In all my years of selling Content Delivery Networking (CDN), I’ve heard many first questions from prospects:

• How many POP’s are in the network?
• Do you support this or that feature?
• How much is it for …?
• Can you tell me what makes your CDN different from this CDN?

and many others. 

While answers to these questions are important, the most important question to ask now is: What level of risk do I take if I choose you as my CDN provider?

In “Crossing the Chasm”, author Geoffrey Moore describes the five main stages of the technology adoption lifecyle: Innovators; Early Adopters (the technology enthusiasts and visionaries); Early Majority (the pragmatists); Late Majority; and Laggards. These stages define characteristics that influence an individual’s decision to adopt or reject an innovation. 

The Content Delivery Network market is about 10 years old, so for the most part we’re at the end of the early majority or in the late majority stages of its market.  As is characteristic of a mature market, the technology is proven and there are a many service providers. The market is accepted and stable, with decreasing differentiation among providers based on features, pricing and coverage. Increasingly, technical and business risk - reliability, performance, and business stability, will separate winning and losing providers.

If you're a new CDN buyer - either an established content provider or a start up, you're buying services in a mature market. Even though you're a risk taker with your business, you should expect LOW RISK CDN services. Your customers are saturated with content, and to them your competitors are only a mouse click away. Outages due to a risky CDN selection can quickly lead to lost customers and revenue.
 
So if you’re a buyer of CDN, start changing the questions.  Start by asking the CDN providers about their risk factors:

• Find out about their recent failures and/or downtime
• Find out what caused them and how the issue was rectified
• Make them prove to you why they are a low risk provider

Having a low Risk Factor should be the most important issue to you!