In Retrospect: The Journey to Edgio

You’ve probably heard the news that Limelight will soon be starting a new journey as Edgio. But what does that mean, and how did we get here? Let’s take a quick look back, starting with the beginning of 2021.

New CEO at Limelight. In February of  2021, I had the opportunity to join Limelight Networks to help shape and lead it through the next chapter of its long history. My extensive background in leading transformations in tech and security enabled me to see a very large opportunity at Limelight. The world has become increasingly distributed and digital, and yet companies continue to struggle to deliver digital experiences that are fast enough and safe enough.  

I saw in Limelight the chance to shape a company that could deliver the fastest and safest digital experiences on the planet. Quite frankly, I was, and continue to be, very excited about what is in front of us and how we can help companies deliver unmatched digital experiences.  

We spent most of 2021 focusing on fixing the basics. We recognized that we needed to have the most performant edge platform in the world. We also needed to streamline the company so we could afford to invest and provide some value back to our shareholders. We laid out a framework to focus on three priorities. Those priorities were, and continue to be, Improve, Expand, and Extend. A brief reminder of what they mean:

1. Improve our core CDN business by pursuing a leadership position in proactive client performance while improving our cost structure.

2. Expand our core business by building a strong customer base (with an emphasis on white-glove client service), improving performance, establishing a cost structure that creates more pricing flexibility, and aggressively pursuing a greater share of traffic and wallet from existing clients while growing our pipeline.

3. Extend our core business with meaningful improvements to profitability and growth by diversifying our capabilities, clients, and revenue mix and by providing robust edge capabilities that include delivery and AppOps solutions.

Focusing on the basics. While setting key priorities for the company, we focused on our people, culture, and organizational structure. We had to make some very difficult decisions in balance with some very exciting changes to get us to where we are today. 

My first hire at the company was a new leader of People Experience, in turn creating a dedicated People Experience team to focus on employee engagement and professional development, and, as part of that, we rolled out new core values of Client Obsession, Performance, Ownership, Design Thinking, and First Team. Our people and our values are the very fabric of our culture. Our values are central to everything we do and have guided us through this past year of enormous growth and change. They are critical to our continued success. We also redesigned our commercial motions from the ground up, including hiring a new leader of Growth to lead all sales and demand marketing motions. 

I asked David Peterschmidt to step in and take on the task of non-executive chairman. His long history of revitalizing leadership at the CEO level and his partnership in helping me shape the Limelight transformative strategy have proven to be very helpful.

The building blocks for growth. In September of 2021, we acquired Layer0. This acquisition combined the benefits of Limelight's world-class global edge network with Layer0's edge orchestration, application acceleration, and developer workflow capabilities to create a leading-edge solution while diversifying Limelight's services and client mix. As the year closed, we delivered on several key milestones from our strategic plan, reporting significant revenue, gross margin, and adjusted EBITDA growth quarter over quarter, and stayed steadfast with our improve, expand and extend strategy. That momentum carried us into 2022, when we reported record first-quarter results. Further, the operational improvements and renewed client focus efforts drove 17 of our top 20 highest historical traffic days within the quarter and 19 of our top 20 customers for the third quarter in a row, growing 20+% year-over-year. Lastly, we recently announced our intention to acquire Yahoo’s Edgecast, which brings us to today.

The phoenix (Edgio) rises. In addition to all of that, we’ve also announced plans to rebrand the company as Edgio, which we expect to complete in a few weeks as we work to finalize the acquisition of Edgecast. This could not be a more exciting time for us. Together, we have the ideal strategic combination to form a powerful technology company leading the edge. 

Our global footprint, high-performing network (#1), AppOps solutions, plus our best-in-class VOD performance and high-performing growth platform are joining Edgecast’s strong partner/channel platform, its robust security offerings, and its edge video platform. Edgecast is also leading in the live events space, and it’s bringing millions of R&D investment dollars into the fold. 

Combined, we will be Edgio - the only globally scaled, edge-enabled solutions provider with the expertise to meet growing consumer demand for fast, secure, and frictionless digital experiences.

I’ll continue to share more as we progress with: acquiring Edgecast, improving our infrastructure, hardening the security of our products and practices, and implementing our strategy. 

Bob