About Verizon Digital Media Services
Verizon Digital Media Services provides blazing-fast and securewebsites, the highest-quality video, and massive scale for exceptional multi-screen experiences — all while reducing costs. The end-to-end platform removes the complexities of connecting an increasingly mobile world and enabling businesses to securely leverage the cloud. For more information about Digital Media Services, visit www.verizondigitalmedia.com.
Verizon Communications, headquartered in New York, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to consumer, business, government and wholesale customers. Verizon Wireless operates America’s most reliable wireless network, with nearly 103 million retail connections nationwide. Verizon also provides converged communications, information and entertainment services over America’s most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers integrated business solutions to customers in more than 150 countries. A Dow 30 company with more than $120 billion in 2013 revenues, Verizon employs a diverse workforce of 176,800.
The Challenge
As a Content Delivery Network (CDN), Verizon EdgeCast is strategically positioned to help its customers maximize the web site experience for their end users. By adding device intelligence to its edge servers, Verizon EdgeCast can eliminate many issues that impact the mobile experience. Pairing optimized web services with Device Detection — especially important for mobile devices — gives end users the best possible online experience.
Verizon EdgeCast caches appropriate web content as close to the edge of its network as possible. This avoids unnecessary trips back to the origin server for content and reduces round trip time (RTT). However, mobile devices frequently need lighter content in different dimensions. Device Detection injected into caching strategies at the edge server can drive improved caching and reduce RTT for mobile devices.
Verizon EdgeCast was interested in a solution that could quickly detect mobile devices and pass capabilities to the caching platform and web services with negligible impact on RTT. The company wanted to offer device detection as a value-added service and its processing had to have virtually no negative impact on end users’ load time.
Likewise, Verizon EdgeCast wanted to house the device detection solution on its many edge servers. So the solution needed to integrate at the network level and be able to pass device intelligence on to multiple customers’ web services.
The WURFL® InFuze Solution
ScientiaMobile’s WURFL InFuze fit Verizon EdgeCast’s requirements. Verizon EdgeCast has integrated the WURFL InFuze C++ API into its Rules Engine within their Optimize suite, enabling its customers to improve the user experience for the millions of its mobile end-users.
Verizon EdgeCast’s Device Detection seamlessly integrates the intelligence needed to adapt site behavior for specific devices into the edge of its CDN, closer to the end user. By integrating advanced device detection, intelligent caching, application acceleration and advanced front-end optimization capabilities directly on edge servers, Verizon EdgeCast is optimizing the mobile experience while reducing traffic and latency. This gives content publishers the ability to quickly customize the user experience, optimize the content being served, add intelligence to applications, and enhance performance for every type of device — all without waiting for a distant originating server.
Verizon EdgeCast bundles Device Detection within the Rules Engine with a suite of caching and application acceleration services that improve performance and allow the company to offer new premium, mobile optimization services.
Results
Web developers can seamlessly access mobile device capabilities from the Rules Engine when designing and maintaining web sites. This improves website response time, offloads origin server resources, and reduces the need for maintaining instances of their own device detection solution. The Rules Engine and Optimize Suite makes a huge difference in the success of not only video or content services, but also in critical offerings such as e-commerce and site acceleration.
Already, Verizon EdgeCast customers are benefitting from Device Detection. Refinery29, the largest independent women’s style website in the U.S. has used Verizon EdgeCast’s Device Detection to improve the user experience for millions of its mobile users.
Much of Refinery29’s fashion-oriented content involves images carried over mobile devices. And mobile viewing continues to grow, with more than 50 percent of Refinery29’s views coming from mobile devices. To address these distinctions, Refinery29 uses Verizon EdgeCast services to position much of its content close to the edge, reducing load time. By leveraging Verizon EdgeCast Device Detection, Refinery29 can offer an optimized web experience for mobile users.
The result is CDN performance that drives only seven percent of traffic to Refinery29’s origin server. And Refinery29’s mobile strategy, driven partially by Device Detection, has dramatically improved response times and helped increase mobile views.
