Blog.

Engineers at 3Crowd have been crazy busy these last months, a lot of advanced features are being made available to our current and future users as we speak, which will result in a lot of blog updates during the weeks to come.

Today’s feature highlight involves CrowdCache™ and video media assets.

• While CrowdCache™ had already been handling FLV progressive download video seeking, we are proud to announce that it is now fully compliant with MP4/H.264 video seeking.
• While we were at it, we introduced a pretty interesting configuration feature that lets CrowdCache™ and CrowdDirector™ users to configure the way the CrowdDirector™ handles and transforms URL query arguments when getting passed to your Media Origin when a cache-miss occurs.
• We are also proud to announce that we also added configuration knobs for you to tune the way your CrowdCache™ fleet handles data rate-throttling since it was a feature that was on top of our ‘public-demand’ list. Again, we walked the extra mile, and made it configurable on a per-MIME-type basis. Even better than that, if you know that your video file’s metadata is correctly recorded, you can even choose your files to be served in accordance to this bit-rate metadata. And that is quite an original feature that you won’t likely find with any other legacy CDN

All of these newly available features have been illustrated together in one comprehensive how-to mini-site, which details how you can efficiently use both CrowdCache™ and CrowdDirector™ to get all the features from your favorite existing CDN vendors or from your own Video Web proxy servers – it includes code examples and embeds with the most widespread video players around, namely JW Player and Flowplayer.

We sincerely hope you find this tutorial useful and welcome any feedback you may have for us. We plan to roll-out many more of these mini-sites to answer your most popular feature highlight demands.

3Crowd’s product and engineering team are delighted to introduce this new feature to our customers: Rule Sets inheritance.

In our constant effort to streamline the CrowdDirector™ load balancer as a service, we have identified a feature which will be a great use to many of our customers who deal with a lot of Rule Sets.
We found that very often, our customers used the exact same Rule Sets with different CNAMES (HTTP_302 redirects) or NS Delegations (DNS redirects), resulting in maintaining multiple objects that basically use the exact same routing behavior, and creating new blank Rule Sets to then manually duplicate existing ones.

These times are now over: it is now possible to create a new Rule Set based on an existing one. We call this Rule Set Inheritance.

With this new release of the CrowdDirector™ you can choose, during the creation steps, to base your new Rule Set on an existing one, cloning the rules from that already existing rule. The benefit is that a logical link now binds an inherited Rule Set to its ‘parent’ rule.
The are multiple valuable advantages to this:

• Creation of such rules just got easier since the only parameter to input is the CNAME or NS Name.
• All rules within an inherited Rule Set are duplicated from the Parent Rule. So editing that Parent Rule Set will now update all the inherited ‘child’ Rule Sets instantly.
• You do not need to modify the inherited Rule Set anymore – any modification on a Parent Rule Set automatically adjusts all the Rule Sets which inherit from it with the exact same modifications.
• At a rule set level, you can also detach a rule and break its inheritance link, meaning that when doing so, it will now be made independent and edit-able.
• You can also attach an already existing Rule Set to another one. In this case, its own rules will be replaced with the rules of its new Parent, and the inheritance link binds it in the same way that all modifications to it will be deferred to its parent.

Here are a few tricks based on this new feature that we think might be of interest to you, based on using this feature:

• Minor variations on a Rule Set
  If you ever want to create new Rule Sets that only differ by a few clauses, just clone them from an existing one, detach them, and only modify the part that should differ from the initial one.
• Add Network Resources to deliver from on a broad range of Rule Sets
  Very often, you will need to add more and more Network Resources in the PRIMARY ACTION part of a Rule Set, as your traffic on these hosts increases with time. If many Rule Sets use the same hosts, this means that you need to modify all PRIMARY ACTION statements in all the concerned Rule Sets.
  With this new feature, if all are bound to the same Rule Set with an inheritance link, all you need to do is update the Parent’s PRIMARY ACTION statement, and it will apply downwards to all its inherited Rule Sets.

Here are some elements of the new UI that was designed for this feature

Although 3Crowd isn’t specifically seeking public rewards and recognition, we were very proud to learn that we had been chosen as one of AlwaysOn‘s 2011 top 250 Innovative Companies. It is a great honor to be nominated along side so many game-changing and innovative companies. The award validates our Company Philosophy of constant innovation.

The related article mentions:
“[...] The AlwaysOn Global 250 winners were selected from among thousands of domestic and international technology companies nominated by investors, bankers, journalists, and industry insiders. The AlwaysOn editorial team conducted a rigorous three-month selection process to finalize the 2011 list. [...] “

The recognition is wonderful, but what is more important is that 3Crowd intends to keep gearing all our efforts towards our current and future customers. We deeply believe that the ultimate form of recognition and best award to have is our customers’ complete satisfaction in and commitment to building fantastic products using our revolutionary solutions.

Stay tuned as this blog will be the main channel for us to keep you informed about our latest innovations.

Following the release of CrowdCache™, we have received various feature requests. One of the most popular, was for an improved, at-a-glance system overview. This would prove particularly valuable to 3Crowd customers utilizing significant numbers of Network Resources, CrowdCache™ Nodes and Traffic Rules. We raised the point with our UX designers and Product Management team, and began construction on a new CrowdDirector™ home page – one we would now like to unveil.

With this new release of the CrowdDirector™ UI, in just one glance, you can instantly learn a lot about the preset state of your system, including:

• Network Resources
• CrowdCache™ Nodes
• CrowdDirector™ Rule Sets

Easy-to-understand icons display a variety of metrics, including count, health and usage. With just a quick skim of the new CrowdDirector home page, you will now be able to identify any failing resources, failing or suboptimal rules, and reasons for these states. Each graphical element is clickable and will provide summary information and link to the corresponding resource or rule edit page.

Click here to download the PDF

Stay tuned as we continue to roll out improvements in the coming weeks based on suggestions from you, our valued customers. Let’s revolutionize the Content Delivery industry together.

Since we launched CrowdCache, we have received an overwhelming response from you. Due to popular demand, we’ve made it even easier for you to get your very own content delivery network (CDN) started using our system.

Since this afternoon, a new button will have surfaced on your CrowdDirector home page – the INSTANT CDN button!

Upon clicking, you will be guided through a lightning-fast super-simple tutorial leading you through the steps necessary for you to roll-out your own CDN. Watch in hand, every attempt took us less than five minutes to get through the tutorial, so why not try and beat our company record and post your results below! Time for you to catch up with our early adopters and use that handy button of ours, isn’t it?

In the meantime, you might want to check out these screenshots from the new interface…

We decided to start over. 3Crowd’s caching technology is a revolution in how data is delivered. Traditionally, delivery was done by a Content Delivery Network (CDN), and when you use a CDN you hand the keys of your content, of your business to an external company focused on their own goals. You end-up with something that is not your own, something that is not optimized to your specific goals and needs.

We decided to make caching technology fundamentally simple. We decided to take the shroud off of the traditional CDN and put the power of CDN technology into the hands of anyone that may need it. Our new technology CrowdCache does exactly that.

The only way to make powerful technology like ours work is to leverage innovative software design. We’ve bridged the gap between software as a service and traditional shrink-wrapped software. This combination makes us one of the few Software Services companies to provide a powerful service daemon that works in conjunction with a cloud-based product.

We have taken years of man-hours to design a system with precision, which can be flexible and malleable to provide our customers with a service that they can control themselves that far extends the capabilities of a CDN.

We’ve been fanatical about how the product functions because we care passionately about the growth of the Internet. CrowdCache is focused around simple design with amazing control.

What you will notice as a customer is CrowdCache has a lot more control, real-time feedback, scalability, power, and transparency than you’ve ever seen before with traditional CDNs and there is a deep story behind each feature, each function.

When designing CrowdCache we looked at the problems associated with scaling online video and then we looked at the technologies that scale with minimal effort. We shut our eyes and discarded any pre-conceived notations of technology, and we realized that the mix of caching and cloud services is the future of content delivery.

Not only are we thrilled about our game-changing product, we are also excited about the environmental impact that product will have. Rather than building massive infrastructure, we are allowing people to utilize untapped resources that otherwise would have turned to wasted heat.

With CrowdCache the sophistication of control over your content is now in your hands. CDNs are no longer a black box technology; it is now everyone’s technology.
This innovative technology is so much more than just a caching system; it is a platform that helps the Internet scale.

At 3Crowd, we believe in the power of three, but we love a crowd even more.

We are excited about the addition of a new vice president of engineering and director of products to 3Crowd. Ronn Brashear and Grégoire Villain join the team to help drive strategic planning and product development activities. We are enhancing our technology staff to support growth of CrowdDirector, as well as new infrastructure applications.

As Vice President of Engineering, Ronn will provide vision, expertise and leadership to the technology research and development effort at 3Crowd. As Director of Products, Greg will lead the product development and marketing efforts, focusing on forging new paths in online content delivery.

Prior to 3Crowd, Ronn served as director of engineering at OnLive, a cloud-gaming service, where he led the architecture and creation of the service infrastructure. He also served as an architect for Tellme, and has held leadership roles at Austin Decisions, Trilogy, and LiveOps. Not only is he a technical wizard, he hires out for parties…really! He is a card-carry member of the magician’s union.

Greg was formerly in charge of the CDN market and product development for the EMEA Region at TATA Communications. Villain has also held various network engineering positions, ranging from engineering triple play networks for a DSL unbundling mass market ISP, as well as designing, and implementing network and hosting infrastructures for high volume content platforms. He also designed and rolled-out Internet Exchange points in France and the Middle East. He is moving from Paris and I am convinced it is because he wants to live where truly great wine is made.

We think these are fantastic additions to the team and couldn’t be more confident that the combined expertise of both Ronn and Greg will help push 3Crowd’s position forward.

The last two announcements that we made were about building our team – adding Jay Adelson to the Board – and a program to support our CDN partners, CDN Certification. While these were significant announcements that improved the company and the product, we want to make sure you also know about the more specific updates to CrowdDirector that we are making.

We have been talking with customers and listening to feedback since the full production launch in July and, as a result, we have just released a major update to the CrowdDirector Health Check System. This system monitors and manages all the resources that CrowdDirector controls. It’s part of the brains behind CrowdDirector and it lets people know when something is hurting.

With this latest update, CrowdDirector checks resources from all major continents and allows compound decisions to be made regarding the health of resources managed by 3Crowd. You now have the ability to check on multiple issues and then make real-time decisions and implement the necessary actions. In other words, CrowdDirector has gotten smarter.

Some additional (more technical) highlights include:

• Advanced match conditions, as well as DNS, TCP, time to first byte, and an increase in total response time
• Comprehensive graphs of all resource health types including, email, SMS, and HTTP API notifications of failures
• Unlimited number of testing nodes
• Historical performance stats on a per node basis
• Historical health stats down to 5 minute resolution

We’ve build one of the world’s most powerful load balancers as a service, and we’re constantly making it better!

This will probably be our last post until after the holidays so we want to wish everyone a happy holiday season. See you again soon in 2011 when we start to announce our new Infrastructure Applications.

Stay tuned!

3Crowd’s CrowdDirector has been nominated by Streaming Media Magazine as part of the magazine’s 2010 Readers’ Choice Awards. With more than 250 nominations, CrowdDirector was chosen as one of the Best Streaming Innovations in 2010. This category recognizes the product, technology, or service that most changed the streaming landscape in the past year.

As a truly new innovation for 2010, we are most excited that this award is chosen by the people using these products, the content providers and professionals in the online video industry that believe in the future of content delivery and the revolution taking place in online video.

While we, of course, want to see our name chosen on November 2 as the top choice, we also want to recognize everyone that received a nomination. Some of our partners are also being called out for their incredible focus and high performing products and services. So check the awards out and all of our fellow nominees here

Voting is open until Oct. 1, and the top three companies/products in each category will be announced Oct. 18. Winners will receive their awards at a reception at Streaming Media West in Los Angeles on Nov. 2.

We’ll keep you posted on our progress here in the blog and also in our Twitter stream @3Crowd – so stay tuned.

We are moving full-steam ahead and are thrilled to introduce three new additions to the team!

Bill Shetti has come aboard to serve as the director of product. Bill has a wealth of experience in product management from positions with leading companies, including Cisco. His role will be to engineer and shape 3Crowd’s unique product offerings. Most recently, Bill was a senior associate at Storm Ventures. Not to mention, Bill’s gourmet cooking skills elevate 3Crowd’s already fantastic BBQ parties that one extra level.

In an effort to further streamline our upcoming product launches, Nathan Hickson has been named director of operations. We are confident that Nathan’s commitment to our mission will drive our operational success in terms of creativity, efficiency and execution. Nathan is a Google and YouTube veteran who was instrumental in the growth of scalable content delivery and network infrastructure. In addition to keeping operations running smoothly, Nathan can also act as the corporate pilot and HAM radio operator.

Steven Machado is also joining the team as vice president of finance. In this role, Steven will provide leadership and coordination of all company financial activities and functions. Steven is bringing more than 17 years of financial management experience to 3Crowd.

As a founding team member at Exodus Communications, Steven is joining up again with Chris Wallace, our vice president of business development and co-founder, to bring a new expertise to the team that will help drive the company’s growth initiatives.

Both Bill and Nathan bring online content expertise and an understanding of the “big picture” to the table. Adding Steven into the mix not only creates a strong, unified team, but one that will become a driving force in enhancing 3Crowd’s presence in the market. Be on the lookout for exciting things to come from our new newest team members!