Managing Access Beyond the Edge of the NetworkWhite Paper |
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This is really Mark Bauer's paper, the Chief Technology Officer for PassEdge. Although unsigned, we worked to preserve his voice and basic concept even as we revised and updated it.
The convergence of audio/video broadcast with Internet services creates new economic opportunities and new challenges. Content producers are forging new multimedia channels to their customers and suppliers. Content distributors are inventing new business models to increase revenue. Broadband networks are ready to support these opportunities with special Internet Protocol (IP) networks, which can carry high-bandwidth, multimedia streams and files to businesses and consumers. Some areas, however, are changing slowly. Movies, music and other digital information products are rarely delivered over the network even when they are purchased over the Internet. Many businesses remain reluctant to introduce multimedia-streaming services on corporate networks. What is restricting growth in these markets?
This paper considers the growing opportunity for delivering multimedia content over IP networks and describes the security problems that accompany this opportunity. The paper explains why content owners cannot effectively manage who has access to valuable content and how that content is used. Finally, the paper presents the PassEdge product solution to these complex problems.
Internet multimedia is an enormous commercial opportunity. Businesses already use multimedia to improve marketing, sales, and support at the point-of-sale computer. They see consumers trekking to multimedia websites to use multimedia content. They realize the great commercial potential to buy, sell, rent and barter using the network. There's an even greater potential to deliver digital products directly over the network. Today, innovative merchants attempt to reduce costs and sales time by delivering multimedia goods online. Soon network delivery may replace the digital versatile disk (DVD) as the medium of choice for content distribution.
The multimedia opportunity feeds on broadband networks and internet computers. Broadband service is becoming cheap as broadband access networks remove the last-mile bottlenecks to businesses and homes. Overlay networks extend broadband service end-to-end over wide geographic areas. New services such as bandwidth reservation, edge servers, and IP multicast make broadband networks into convergent networks that combine broadcast delivery with interactive-web services. Innovative software combines broadcast audio/video with web media into convergent media applications. Today's software exploits advances in the computing ecosystem, such as evolving hardware and network capabilities, to make network and media convergence a compelling customer experience.
The experience is compelling to vendors as well as to customers since broadband networks connect a large customer base and reduce the cost of multimedia delivery. Network and media convergence increases market size, reduces costs and increases potential revenues. This makes for a growing economic opportunity.
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