The new partnership with Akamai supersedes Brightcove's alliance with Limelight Networks formed in 2006. This is a second high-profile Akamai client takeover from Limelight this year: Netflix, previously exclusively Limelight's client, has pledged 51 per cent of its traffic to Akamai, which has offered it a highly discounted rate.

As the CDN market increasingly becomes a commodity business, providers have started to look for ways to differentiate and add value to their products by offering additional services. However, at least in the short term, guaranteed sales are potentially as valuable as often unproven CDN value added services. Consequently, partnerships with online video platforms, such as Brightcove and Ooyala (both Akamai partners), are becoming particularly important because of the traffic they bring. That said, such partnerships are no guarantee that platforms' clients will use the default CDN as typically online video platform clients can opt out and make direct deals with CDN of their choosing.