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Noroff Case Studies

Cloudinary CDN Case Study

Author: Nicolai Andreassen Bye <nicolaibye>

Introduction

In an ever-growing online world, performance and availability become core for any website looking to serve multimedia assets. CDNs aim to provide this by creating a network of servers and serving content to the end-user from the geographically closest server, known as the “edge server”.

This works perfectly for improving load times on websites, but comes with the drawback of assets becoming stale if the original is updated. CDN is ideal for websites where its content is updated rarely.

In this case study, we will be exploring one of these CDNs in Cloudinary. With its free entry point, vast toolbox and developer options for uploading and managing assets, it’s a perfect starting point for newcomers to CDN systems.

Brief History

Key moments from Cloudinary’s brief history:

  • 2011: Cloudinary was founded in Israel by Itai Lahan, Tal Lev-Ami and Nadav Soferman.
  • 2014: Announced fully integrated image processing add-ons using technologies like Imagga, URL2PNG, Aspose and WebPurify, to name a few.
  • 2015: Received a strategic investment from Bessemer Venture Partners.
  • 2015: First U.S headquarters in Palo Alto, California, opened and added video management to its services.
  • 2019: Moved the company to Santa Clara, California and launched tools for responsive image breakpoint generation.

Main Features

Cloudinary provides an easy-to-use platform for storing, adjusting and optimizing images, videos and 3D assets for all screen sizes utilizing AI technologies. With a healthy ecosystem with over 300 partners, integrations, and plug-ins offer Cloudinary offers a single CDN system to manage, transform, optimise and deliver engaging visual content.

Transform and Customise

  • Generative Image manipulation: Using generative AI to fill, remove/replace objects or upscale your images.
  • 3D: Upload and implement 3D models.
  • Product Gallery: Gallery widget for back-end media management.
  • Filters and Overlays: Making edits directly to the assets with filters and overlays.

Optimise and Deliver

  • Cropping: Set the desired measurements and automatically crop your images. In addition, with AI powered tools, you can crop with object awareness both in images and videos.
  • Auto Responsive: Automatically adjusts the size and shape of your image to fit the device it is being viewed on.
  • Automatic Optimisation: Chooses the best format for the highest user experience by automatically formatting your assets.

Manage and Analyse

  • Smart Tagging: AI tools recognise and create tags and captions during the upload of images and videos.
  • Automated Workflows: Create presets that can easily be applied to all your assets for a seamless workflow.

Market Comparison: Cloudflare vs Cloudinary

Where Cloudinary differs from our example, CloudFlare, is in the depth of optimisation, media management, and delivery of digital media assets. Cloudflare focuses on providing website performance and security services, while Cloudinary primarily focuses on media management and editing, making things easier for developers.

Getting Started

Cloudinary has a handy feature of editing directly in the url for your digital assets. This means that it is quick and easy to add your media to your HTML structure while being able to apply the features from the service.

However, Cloudinary also provides integration with both backend and frontend tools such as Node, Python, PHP, React, Vue, etc. Rather than listing all the different ways to initiate this, you can find all of the Quick Start guides here.

Conclusion

Cloudinary is a powerful tool that allows you to manage and edit vast amounts of multimedia content with ease. Where it sacrifices in top of the field security and performance, it more than makes up for it in its in-depth tools and features.

Being both a perfect tool for small individuals working on their portfolio pages, to massive enterprises with business around the entire globe.

References