The Open Capacity Marketplace (OCM) is an open industry platform where content owners can source delivery providers (CDNs) and federate traffic across networks.
Content delivery is becoming increasingly complex as content providers seek more capacity, broader geographic reach, and lower delivery costs. The Open Capacity Marketplace (OCM) aims to simplify this challenge by creating a standardized marketplace where content providers, CDNs, ISPs, broadcasters, and other network operators can buy, sell, and exchange delivery capacity through automated, standards-based workflows. By combining Open Caching, blockchain technology, and smart contracts, the OCM seeks to make content delivery more efficient, transparent, and accessible.
The OCM is a technology platform that enables three things:
Using standard interfaces, like SVTA Open Caching, CPs can see capacity as one footprint when they incorporate the network details of those capacity providers they choose into their delivery architecture.
You can read our whitepaper to get more detail on the architecture and how transactions happen within the marketplace.
When content margins are so tight, CPs are looking for anything to save money. Reducing complexity saves money. Increasing efficiency saves money. By moving the manual process of finding, securing, and engaging with capacity networks (which may be dozens at the end of the day, especially as ISPs want their piece of the action) into an automated technology platform. This is the vision of CDN Federation…only better.
But the OCM is more than that. It’s also about giving ISPs an opportunity to participate in content delivery revenue. They are ultimately responsible for delivering the traffic because they control the last mile. Why shouldn’t they have an opportunity to capitalize on that?
Because the OCM is built on industry standards, it really is the glue to connect the three constituents — CPs, ISPs, and CDNs — together in a way that allows for future methods of delivery (and capacity types) to connect. Consider ATSC 3.0 broadcasters. As receivers become integrated in more devices, those broadcasters will want to find a way to generate revenue from that channel. But they aren’t CDN providers. They don’t have a sales staff to sell their capacity. And what about when capacity networks start incorporating multicast? Content requests could include any capacity in selected geographic regions that include multicast (which further reduces CP content delivery costs).
While CIsco made a valiant effort to bring the industry together under emerging industry standards (CDNi), the technologies didn’t really exist to enable the kind of exchange they imagined. What’s more, it didn’t address what has become an even bigger issue — ISPs wanting their fair share of the revenue. Now, though, the combination of industry standards like Open Caching (which continues the work of CDNi), Blockchain and smart contracts, and content steering, have provided a means by which to create a technology platform that can finally unite the industry in a way that enables multi-party, complex business relationships to be handled, and settled, in an automated fashion.
Welcome to the future of content delivery.
The Open Capacity Marketplace (OCM) is a technology platform that connects content providers with a wide range of content delivery capacity providers. It enables organizations to buy, sell, and manage delivery capacity through a common marketplace, supporting both traditional CDN capacity and emerging delivery methods such as ATSC 3.0 broadcast networks.
The OCM automates the process of finding, evaluating, contracting, and utilizing delivery capacity. Instead of negotiating separately with multiple CDNs, ISPs, broadcasters, or other network operators, content providers can access available capacity through a single platform. This reduces operational complexity, improves efficiency, and can help lower overall content delivery expenses.
The marketplace is designed for multiple participants across the content delivery ecosystem, including content providers (CPs), commercial CDNs, internet service providers (ISPs), broadcasters, mobile operators, and other organizations with available network capacity. Participation is enabled through industry standards such as Open Caching, allowing a broad range of capacity providers to contribute resources.
Blockchain technology and smart contracts enable permissionless participation and automated business relationships within the marketplace. Transactions, capacity agreements, verification, and settlement processes can occur without requiring a central intermediary, helping streamline operations while providing transparency and trust between participants.
The OCM is designed to create a unified marketplace where content providers, CDNs, ISPs, broadcasters, and future delivery networks can work together through common standards. By supporting new capacity types, automating complex business relationships, and enabling more participants to monetize their infrastructure, the OCM aims to create a more flexible, efficient, and scalable content delivery ecosystem.
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