IO River raises $5.4 million to help Internet companies easily use multiple CDNs

A startup called IO River Ltd. announced today that it has completed a $5.4 million seed round of financing to launch 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.

This round of financing was led by S Capital, with participation from many angel investors, including Aryeh Mergi, co-founder of XtremIO Inc., which was later acquired by EMC Corp., and Ronni Zehavi, co-founder of CDN startup Cotendo Inc. and 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 is quickly accessible from anywhere on the planet. Today, a handful of providers, including Akamai Technologies Inc., Cloudflare Inc. and Fastly Inc., dominate the global CDN market.

While most businesses initially relied on just one CDN, more and more businesses are realizing that the pricing, features, and performance offered by these providers vary widely across regions. Additionally, relying on just one CDN means facing a single point of failure, increasing the risk of downtime. As a result, more and more Internet companies and content providers are exploring the use of multiple CDNs, and this is where IO River’s new platform can come into play.

The startup has created what it says is the first complete platform for managing multiple CDNs and edge platforms, allowing companies to easily ensure content is served to users in the fastest, most cost-effective way. It enables companies to leverage optimal edge locations regardless of where users access their services. IO River claims that in this way it can improve content delivery performance by up to 50% while reducing the costs associated with it by up to 40%.

One of the main challenges is that CDN platforms are difficult to manage, with each provider offering a different set of tools, said IO River co-founder and CTO Michael Hakimi. “The world’s largest content providers do not rely on a single content delivery network,” he said. “They use multiple edge providers and are managed by beautiful internal tools to improve cost and performance. We want to bring that capability to everyone.”

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

Edward Tsinovoi, co-founder and CEO of IO River, said each CDN provider offers unique benefits, so it makes sense that customers would want to take advantage of each provider’s strengths rather than being limited to using a single solution. “IO River offers organizations the best blend of speed, reliability and cost,” he said. “organize [can] Run multiple edge networks as if they were managing only one network. “

Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research Inc., told SiliconANGLE that it’s really just a matter of time before someone seizes on the idea of ​​a “super CDN” that would help enterprises better leverage the capabilities of multiple CDN platforms, as that’s what so many CDN platforms have to offer. part. A broader industry trend is moving toward cloud management.

“The reality for many large organizations is that content is spread across multiple CDN providers, and they don’t make it easy to share or export that content elsewhere,” the analysts explained. “IO River therefore has a very promising future, and its ability to streamline CDN operations is likely to be well received by companies that rely on these services to support the next generation of edge applications.”

S Capital co-founding partner Haim Sadger also believes demand for the IO River platform will be strong, as Internet-based companies live and die by their ability to deliver content quickly and without downtime. He explained that companies lose a lot of sales in just a few minutes after a website goes offline. At the same time, they are under pressure to reduce the costs associated with fast content delivery.

“The classic approach of using a CDN doesn’t solve these problems,” Sadger said. “IO River is delivering modern solutions that meet market needs.”

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