About me

Hi, my name is Stef van der Ziel. I produced my first webcast in 1994 at age 21. I am the owner of Jet Stream BV and StreamZilla, two successful and innovative companies in the field of digital distribution strategies, CDN technologies and streaming services.

CDN Strategies Blog

This blog is about the CDN industry: the business, strategies, developments, technology, my vision, my background. It is in no way objective :-)

Besides my commercial interests in streaming media services and CDN technologies, I have a personal motivation. Actually my commercial activities are built upon my personal motivations, visions and ambitions. I am an internet pioneer. When I produced my first webcast, I foresaw a that the internet would democratize broadcasting. If I – a dropout with heavy interest in media and technology – could broadcast video globally, then anyone would be able to do so. In a matter of time, all content would be distributed via the web to PC’s, mobile clients and TV’s.

I envisioned a future where citizens and companies would not be locked in walled gardens and content owners could distribute content directly to consumers. I just knew that in a matter of time, people and companies would use the internet to share content. I also foresaw that the internet could not handle the sheer volumes of content. There would be a huge need for smart distribution technologies.

My personal motivation was -and is – to scale the web for professional, massive content delivery, to democratize broadcasting, to disrupt the traditional cable and broadcasting industry and to break open this market so anyone could create, distribute and consume content, anywhere, without borders.

I invested a lot of time in learning everything about streaming technology, with a focus on distribution. I produced large webcast events (+55 staff, ten thousands viewers, many simultaneous live channels, vod and interactive websites), both commercially and non-profit: to learn. I talked to anyone in the upcoming internet industry: broadcasters, publishers, ISP’s, telco’s and cable operators, about scaling and distribution. I talked about the changing value chains, and the impact on the companies in these chains. We designed basic CDN tools to use in our own large scale webcasting projects. I initiated many meetings to get infrastructure and content companies in the same room.

I started to theorize future-proof, scalable, flexible CDN architectures, technologies and solutions, that would help the internet scale, and would support my ambition and vision. With the knowledge and experience that I had developed over the years, we started to develop and further enhance the already developed CDN technology, and it did exactly what it had to do, to fulfill my visions and expectations.

I think that is what also sets our commercial activities apart from other companies. We didn’t start from a technical perspective. We aren’t yet-another-IT-company. We didn’t design a box and then try to find arguments to sell it. We started from a vision. We started as content producers. We started with the value chain, and the business cases. The technology is just an implementation of all this.

Well, ‘just an implementation’… the feedback we get is that our technology is miles ahead of anything else in this industry. After over 15 years of hard work, that is a great and IMHO well-deserved compliment, also for my great and loyal staff! We have a mission. This is what we do. We put our hearts in our products. Our customers and partners see this. They license our technology. And I am getting closer to that personal motivation: revolutionize broadcasting…

Feel free to share your comments: stef@jetstream.eu

Work

I love my job. I am proud of what I have achieved. No education. No money. Little help. I managed to achieve a lot with ambition, creativity, fascination and enthusiasm. We are a very successful company and we have a very good reputation for quality, knowledge, innovation and strategic expertise. I am proud that I have great colleagues and great customers. Work should be success and fun. Our office is located in Groningen, in the ‘Mediacentrale’, an old powerplant, modernized into an office building for digital media companies.

Our CDN is extremely densified to lower hardware, housing and maintenance costs, without losing performance. The operation is very environmentally friendly. The datacenters we use further decrease power usage by using free cooling, cold corridors, renewable energy, CO2 exhaust compensation and we use low power / high performance servers.

Home

I live with my lovely wife in a modernized farmhouse in the beautiful Drenthe province. The farmhouse is ±100 years old and has a thatched roof. The old stable is turned into a large living room with a modern kitchen, great for having friends over. Who can sleep in our guest room with private bathroom. I have a home office so I can be more flexible for international conference calls. It is a great place to relax after working and travelling 60 to 70 hours per week.

Our garden used to be a pasture which is turned into a beautiful park with ponds. We also have an orchard with pear and apple trees. The old vegetable garden is now a rose garden. The Netherlands is one of the most crowded countries. Having such a garden and no neighbours is a fantastic luxury. Animals love our garden too: chickens, birds, frogs, butterflies, ducks, bees, hedgehogs… Herons ate our fish and our cats ate all the mice.

Cars

I love cars. I drive a V8 Range Rover Sport for touring and we also have a Mini Cooper S for fun. I sold my ’99 Jeep Cherokee limited. I replaced the Range Rovers’ original alloys with 20″ and customized the grille, exhausts and some small details. Some may say my cars are decadent. So what. I’ve worked so hard for it and earned everything myself. With the great winter we’re having in 2010, the Range Rover has proven itself day in day out. Strange thing is that due to our taxing system it is cheaper for me to have an office car (not driving it privately) plus a private car.

Cars are a very expensive hobby in the Netherlands :-( Fuel is more expensive than anywhere in the world, almost 8 dollars per gallon… Three quarters of that is tax. And when you buy a car, you pay 42% plus 19% extra for tax… You are not allowed to drive a company car privately or you pay even more tax. On top of that we pay ‘road tax’, exorbitant parking taxes and occasionally speeding taxes. We call them envy taxes… Yes I am a bit allergic to civil servants and politicians, especially when they have expensive hobbies that make my expensive hobbies even more expensive… and when they waste my money on failing social, IT, infrastructure projects and bureaucracy. Our government wants to put GPS trackers in all our cars so they can charge us even more per driven kilometer. No way!

I am a good person. I quit smoking. I don’t get drunk. I make an honest living. We are respectful to our loyal customers. We are reliable. We don’t charge exorbitant rates for our services. I am nice to my wife, family and friends (although I do tend to tease them a lot). Our StreamZilla CDN is 100% CO2 neutral and is by far the greenest CDN out there. I even pay my taxes in time….

…but allow me to have one ‘bad’ habit. Fast cars. I don’t buy the cars to show off. I’m not that kind of person. I just really like cars. Of course I drive alert and securely. I never drive aggressively. I am a gentleman on the road. But when the road is empty and the weather is good…

… I sold my BMW 650 and bought a luxurious Italian V8 sportscar. Vrrrrroooooommm!!! The looks. That engine. The kick in your back. The precision steering. The exhaust roar. Is it normal? Not at all. Is it a well-considered and economical choice? Nope. Will it break down? Probably more often than a sane person would ever want. Does it get a smile on my face? Oh yes :-)

Drums

We have no neighbours. No neighbours! Boom-Bang-a-Bang!

Got married!

We got married on May 29 2009. Fortunately we had a beautiful day for the reception in our own garden.

Cats

Five of them. Little rascals. I chase them when they scratch the couch.

I like photography. I also like filming, listening to music (Punk, Metal, Grunge, Rock, Hip hop, Dance), Macs, watching films, gadgets, cool suits and shoes, and hanging out with my friends. I travel a lot, for business and pleasure. Recently I’ve been in the USA, Canada, London, Scotland, France, Moscow, Italy, Spain, Luxemburg, Belgium and Germany.