Eric Schumacher Rasmussen, VP & Editor-in-Chief of Streaming Media welcomes attendees to Content Delivery Summit 2021 and introduces this year's program chairman, Dom Robinson. Dom will set out the overall narrative for the day's discussions along with co-hosts Tim Siglin and Mark de Jong.

In this special keynote presentation, Streaming Media's Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen and Tim Siglin will be joined by Arash Marzban, SVP of Product from our research partner StackPath to present the findings of original research into the the latest trends in content delivery and edge compute, followed by a provocative discussion about the results and a question-and-answer session with our audience.

This session follows on the keynote and will focus on the real world availability of these fundamental infrastructure services that underpin all CDN operations, and the complexities to consider when deploying POPs around the world.

A discussion about carrier connectivity and IP network availability for CDN services around the US and the Global Market as a whole. This session will explore the current transit and peering market around the world, and look at optimal paths for varying scales of CDN deployment - including in-housing and out-sourcing bandwidth services.

As is tradition now in the Content Delivery Summit, we always take a pause to think about ‘Greening of Streaming!’ - In this Editors Pick ‘Fireside Chat', we have an informal discussion with Akamai’s sustainability thought leader - looking at the challenges they have overcome as the demand for traffic increases demands for power and infrastructure.

Silicon is a key element of any distributed compute strategy. In the CDN market, the option to offload ‘heavy maths’ to GPUs and FPGA is central to achieving low power requirements, and higher density. This panel will explore the options that are emerging and the applications that they can address in the CDN from video encoding to edge AI and VR.

Telcos are ever diversifying their video service offerings to consumers with constant innovation in the access networks. Cable is leveraging DOCSIS and Multicast ABR, 5G is gradually taking off and even the LEO satellite markets are all driving some significant strides in the innovation in the ISP and end user connectivity layer. We talk to several sector experts about these emerging technologies, what they are and how they work, and how they will drive new opportunities to work with, or ‘be’ the CDN to provide the last mile delivery to the consumer.

For a decade Dave Temkin led the CDN that built Netflix into the behemoth that it is today. Recently, he stepped back from that role, and so we thought it was a good moment to catch up in a fireside chat mode, and ask him to reflect on that experience, and to share some sage advice for those facing a similar challenge today.

Now that we have looked at CDN underpinnings and infrastructure, we move up the stack to look at the applied CDN as it is today.Our regular afternoon catchupwith the SVA activities provides a regular insight into where the industry is collaborating on engineering challenges, and focuses on how content publishers and CDNs can work together to ensure the best possible service delivery to the end consumer.

In this session, Jason Thibeault will introduce the SVA activities and focus on the challenges facing CDNs, and collaborative working group projects that the SVA are catalysing to help the industry as a whole deal with optimising video delivery online.

Following on from his Keynote, JT has invited some key participants from the CDN-related SVA activities to help give some business context about why these innovations are important to them, and builds on the details in JT’s keynote to explain not just ‘what’ the SVA projects are doing, but to also help the audience understand why.

In this regular feature session at the heart of Content Delivery Summit, we talk to some of the largest Global CDNs about their strategies, successes and challenges in meeting the ever growing demand for high quality video. This is always one of the most ‘holistic’ CDN sessions of the day, and the video emphasis is always very pertinent to our co-located Streaming Media East audience too!

Disney+ has faced tremendous growth in a short space of time, reaching nearly 100M subscribers in little over a year. Meeting that demand, from the technical aspect, has been a considerable, and exciting challenge.

For this fireside chat we have invited some of the key players who have had responsibility for that Content Delivery technology strategy for an informal look at some of the key approaches they have taken.

Today’s CDN infrastructure is coordinated and serviced by a complex distributed computing environment. This session will explore different ways that the orchestration and operation of these environments can be achieved.

Multi-CDN has been a ‘thing’ for a number of years now. Latency is also a hot buzzword, and ‘buffering’ remains the enemy of all of us (particularly our kids)! We talk to a group of experts who are focussed specifically on ensuring that Publishers, CDNs and telcos can provide the best quality of service to the consumer.

In this fireside chat, we hear from operators that are leveraging expertise in running at-scale distributed compute networks and edge-compute to facilitate content delivery. As edge computing evolves and emerges as one of the leading "next- generation" services in demand today, these sessions are a must-attend for those who want to leverage their expertise in CDN compute and network operations to broaden their service offerings.

The Content Delivery Summit chair and moderators join for a recap of the day's key takeaways and analysis of the top opportunities and challenges facing the content delivery space.  At the end of the panel, we'll transition to an open discussion and take questions from the floor to ensure that all delegates have a chance to raise any topics of interest. Virtual networking among attendees will also be encouraged.