Revolutionizing content delivery: The edge streaming service for a greener future

In a world where data-rich content is nearly omnipresent, the ability to distribute it is getting harder and data egress fees more expensive. As content providers deliver higher definition content, their viewers have an even lower tolerance for a bad stream.

Content providers must overcome this and other key streaming challenges—increasing complexity, variable quality and demand for customization—to deliver a flawless viewer experience.

They need dedicated bandwidth and a network of low-latency content streaming servers at the edge that are distributed close to where viewers are located.

Lumen, together with Intel, Supermicro and Varnish, has created a prebuilt ecosystem to solve this pain point, enabling providers to launch streaming services faster and reach viewers sooner without adding more hardware resources and in a way that is cost and energy efficient.

This solution, which uses the Intel® Edge Content Streaming Service and its bare metal operator partners, enables content providers to overcome these challenges by predicting demand and storing content near viewers to allow them to experience a faster delivery, lower latency and a smoother viewing experience.

“By leveraging this pre-built streaming platform, content providers can avoid the time-consuming process of building their own infrastructure from scratch,” said Scott Brindamour, Vice President of Product Management at Lumen. “This ready-to-use solution leverages Lumen architecture, allowing them to focus on content delivery rather than backend development.”

Greener streaming

“This service platform is more than just a live-streaming platform,” said Nagesh Puppala, GM of the Media and Entertainment Solutions Division at Intel. “It’s a revolutionary solution provided by Intel and our software and bare metal operator partners in content delivery that empowers content providers, engages subscribers and pushes the boundaries of what’s possible.”

An influx of data-rich content means they must increase performance to meet demand, without adding more hardware resources and in a way that is cost and energy efficient.

In 2024, the team achieved record-setting workloads while testing performance, surpassing the 1 Tbps data rate and achieving up to 1.18 Gbps/Watt Efficiency. This energy savings shows a possible reduction in carbon footprint by an estimated 41.38 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e). Streaming for an hour emits less CO2 than driving a car; however, further reducing this impact can have a significantly positive impact on the environment given the size of the content streaming market.

Faster deployment and revenue generation

The combined solution is designed to boost performance so content delivery services and other industries can see improved performance, reduced operating costs and a possible positive environmental impact. Faster deployment can also mean quicker revenue generation.

“As content delivery becomes more of a strategic function that organizations are bringing in house, benchmarks like these will help them understand what is needed to achieve sustainability goals and objectives,” said Frank Miller, CTO of Varnish Software. “The need to deliver more throughput with less energy and at the lowest cost has never been greater.”

“Supermicro, in collaboration with Varnish and Lumen is excited to support Intel’s Edge Content Streaming Service,” said Vik Malyala, President & Managing Director, EMEA; SVP, Technology & AI, Supermicro. “Accelerating the performance of edge content delivery on an already proven streaming service with the most energy-efficient and versatile servers as a total solution is an ultimate win-win for the customers.”

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