
