How CDN startup Cotendo is taking on Akamai

In addition to value-adds like SSL, off-site delivery and real-time analytics, Cotendo has become the only company besides Akamai to offer dynamic site acceleration (DSA), though presumably at a lower price. DSA involves improving the performance of objects that can’t be cached because they’re constantly changing (e.g., news sites like TechCrunch and Seeking Alpha). Because these objects can’t be cached, their servers of origin are directly bombarded with requests, which can overwhelm the servers.

“We keep the session open between the first mile and the last mile,” Zehavi said. “So we don’t need to process every request between the last mile and the first mile. We keep the connection open.”

Cotendo also offers what it calls a CDN Balancer, a tool that customers can use to either manually or automatically adjust tradeoffs between cost and performance in different areas – ensuring the best performance for the best monetized content, for example, and spending less where performance is less important. The Balancer also gels well with Cotendo’s humbler approach to carve out a niche in the CDN space rather than dominate it because the Balancer allows customers to use Cotendo’s CDN in concert with other CDNs (a likely scenario since customers may want a separate CDN for their video needs). But Cotendo also plans to use it to gain share, as it will allow customers to compare its performance with that of incumbent CDNs.

Cotendo plans to launch two more value-adds later this year that will fulfill the goals of differentiation and customer stickiness.

Right now the company is targeting business customers but not service providers such as Global Crossing. “Maybe next year,” Zehavi said.