Akamai vs JW Player

• Content offloading - once rules are set up within Akamai you don't need to even think about how many images or large JavaScript or CSS files (for example) are being served from your own estate, Akamai takes care of it all via rules that are quick, easy and flexible.
• Page caching - for pages that don't change very often Akamai allows you to set up rules, quickly and easily, to serve up your page content for you, which takes even more load away from your origin servers.
• Quick rollback - the Akamai system allows easy testing of rules and changes via a staging system, and also offers a quick rollback option, which is perfect for the rare occasions when something has been set up incorrectly.

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• Responsive HTML5
• Provides share functionality built into the player
• Platform use enables playlist functionality and playlist players which can be customized or versioned for specific uses
• Videos uploaded to the JW Platform automatically provide multiple image frame options for selecting video thumbnail

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• The interface in their control centre could be a bit more user-friendly with some of the settings in places that you wouldn't expect them to be. The search offsets this problem to an extent but it's still sometimes slower than you'd like to find what you are looking for.

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• Technical support is extremely slow to respond to inquiries and often does no more than point to existing documentation on its knowledgevbase, which is often inadequate, and slows down proper resolution to issues.
• No access to cases established for customer record of all correspondence with support.
• JW Platform Playlist RSS feed is not currently compatible with iTunes video podcast submission parameters which is a real disconnect.

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• The front end optimisations available from Akamai are so significant and yet so hidden it makes for an extremely pleasing user experience. When a page loads just that much faster due to images being in the exact right format for the job it gives a clear advantage over competitors.
• Analytics coming from Akamai have changed the decisions made within the business for the better and have resulted in great improvements in many areas, such as a greater retention of visitors to the site. Little tweaks to possible certain problem areas flagged by Akamai have made a huge difference.

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• Positive in the sense that we have been able to integrate its use and their platform for our VideoproFile.net client videos hosting and distribution, with far greater functionality and features than just using the stand-alone player as a plugin for the site.
• There have been some negative impacts such as the playlist RSS feed iTunes incompatibility as already mentioned.
• Another negative impact on some videos with the JW Platform is its encoding qualities seem to be lesser than popular video sharing sites such as Vimeo, YouTube and Dailymotion; this is only evident on certain videos, however serious enough that the only alternative is to encode our own, load to our own CDN, then load via URL to the JW Platform, then uploading a separate image for its thumbnail. This is a work-around, but seems completely unnecessary given that since most clients are inclined to just use the FREE video sharing sites anyway, we cannot afford to see some videos appear to display blurry images at places within the videos encoded and hosted on JW Platform. This also places a greater burden on us to review every video hosted with JW Platform as a measure of QA...steps we'd prefer NOT to take if we could rely on its quality of encoding matching that of the most popular video sharing sites.

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