Aflexi has announced its launch, which is slated for January of 2009.
Aflexi is a CDN aggregator, targeting small Web hosters much in the same way that Velocix’s Metro product targets broadband providers. (What’s old is new again: remember Content Bridge and CDN peering, a hot idea back in 2001?)
Here’s how it works: Aflexi operates a marketplace and CDN routing infrastructure (i.e., the DNS-based brain servers that tell an end-user client what server to pull content from), plus has Linux-based CDN server software.
Web hosters can pay a nominal fee of $150 to register with Aflexi, granting them the right to deploy unlimited copies of Aflexi’s CDN server software. (Aflexi is recommending a minimum of a dual-core server with 4 GB of RAM and 20-30 GB of storage, for these cache servers. That is pretty much “any old hardware you have lying around.”) A hoster can put these servers wherever he likes, and is responsible for their connectivity and so forth. The Web hoster then registers his footprint, desired price for delivering a GB of traffic, and any content restrictions (like “no adult content”) on Aflexi’s marketplace portal.
Content owners can come to the portal to shop for CDN services. If they’re going through one of Aflexi’s hosting partners, they may be limited in their choices, at the hoster’s discretion. The content owner chooses which CDNs he wants to aggregate. Then, he can simply go live; Aflexi will serve his content only over the CDNs he’s chosen. Currently, the content routing is based upon the usual CDN performance metrics; Aflexi plans to offer price/performance routing late next year. Aflexi takes a royalty of 0.8 cents per GB (thus, under a penny); the remainder of the delivery fee goes to whatever hoster served a particular piece of content. Customers will typically be billed through their hoster; Aflexi integrates with the Parallels control panel (they’re packaging in the APS format).
Broadly, although the idea of aggregation isn’t new, the marketplace is an interesting take on it. This kind of federated model raises significant challenges in terms of business concerns — the ability to offer an SLA across a diversified base, and ensuring that content is not tampered with, are likely at the forefront of those concerns. Also, a $150 barrier to entry is essentially negligible, which means there will have to be some strenuous efforts to keep out bad actors in the ecosystem.
Aflexi sees the future of the CDN market as being hosters. I disagree, given that most hosters don’t own networks. However, I do believe that hosting and CDN are natural matches from a product standpoint, and that hosters need to have some form of CDN strategy. It’s clear that Aflexi wants to target small Web hosters and their small-business customers. They’re going to occupy a distinct niche, but I wonder how well that approach will hold up against Rackspace-plus-Limelight and Amazon’s CloudFront, which have solid credibility and are targeted at small customers. But the existence of Aflexi will offer small hosters a CDN option beyond pure resale.
Aflexi says its initial launch hosters will include ThePlanet. That in and of itself is an interesting tidbit, as ThePlanet (which is one of the largest providers of simple dedicated hosting in the world) currently resells EdgeCast.
One more odd little tidbit: The CEO is Whei Meng Wong, previously of UltraUnix, but also, apparently, previously of an interesting SpamHaus ROKSO record (designating a hoster who is a spam haven — willing to host the sites that spammers advertise). Assuming that it’s the same person, which it appears to be, that reputation could have significant effects upon Aflexi’s ability to attract legitimate customers — either hosters or content owners.
The company is funded through a Malaysian government grant. The CTO is Wai-Keen Woon; the VP of Engineering is Yuen-Chi Lian. Neither of them appears to have executive experience, or indeed, much experience period — the CTO’s Facebook profile says he’s an ‘07 university graduate. The CEOs blog seems to indicate he is also an ‘07 graduate. So this is apparently a fresh-out-of-college group-of-buddies company — notably, without either a Sales or Marketing executive that they deemed worth mentioning in their launch presentation.
Bottom line, though: This is another example of CDN services moving up a level towards software overlays. The next generation of providers own software infrastructure and the CDN routing brain, but don’t deploy a bunch of servers and network capacity themselves.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Whei Meng Wong // Dec 19, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Lydia, I must say you’ve done a real thorough check on us and thank you for the comments, noted
The ROKSO guy listed in Spamhaus is me, but I’m no longer dealing with the guys listed in my profile. Aflexi is my new business that I’m pursuing and do not have intention to look back but learning from the past.
Although we are fresh graduate, we have started working since high school and many relevant jobs. This might affect public perception to us, albeit I must stress that we are in this game for real, and intend to be market leader.
2 Lydia Leong // Dec 21, 2008 at 2:57 am
My “thorough check” was just a couple of minutes spent on Google searches, for better or for worse. Your SpamHaus listing is the top hit on your name, for instance. And you and your colleagues have public blogs that reveal a lot of personal information — and you’ve got a public job listing that notes that you’ve got an engineering team size of two, which leads me to guess that you’ve probably got a company of three guys.
You may find it to your benefit to separate your personal and professional identities; in fact, I would recommend it. You probably don’t want potential customers looking you up and seeing your team’s romantic travails, or the other foibles of youth, especially as they touch upon your thoughts on your work lives. For you all, it could be easily accomplished — Americanize your first names for professional use. I recognize you’ve got a reputation built up on Web Hosting Talk and so forth, but you’ve also got the spammer rep, and it’s easier to build a good rep than to ditch a bad rep.
Because you’ve got the spammer rep (and regardless of whether you do any kind of name jiggering), you are automatically going to draw more scrutiny and smart/cautious people are going to want greater contractual assurances from you.
For instance, if I were your customer, I would certainly want a contractual guarantee that your server software contains nothing more than what you’ve told me it does, and that I have an absolute right to deny any particular content or customer, beyond content-control settings. Spamming is a crime in the United States, not merely an annoyance, and I would want to be absolutely sure that this federated CDN would not in any way shape or form expose my company to illegal activity or any form of liability if a spammer were to try to begin hosting content upon it.
There are jurisdictional issues as well — your company is based in Malaysia, and I might very well want to ensure that any disputes were arbitrated in my country and not yours, especially if my country has stronger intellectual property protection laws or the like.
I would also want assurances that you would not sell to people who would use the service for something illegal in a particular country or otherwise grey. You’ve shown thus far your scruples are flexible enough that you’re willing to take money from characters who are at best shady, if not downright criminal. A prospective customer of yours ought to weight that accordingly. What you’ve said is that you’re starting a company on a new business model — not that you’re sorry for what you did or that you are resolved never to do it again, even if it turns out to be profitable. A CDN is potentially very interesting to people walking on the grey side (if not wholly committed to the dark side: distributing child pornography, say). Hosting partners are going to need the absolute guarantee that your AUP enforcements are going to be strict, instant and incontrovertible.
Good luck; you’ve got an interesting idea. But I think the past may follow you more than you are currently anticipating, especially as you try to move into larger hosting providers.
3 Whei Meng Wong // Dec 21, 2008 at 7:29 am
Thank you for the recommendation, will act on the necessaries.
As far as the jurisdictional goes, we are drafting the legal agreement (http://www.mintz.com/) with accordance to California state law and it’ll be arbitrated in the US, instead of Malaysia.
And yes, we will definitely uphold to our AUP, and will not hesitate to terminate our contract with the abuser. We are well aware of our federated concept that might put everyone at risk if it is not done correctly; hence we have had internal meeting on evaluating all the risks and already seek for legal consultation to ensure our practice conforms to US legal system.
Once again, thank you for your suggestions and will keep you posted on new updates!
4 Contentinople - Ryan Lawler - Reformed Spammer Turns to CDNs With Aflexi // Jan 6, 2009 at 10:57 am
[...] a comment on the Gartner blog post covering his company, Wong admitted that he had worked with certain well-known spammers in the past, but claims that he is reformed and [...]
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