CDN: give voice to the creativity of your digital assets

In the digital age, distributing multimedia content such as images, audio, live and streaming video in an optimal way is crucial to any brand’s customer experience.

THRON’s native CDN ensures – together with delivery features of the THRON PLATFORM – duplication-free, top performing distribution and always up-to-date communication channels.

What is CDN

Technically

The CDN – an acronym for Content Delivery Network – is a network of geographically distributed servers that accelerates the content delivery processes.

The nodes of the network – PoP, Points of Presence – are geographically spread and strategically positioned close to the end user. These nodes store a copy of the content, which they will use for delivery: when access to a piece of content is requested, the CDN directs the request to the network node phisically closest to the user, which will take care of its distribution.

In this way, the CDN relieves the work of the server where the original content is stored, as it is the CDN nodes that handle the requests and the main server is not contacted directly. 

Concretely

When we visit a site or an e-commerce, our browser requests access to the content from the server where it is located, in order to allow us to view it. 

Without a content distribution network, the server may not respond to the request received or respond very slowly due to the geographic distance of the device that forwarded the request. This is especially true when the end user uses content on mobile devices, as requests for content from mobile devices are particularly affected by geographical distance. 

Moreover, without a CDN, it is difficult to handle the traffic peaks that tipically occur when requests for access to content are particularly intense, such as Black Friday, seasonal sales, streaming events and new product launches. 

Using a CDN that is widely distributed around the globe means being able to count on a CDN with a greater number of nodes around the world and, therefore, on a more performing distribution. In particular, this results in:

• globally distributed content that makes global the audience of potential customers
• minimised page load times that improve the user experience by reducing bounce rates and shopping cart abandonment
• elastic peak traffic management allows channels to respond perfectly all times, even to extraordinary volumes of requests.

THRON’s native CDN and features for effective delivery

THRON PLATFORM, our platform that include the DAM Software and the PIM Software, can rely on a native CDN that ensures maximum performance experiences, regardless the geographical distance of the user and the volume of requested received.

Such a solution helps those running a website or e-commerce to meet user expectations and build great browsing or purchasing experiences, increasing conversion rates and ROI of content marketing activities. 

The use of a DAM PLATFORM with a native CDN such as THRON’s also allows content and information to be distributed at high quality performance at all times, saving on licence costs, as well as effort and configuration costs that would be required if relying on an external CDN.

The optimal delivery of assets passes through CDN

Given the digital nature of communication in recent times, the optimal distribution of digital assets is a crucial step in any brand strategy.

Optimal delivery, as well as all phases of the digital asset lifecycle, is managed by THRON Platform.

The Content Delivery Network, in fact, is an important element of content distribution but not the only one. The distribution network, in fact, has to rely on an adequate architecture and dedicated features to guarantee maximum performance of the distributed assets. 

THRON features that maximise delivery quality

THRON is the only DAM that centralises all content and distributes it directly to the end channel without ever duplicating it.

THRON’s delivery, combined with the native CDN, enables delivery at the highest level.

In a nutshell:

• Content is one and only one. To publish an image or video, there is no need to copy it to the CMS server or the e-commerce media gallery. In the hub, all content are organised and, again from there, you have control over what you publish in the various channels and track previous versions. 
• One does not have to worry about performance. THRON’s elastic architecture allows it to scale automatically according to users’ requests for content, thus managing any traffic peaks on the site.
• The focus is on creativity. The perfect asset for each channel is automatically distributed by THRON. No copies with different backgrounds or formats. THRON’s RTIE (Real Time Image Editor) enables the smart photo cropping avoiding manual activities. With THRON Universal Player, the quality of distributed audio, videos and documents is adapted to the user’s actual conditions such as browser and connection speed. 
• Channels update auomatically. When a new version of the asset is created, THRON distributes it in real time without any manual intervention on each channel. This makes communication consistent across all brand touchpoints.
• You can analyze content strategy results. Thanks to artificial intelligence, THRON tracks and studies the users who interact with the distributed content, proposing customised experiences. Thanks to THRON’s content analytics capabilities, it is also possible to evaluate the performance of assets and analyse the customer journey of each individual user.

These features, and many others, together with its architecture and native CDN, make THRON the platform that enables agile and efficient distribution of digital content.