Cotendo is a new competitor entering the crowded market of content delivery networks, with money-saving technology that has attracted the backing of venture capital heavyweights Sequoia Capital and Benchmark Capital.
“Our software does more with less,” says Ronni Zehavi, chief executive of the Silicon Valley company, about its Israeli-developed technology.
That means Cotendo needs less servers to deliver content, offering cheaper services for its target market of mid-range companies, and providing them with the kind of bespoke offering that larger CDNs such as Akamai and Limelight only offer to the biggest clients.
Mr Zehavi says only Cotendo and Akamai can serve the dynamic content now being demanded as websites try to serve more personalised content to users.
His service offers real-time reporting on usage to customers, acceleration tools and the ability to balance easily the load on their servers to meet demand.
Sequoia provided initial funding in January 2008 and has joined with Benchmark in a $7m second round.
“Some areas of technology get starved for a long time. Content delivery is one of them. It has been years since fresh eyes were trained on the subject and during this period the amount of content conveyed around the Internet has multiplied at a rate that even rabbits would admire,” said Michael Moritz, general partner of Sequoia Capital, in a statement.
CDNs are best known for serving video efficiently around the internet, but Mike Sawyer, who has moved from Limelight to be head of marketing at Cotendo, says this problem has been largely solved with extra capacity.
“What we see as the next wave after video is that sites want an integrated approach of offering whole-site delivery. We let companies manage how they accelerate their dynamic and static content to give users faster performance and reduce the load on their own infrastructure.”
Cotendo is entering a competitive market at a tough time, but it has already acquired customers, it says, suggesting it may have found itself a new niche.
