Understanding The Components of a Streaming Media Network – Part 2

Content Management
A content management system typically sits atop a CDN offering multiple views of the content placed on the network. A content management system allows the user to peruse and search through the available content. It also maintains all the meta-data, additional information about the content, such as author, duration, synopsis and even thumbnails of the video. Additionally, access control and pay-per-view mechanisms can be built into a content management system. A corporate LDAP server can even be used as the authentication mechanism used by the content management system.

Some content management systems allow multiple portals displaying different content but utilizing the same underlying CDN. For example, a corporation may deploy a CDN and then implement multiple portals, one for each department, utilizing the same underlying infrastructure. The Human Resources Department may have a content portal with training information and the Marketing Department its own portal all managed via one content management system and one set of infrastructure.

A content management system may have some of the components of a reporting system. If all the requests for content go through the content management portal then it can report on the aggregate number of requests for content. However, it is the streaming servers themselves that know for how long and even if the viewer watched the content. It is like calling directory assistance and asking for a telephone number. The directory assistance operator has no idea if you really did talk to the party whose number you requested. All the operator can report is that you requested the number. It’s the same with the content management system, it can only report that the content was requested, not that it was actually delivered. The delivery and those corresponding statistics are dealt with by the actually streaming servers.

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