Light Reading Mobile – Telecom News, Analysis, Events, and Research
Startup Spotlight  

EdgeCast Networks Inc.

August 31, 2007 |

COMPANY: EdgeCast Networks Inc.

MARKET SEGMENT: Content delivery networks

LOCATION: Los Angeles

HEADCOUNT: Less than 50

FORMED: 2006

FINANCING: The company is self-financed with the exception of a "small strategic funding round raised from individual investors" that included executives at Lions Gate Entertainment, Viacom Inc., and CinemaNow.

WHAT IT DOES: Calling itself "the JetBlue of CDNs," EdgeCast focuses on the delivery of video and rich media in a way that it claims is more customer friendly than its competition. The company touts its site acceleration, reporting tools, and a flexible pricing model for bandwidth costs as key advantages in competing with other content delivery players.

EdgeCast doesn't lock customers into one- or two-year contracts. The company's pricing model makes the cost of transit a variable factor, so that as bandwidth costs go down, so does pricing for the customer.

CUSTOMERS: Imax, March Entertainment, and Ampp Media

PARTNERSHIPS: EdgeCast has strategic partnerships with Microsoft Corp. and Adobe Systems Inc. for streaming video and says other partnerships are in the works.

COMPETITORS: Akamai Technologies Inc., Limelight Networks Inc., Mirror Image Internet Inc., Internap Network Services Corp., Level 3 Communications Inc., CacheLogic Ltd., and about a half dozen other companies that have announced their presence in the content delivery market during the past week.

MANAGEMENT:

  • Alex Kazerani, CEO – Prior to founding EdgeCast, Kazerani was founder and CEO of KnowledgeBase, a provider of hosted and on-site knowledge management software that was purchased by CRM player Talisma Corp. in 2005. Prior to that, he started Web hosting and application services provider HostPro, which was bought by Micron Electronics in 1999.
  • James Segil, President – Prior to founding EdgeCast, Segil was VP of business development for Talisma as a result of that company's acquisition of KnowledgeBase, where he had served president & COO. Before that, Segil led Web-hosting company Virtualis Systems through startup, acquisition, and integration with the hosting division of Alegiance Telecom (Nasdaq: ALGX), where he became COO.
  • Phil Goldsmith, COO – Prior to founding EdgeCast, Goldsmith was director of sales for Talisma as a result of the acquisition of - you guessed it! - KnowledgeBase, where he was VP of worldwide sales and support. Before that, Phil led the sales organization at HostPro.
  • Jay Sakata, CTO - Sakata missed out on being part of the KnowledgeBase team, because he was too busy serving as the founder and chief architect at IP3 Networks, where he built the entire VBN router and technology and filed several patents. Before IP3, he served as chief network architect for iWay Broadband, an in-building broadband deployment ISP based in San Diego. But Sakata was part of the HostPro technology team, where he served as network architect for HostPro Los Angeles.
  • Lior Elazary, Chief Architect – Elazary is responsible for architecting the EdgeCast System. Before that, he helped found both KnowledgeBase and HostPro, where he was in charge of research and development.

    WHAT TO WATCH: It's clear that major media players and film studios are EdgeCast's target customers. The question is whether or not the company can demonstrate the scale necessary to compete against larger players such as Akamai or Limelight.

    RECENT NEWS: Not much to report yet, except that the company came out of semi-stealth mode in August. (See Edgecast Launches CDN.)

    — Ryan Lawler, Reporter, Light Reading



    • Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

    Single tags

    These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

    <br> Defines a single line break

    <hr> Defines a horizontal line

    Matching tags

    These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

    <a> Defines an anchor

    <b> Defines bold text

    <big> Defines big text

    <blockquote> Defines a long quotation

    <caption> Defines a table caption

    <cite> Defines a citation

    <code> Defines computer code text

    <em> Defines emphasized text

    <fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

    <h1> This is heading 1

    <h2> This is heading 2

    <h3> This is heading 3

    <h4> This is heading 4

    <h5> This is heading 5

    <h6> This is heading 6

    <i> Defines italic text

    <p> Defines a paragraph

    <pre> Defines preformatted text

    <q> Defines a short quotation

    <samp> Defines sample computer code text

    <small> Defines small text

    <span> Defines a section in a document

    <s> Defines strikethrough text

    <strike> Defines strikethrough text

    <strong> Defines strong text

    <sub> Defines subscripted text

    <sup> Defines superscripted text

    <u> Defines underlined text

    Network Computing encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Network Computing moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Network Computing further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

     
    Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
     
    Related Content
    Most Popular
    Read
    White Papers SPONSORED CONTENT
    Featured
    Resource Library SPONSORED CONTENT