Content Delivery Networks

5Service Velocity

(An earlier version of this chapter was published in www.StreamingMedia.com in 2016 ¹ )

Interestingly the term “service velocity” appears as far back as 2007 in the context of networks and telecoms, with citations of the term referenced from some academic papers (which I have been unable to find) within the cable industry’s patents of early 2008.

The term’s rapid emergence from that point can be seen on Google Trends.²

However, it is only within the past few years that I have been aware of the term with relevance to service deployment for streaming media. There is a reason for this, and I will explain both the cause and the effect below. Indeed service velocity is yet another string for the bow of my broader arguments about how we should anticipate significant macro change in the industry over the next two to five years. It also, from first‐hand experience, underpins where my own company is finding a strong growth of interest and activities at the moment.

Let me first explain the service velocity concept by quoting a great brief from 2012 where Carl Weinschenk, senior editor of BTReport, gave a good definition³:

Service velocity, as the name aptly implies, is the set of skills and infrastructure that enables service providers to offer the spectrum of sales, deployment, repair, upgrading and other requisite capabilities in a speedy manner.

The idea is fairly straightforward: Operators who anticipate where business will come from will be able to offer it more ...