Last night I was over at the GridNetworks holiday party held at the Big Picture just below El Gaucho. Grid CEO Jeff Payne and I go all the way back to the mid 90’s in the industry and it was great to see several old friends from the “early days” such as Tim Gelinas…former CTO from Spry. Also present was many of the REALLY early RealNetworks folks (Jon Shay, Chris Wright, Tony Taylor and many, many others. Both Suj Patel from Isilon and I are advisors at Grid and it was good to talk with him briefly. He couldn’t say much due to his pending IPO but he was clearly in a good mood. The always likable Jon Staenburg was present and a few other members of the Seattle investment contingent.
Grid showed some pretty incredible demos and even us former Real folk were surprised that the high quality audio and video didn’t fall out of synch over time. Yet, that’s exactly what this night was about. Next generation video experiences are the new hot topic and we’ll be seeing many players going for gold in this arena. Skype co-founders are even in on the game with their new Venice Project as is Mark Cuban’s RedSwoosh. Octoshape is very unknown in the US but quickly building a name in Europe. Would the Skype guys, with their billions in pocket, even bother with this if they didn’t think the opportunity weren’t big enough? Think about it.
The challenge is simple enough. Deliver DVD quality experiences into your home over the internet.
Existing players like Akamai will be out to prove their existing edge infrastructure is up to the task.
More likely, grid systems like…umm…GridNetworks…will provide a very big piece of the puzzle.
Just where is the “edge” of the network anyway? Is it one of Akamai’s thousands of caching servers?
Or is it your own home?
Jeff Payne argues we’re all the edge.
In time, I think he’s right.
