A newcomer in the content delivery network (CDN) market this week took the wraps off its new network and applications, which are aimed at giving content providers better control over how assets are shared and optimized.

Based in San Carlos, Calif., Cotendo was founded in 2008 and is funded by Sequoia Capital and Benchmark Capital. Its R&D operations are based in Israel, where founder and CEO Ronni Zehavi is located.

Contendo’s Content Delivery Application Suite can help businesses better manage performance and costs associated with delivering content, Zehavi says. Application-level features let users control content in real time. For example, a company could determine how much to boost content delivery based on how valuable (in terms of revenue potential, for example) certain content is. Or a company could opt to use Cotendo’s CDN to boost performance of a particular application during peak times, but not off-peak times.

“Customers want more control and more flexibility. They don’t want a CDN that’s a black box,” Zehavi says. “They want to be able to shape and run [a CDN] the way they want it.”

The Cotendo application suite consists of: Content Delivery, which can speed delivery of cacheable Web content such as images, media objects and static HTML; Dynamic Site Acceleration (DSA), which is geared for maximizing the performance of non-cacheable dynamic data and Web sites while at the same time reducing load on origin servers; CDN Balancer, which lets users set different optimization rules for different kinds of content, to improve resiliency and keep expenses in check; and Cotendo RT Reports & Analytics, which provides traffic and audience metrics and reports.

The ability to optimize both static and dynamic content is critical, Zehavi says. “Static is basically Web content you can cache at global locations for performance, like graphics and media files. Dynamic is where you accelerate the ongoing connection between users and a dynamic Web site or application.”

CDN Balancer is a unique option that Cotendo offers, adds Mike Sawyer, vice president of marketing. CDN Balancer lets content providers control how they split distribution among different delivery networks, based on rules and real-time conditions -- a feature that midmarket content providers want but haven’t been able to get easily, he says.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.