Scottsdale, Arizona - 09 Dec 2015

As the demand for high-quality, uninterrupted IP video continues to grow, so too does the desire for tools that can ensure this quality. While Quality of Service (QoS) metrics are frequently utilized in video delivery, extrapolating the data to understand the true Quality of Experience (QoE) for a user is a recently favored approach. According to the latest market study by ABI Research, a leader in technology market intelligence, Content Delivery Network (CDN) Balancing and OTT Monitoring, as well as Real User Monitoring (RUM) and Application Performance Monitoring (APM) technologies used to measure video services are growing, with associated revenues estimated to reach US$477 million in 2020.

Read ABI Research’s Video Delivery Analytics: Quality of Experience and Multi-CDN Tools report.

“While the video analytics market as a whole is rather mature, the desire for more granular, user-level data led to a shift in focus from QoS metrics to QoE services and data,” says Eric Abbruzzese, Research Analyst at ABI Research. “The increasing complexity of the IP video and OTT content markets will continue to drive both new and existing providers, operators and content owners to pursue deeper analytics capabilities to fully understand the experience of the end user.”

As delivery demands continue to grow, CDNs have been forced to scale to keep up; even with new scale, one CDN is not enough for large service providers. As 4K and higher bitrates become more commonplace, this trend will affect even small to mid-size operators. The increasing shift toward multi-CDN architectures to better handle this network load goes hand in hand with QoE analytics; these multi-CDN setups are often handled within a single company and sometimes in a singular product. Mobile networks will also factor in; with an estimated 120,000 petabytes of mobile video streaming usage predicted in 2019, the importance of mobile network optimization and QoE will continue to affect a majority of viewers.

“Whether mobile or wireline, operators and service providers are focused on minimizing content start times and buffering delays while maximizing video quality and stream reliability,” says Sam Rosen, Vice President of Consumer at ABI Research. “Real-time, granular, user-level data streams allow the opportunity for a deeper understanding of not only how a network is performing but also how individual users are affected by network idiosyncrasies. Automated load balancing and network optimization platforms will help inform future business decisions, from content licensing to CDN usage.”

These findings are part of ABI Research’s Mobile, Multiscreen, and Cloud Video Delivery Service, which includes research reports, market data, insights and competitive assessments.