CDN to play bigger role in Internet industry

"Content delivery network (CDN) will no longer be a supplement to the Internet, it might be the key carrier of Internet applications", said Wang Song, founder, chairman and CEO of ChinaCache International Holdings Ltd, China's leading total solutions provider of Internet content and application delivery services.

"I witnessed the great changes in the role that CDN has played during my career in the field for more than 10 years, from just providing solutions for some phased problems to representing the Internet", Wang said in an interview with China Daily website.

It reached a milestone on March 2013 when more than 50 percent of all Internet traffic was delivered through CDN in the US market.

The figure in China is only about 10 percent now and Wang expects that China will achieve that level in three to five years, which implies a huge market.

As the largest CDN provider both in China and Asia, ChinaCache organized the Global Content Delivery Network conference in June in Beijing, which attracted over 1,200 domestic and foreign attendants.

"We invited not only CDN and related companies, but also upstream and downstream firms to participate in the conference, such as telecom operators and content providers of different levels and forms", said Wang.

With the rapid development of 4G and mobile Internet, telecom operators will switch their business model from relying on voice communication to Internet data traffic, Wang added.

During the first quarter, ChinaCache announced a strategic partnership with China Telecom to build and manage a content delivery network. In April the company signed a framework agreement with People.cn relating to the development of the cloud infrastructure to meet their rapidly growing cloud computing and storage needs.

Aiming at going global, ChinaCache got listed in Nasdaq on October 1, 2010 and set up a branch in Los Angeles in 2007 and a research center in Silicon Valley in 2011. The company also extended its coverage to European and Southeast Asian countries.

"We have an operation and support team of 40-plus people in the US to provide local services with more than 10 nodes", Wang said.

Comparing with other CDN providers, "we have an edge on efficiently controlling operation costs", said Wang. While shortage of local talents remains the hard stone on the company's way to explore the global market.

ChinaCache saw net revenues of 323.9 million yuan in the first quarter, representing a 40.4 percent increase year-over-year.