Level 3 CDN exec discusses group changes, strategy

Level 3 has made changes to its Content Markets Group, with three top executives leaving the company, but Mark Taylor, head of strategy for the group, said it won't affect the company's CDN services or strategy to develop an end-to-end media delivery service. Taylor said the changes "de-layer" the organization, putting fewer levels of command between executives, sales force and product teams.

"The staff in the Content Markets Group now takes on a larger mandate, but there really has been a bigger flurry externally, rather than within the company," Taylor said. "We should have done a better job communicating the changes to our customers, but we are quickly setting that right, senior executives are visiting some even, and our marketing plan and strategy for the group has not changed."

Taylor, who has been with Level 3 since the inception of its CDN offering, said he wants to move Level 3 into end-to-end media delivery, with the the goal of being able to provide services "from creation to consumption." He said he is looking into attracting business from satellite and physical distribution of media files on Level 3's fiber backbone.

Taylor referenced the 2008 Democratic National Convention as an example of Level 3's capabilities in this area, an event in which the company wired the event locations, provided trucks with ingestion and encoding equipment and handled the delivery of the content to end users. 

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