A startup called IO River Ltd. announced today it has closed on a $5.4 million seed funding round, as it launches what it says is the industry’s first multi-CDN-as-a-service platform.

Using its platform, internet companies will be able to leverage multiple content delivery networks at the edge to achieve superior performance and reliability for applications and websites.

Today’s round was led by S Capital and saw participation from a number of angel investors, such as Aryeh Mergi, co-founder of XtremIO Inc., which was later acquired by EMC Corp., and Ronni Zehavi, co-founder of the CDN startup Cotendo Inc. and the human resources management platform HiBob Ltd.

IO River explains that it has become popular for web-based companies to use CDNs to ensure that their content can be accessed rapidly from anywhere on the planet. These days, a handful of providers, such as Akamai Technologies Inc., Cloudflare Inc. and Fastly Inc., have emerged to dominate the global CDN market.

Although most enterprises initially rely on just one CDN, a growing number have come to realize that these providers offer pricing, capabilities and performance that varies quite significantly across different regions. In addition, relying on just one CDN means being exposed to a single point of failure, increasing the risk of downtime. As a result, more internet companies and content providers are exploring the use of multiple CDNs, and this is where IO River’s new platform can be helpful.

The startup has created what it says is the first complete platform for managing multiple CDNs and edge platforms, making it simple for companies to ensure their users are served content in the fastest and most cost-effective way possible. It allows companies to take advantage of the most optimal edge location, no matter where their users are accessing their services from. In this way, IO River claims, it can improve content delivery performance by up to 50% while reducing the costs associated with this by as much as 40%.

According to IO River co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Michael Hakimi, one of the main challenges is that CDN platforms are difficult to manage, with each provider offering a distinct toolset. “The largest content providers in the world don’t rely on a single content delivery network,” he said. “They use multiple edge vendors, managed by fancy in-house tools to improve cost and performance. We wanted to bring that capability to everyone.”

IO River simplifies CDN management through a unified user interface that makes it possible to configure and control multiple edge networks in one place. Customers can choose which CDN to use for which users, based on defined rules such as their location and the type of traffic. In addition, it provides additional services such as web application firewalls, rate limiting and traffic control to boost security and optimize performance.

IO River co-founder and Chief Executive Edward Tsinovoi said each CDN provider offers unique benefits and so it makes sense that customers want to take advantage of each one, without being locked into using a single solution. “IO River gives organizations the best blend of speed, reliability and costs all in one place,” he said. “Organizations [can] run multiple edge networks as if they were managing just one.”

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE it was really only a matter of time before someone seized on the idea of an “uber CDN” that would help enterprises to better leverage the capabilities of multiple CDN platforms, as this is part of a much broader industry trend towards cloud management.

“For many large organizations, the reality is that content is spread across multiple CDN providers, and they don’t make it simple to share or export that content elsewhere,” the analyst explained. “So IO River is onto something extremely promising, and its ability to ease CDN operations will likely be well-received by those companies that rely on these services to support next-generation applications at the edge.”

S Capital co-founding partner Haim Sadger also believes there will be strong demand for IO River’s platform, because internet-based companies live and die according to their ability to deliver content rapidly and without downtime. He explained that companies will lose significant sales within just a few minutes of their websites going offline. At the same time, they’re under pressure to reduce the costs associated with rapid content delivery.

“The classical approach of using a CDN doesn’t solve these problems,” Sadger said. “IO River is offering a modern solution that meets the needs of the market.”

Image: beshenayabelka/Freepik