From Vision to Reality: Our Journey in Shaping IO River

12 years ago, I found myself across the table from a highly talented engineer, in the running for the position of Principal Software Engineer. The moment we began our discussion, a surge of excitement told me he was the perfect fit. But, as we all know, good things aren't always easy to obtain.

Little did I know, this meeting was not just an interview; it was the first step in a journey that would redefine my life and carve the path for our startup.

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Then, unexpectedly, he said no.

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12 years have passed, marked by a few more gray hairs, some extra pounds, and the joys of fatherhood. Through all this, Michael Hakimi and I now proudly stand as the Co-Founders of IO River. Our mission is to harness the vast potential of the internet in enhancing reliability, performance, and cost-effectiveness for online services.

The same vision that gave us the privilege to have the backing of our top-tier industries’ investors, and which with a lot of hard work, and probably a bit of luck, gave us the opportunity to collaborate with Fortune 500 companies.

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I believe that every successful company is built on the foundation of an exceptional team. With this in mind, assembling the IO River 'A-Team' was our initial and foremost mission.

We garnered the trust and support of S-Capital (the former Israeli branch of Sequoia), led by Haim Sedgar and Aya Peterburg, alongside several industry heavyweights like Aryeh Mergi (Co-Founder at M-Systems and XtremIO) and Ronni Zehavi (Co-Founder at Cotendo and HiBob). Their backing was instrumental in the birth of IO River. 

This goal can only be realized by an elite team of engineers. We reached out to old colleagues, inviting them to join our quest. The response was overwhelming – leading technological minds from giants like Google and Dell, amongst others, came onboard. 

Together, we have formed a dream team of engineers, setting the stage for groundbreaking achievements at IO River.

Yet, even with an elite engineering team, there's more to the equation at IO River. We firmly believe that transforming great technology into truly disruptive innovation requires a deep understanding of the field and a customer-centric approach. This means developing products that directly address our customers' most pressing challenges.

To ensure our technology not only leads but also aligns with essential needs (in other words, ensuring we’re crafting a 'must-have' solution, rather than a 'nice-to-have')), we've welcomed aboard former executives with proven track records: the ex-VP Sales from Cotendo (a pioneering CDN company acquired by Akamai) and the ex-VP Sales from Reblaze (a front-runner in Cloud Security). Their insights are pivotal in refining our offerings to meet the critical demands of online services.
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Our journey continues with guidance from elite industry advisors, such as Ash Kulkarni, CEO of Elastic, and Mark Weeks, ex-GM EMEA at Akamai, alongside notable experts from Google and Forter. Their collective wisdom has shaped IO River's go-to-market strategy, anchoring our innovations in strategic acumen and a strong customer orientation.

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The Digital Evolution: Pioneering Change with IO River

In an era where our world grows more global and digitally connected by the day, traditional CDNs, products of the previous century, find themselves grappling with the challenges of modern times. Originating from a time when it was assumed all data would traverse a single network, these CDNs are now proving inadequate for the dynamic and interlinked nature of today's digital landscape.

In the digital realm of today, even minor service disruptions carry significant weight, let alone the ramifications of widespread outages. Such disturbances set off a chain reaction, disrupting online services, causing operational glitches, and leading to considerable financial repercussions. Despite the substantial investments by premium CDNs in error and failure prevention, the hard truth remains: mistakes are inevitable, and relying on a system with a single point of failure is untenable.

The cost of these mistakes is not just financial; it can also significantly impact the broader digital landscape. Premium CDNs often enter a state of 'freeze', avoiding risks that could lead to errors, which in turn hinders prompt advancements in the digital world.
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IO River emerges as a transformative force in the market with its visionary approach. By aligning with customer needs for multi-network utilization, and amplifying cost-effectiveness while minimizing management overhead and complexity, we are redefining conventional CDN methodologies. In an industry often stifled by the fear of errors, IO River stands out as a dynamic change agent, paving the way towards a new era in CDN/Edge solutions.

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Introducing Virtual Edge by IO River

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IO River proudly presents Virtual Edge, a pioneering Multi-CDN as a service offering. This innovative solution is structured into three integral layers:

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1. Intelligent Traffic Balancing: Virtual Edge enables traffic division based on performance and cost, leading to up to 40% savings  alongside a 50% improvement in performance.
   
   
2. Unified Management: The solution's orchestration layer simplifies the management, configuration, and monitoring of all CDN providers through a unified interface, including UI, API, and Terraform.
   
   
3. Consistent Security, Traffic Control, and Edge Computing Services: Virtual Edge ensures uniformity in additional services such as WAF, Rate Limiting, and Load Balancing across CDN platforms, all without the need for additional tier through which all traffic must pass

Virtual Edge by IO River shatters the limitations of single CDN provider dependency. It empowers online services with:

• A remarkable 99.999% availability, unattainable with just one CDN provider.
• Up to a 40% reduction in CDN costs.
• An improvement of up to 50% in performance.

Seamlessly integrating into your existing setup, Virtual Edge allows for effortless POC implementation with multiple CDN/Edge providers. Adding a new CDN/edge provider takes less than a minute. IO River orchestrates a gradual and cautious migration for your production traffic, considering all your already existing commitments.

Maximize the potential of Content Delivery through collaboration

In today's CDN/Edge landscape, vendors typically strive to craft the optimal solution in a silo, independent of the wider market. This approach has led to the creation of impressive networks and services, but it's also resulted in barriers that make switching providers difficult, and in some cases, nearly impossible.

At IO River, we embrace a distinct philosophy. Rather than constructing our own network, we focus on forging partnerships and fostering cooperation. We recognize that no single CDN/Edge provider is the ultimate solution for every scenario. Therefore, IO River enables the maximization of Edge capabilities by integrating multiple providers, offering our customers unparalleled flexibility. This approach allows for optimized costs and performance while ensuring extraordinary reliability for the delivery of the online services.
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We already support all leading CDN providers, including Cloudflare, Akamai, Fastly, Edgio, AWS CloudFront, among others. By collaborating with CDN providers and security frontrunners, IO River is dedicated to developing the most adaptable, fast, reliable, secure, and cost-effective platform for online services.

Staying Ahead in the Evolving Edge Landscape

The trend of employing Multi-CDN strategies, initially popular in video streaming, is now gaining momentum across various sectors. Recognized for its potential to amplify reliability, performance, and cost efficiency, this approach has been adopted by industry forerunners.

A growing number of enterprises are transitioning to a multi-vendor framework. We invite you to join us on this transformative journey as we redefine the CDN/Edge Computing market. Discover IO River's innovative solutions by visiting our website: https://www.ioriver.io.

On a personal note, I take immense pride in our accomplishments: assembling a top-tier team, forging disruptive technology, forging alliances with industry leaders, and serving our remarkable clientele. Yet, this is just the beginning. We look forward to welcoming new members to our team, building relationships with more customers, and forging partnerships in this exciting revolution.

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