Contendo's Site Acceleration Technologies Ensure Fast, Secure and Reliable Web Transactions

(Editor’s Note: This article refers to a video interview shot in San Jose as part of TMCnet’s “On the Road” video series. To view the entire library of videos from Road Shows and other industry shows, as well as product demos and interviews in our in-house studio, visit TMCnet Videos home page.)

Like any other market, content delivery world is also experiencing a huge change. It’s no secret that content is being personalized. In addition, user’s expectation about the speed with which they receive content is also changing. As a result, the difference between losing a sale or a customer is literally measured in seconds today. To bring TMCnet.com readers up to date with all the changes taking place in content delivery world, Cotendo’s vice president of operation Michael Kuperman recently met with TMC’s (News - Alert) Rich Tehrani.

To better understand Cotendo and its services, Tehrani asked Kuperman to describe how his company was helping solve problems related to slow content delivery and application delivery.

In reply, Kuperman said that Cotendo provides a suite of services that help you do everything from accelerating the speed of content delivery to how fast it can publish the changes or how fast it can see issues on the network. Generally, he added, we accelerate every bit of the food chain of the content delivery network, starting from DNS to the small object and the large object. And, he added, to the customer it translates into a very cohesive real-time experience.

Next, Tehrani asked how Cotendo was helping customers in markets, primarily enterprise, ad networks and e-commerce, served by the company?

While solutions are different in every one of them, they are all looking to avoid risk, replied Kuperman. For enterprise, risk means availability, ability to roll back, stated Kuperman. “So we provide lot of instrumentation around staging content without exposing production sites,” noted Kuperman. Plus, he continued, it’s about the ability to do application delivery network testing.

For e-commerce, performance is key, which also mean availability. Hence, explained Kuperman, “We provide lot of tools for managing how fast content is delivered and how it is personalized.” It enables making decision at the edge versus back at the origin server. “Thus, translating into a faster user experience,” asserted Kuperman.

Our DNS system also allows you to make marginal improvement in speed, but offers 30-40 percent better experience than competition. “It is 10x or 20x better than origin server,” claimed Kuperman.

As the discussion progressed, Tehrani was interested in knowing different vertical markets Cotendo was addressing. And the international growth it has experienced over the years.

Quickly, Kuperman boasted about the traction his company was seeing in Europe. To address market demands in France and Germany, Cotendo was opening offices in those countries, noted Kuperman. Plus, he added, “We are strong in the U.S and expanding in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.” “For a company that is selling only for last one and a half years, we have very good global coverage,” affirmed Kuperman.

As for verticals, the Cotendo’s VP of operations identified e-commerce and enterprise as sweet spots. The company offers a suite of tools for these customers. Everything, from reports to the way technology is implemented and services play with each other. “When they come to us and give us their business problems, we just don’t give them technology, we actually make the technology solve their business problems, alleged Kuperman.

How do you differentiate yourself in this market that is commoditized, Tehrani asked Kuperman. I think CDN market in general is commoditizing, but the market we are in is not was Kuperman’s reply.  “Our focus is on value added services segment where a customer comes and needs a whole suite of products like DNS, DSA, SSL, and application delivery. This is where all our customers are focused and that is where we are focused,” emphasized Kuperman.

Subsequently, Tehrani expressed interest in knowing the reasons why customers were switching over from other networks to Cotendo.

Swiftly, Kuperman identified performance, feature set, reliability and security as main drivers. “Because we are dealing with a very sensitive market, we have taken extra steps to guarantee to our customers that their content is secure, their certificates are secure and their data is secure. So we have taken steps like external penetration testing, internal penetration testing, and third party automated scanning,” explained Kuperman. He further added, “You don’t have to take my word. In fact, reputable accredited vendors are coming and giving guarantee that we are a safe place to transact.”

Toward the end, Tehrani asked Kuperman to describe what was coming next from Cotendo. In response, Kuperman said the company was moving into very interesting space. Though it is not Cloud computing, it is definitely in that quadrant, stated Kuperman.

“We are going to be taking decisions that were made at the origin today and making them at the edge,” noted Kuperman. That has almost infinite amount of applications for our customers. And will translate into faster web sites with even more reliable speeds and more rich applications, said Kuperman. “It will further differentiate us from our competition,” concluded Kuperman.

For detailed interview click on the link below:

 http://www.tmcnet.com/tmc/videos/default.aspx?vid=2790&title=Michael+Kuperman+of+Cotendos