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Analysis: Radiance's New CDN App Boosts File Delivery: Page 3 of 3

Radiance also is expensive. Although the price is influenced by network design, number of locations and number of seats, typical price quotes can quickly ramp up. Radiance estimates a deployment supporting a group of eight to 10 collaborative teams, in a managed service model, could cost from $8,000 to $15,000 per month. A Fortune 100-sized company could be looking at around $100,000 per month. These quotes were based on typical deployments, not exact specifications.

Radiance starts pricing for the product at $220 per seat for the first 25 desktop user clients and offers bulk discounts. That's about half the cost of Microsoft Office, or double the cost of a complete desktop-management system, adding just transfer files. Overnight delivery on DVD or tape remains cheaper for occasional transfer needs. However, if you need to transfer large files every day, shipping will cost more than Radiance and require several hours of work.

Another alternative would be upgrading connectivity. Upgrading your Internet connection by a factor of 2x would be cheaper for enterprises using commercial broadband DSL or cable. But poor network connections, such as international and satellite links, won't see as great a speed increase, due to TCP inefficiencies. Organizations with static branch offices may want to consider going with a cheaper WAFS solution, allowing larger e-mail attachments for internal messages, and install job-scheduling software on end user machines or servers for late night transactions. However, vertical markets, such as video production or CAD, will find e-mail insufficient for gigabyte-sized attachments and should consider Radiance more so than organizations with less aggressive file transfer needs.