What is MetaCDN?

MetaCDN is a cloud-based content delivery network (CDN) that harnesses high performance, low cost cloud storage networks. MetaCDN dramatically improves the performance of your website by replicating your content in over seventy locations around the world - letting you grow your business, not your infrastructure.

We offer effortless delivery of multimedia content to consumers worldwide, optimising the experience on all devices, platforms and connections to maximise branding opportunities, customer engagement and retention.

Who is behind MetaCDN?

MetaCDN Pty Ltd is a commercial spin-off from the University of Melbourne, based on research performed by Dr. James Broberg on Content Delivery Networks and Cloud Computing in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, as part of the Melbourne School of Engineering.

The MetaCDN project has received financial and in-kind support from the Australian Research Council (ARC), The University of Melbourne and Commercialisation Australia.

MetaCDN Pty Ltd was incorporated in February 2011 to bring the MetaCDN technology to market, and in March 2011, MetaCDN secured an investment from leading Australian venture capital firm Starfish Ventures. Starfish Ventures is an experienced venture capital manager that understands the challenges of building and managing high growth technology businesses from an Australian base. Its investment focus includes high growth information technology, life sciences, and clean technology companies.

The Team

James Broberg, PhD – CTO and Founder

Dr Broberg is the creator of MetaCDN, and has led its development for the last four years as a research project inside the University of Melbourne, and now as CTO and Director of MetaCDN Pty Ltd.

James is a recognised thought leader in the CDN and Cloud Computing fields, with numerous world first ideas and experiments in this space. He has published extensively on distributed systems, cloud computing and content delivery, with over twenty five peer reviewed publications to his name. James recently co-edited the Wiley book on Cloud computing entitled, Cloud Computing: Principles and Paradigms.

From 2003-2006, James was a PhD candidate at RMIT University. His doctoral thesis focused on devising novel and innovative task assignment policies for distributed systems under conditions of high utilisation and highly variable workloads.

James brings a wealth of relevant technology experience from his time in academic and commercial R&D sectors.

You can contact James via email or follow him on Twitter.

John Ellershaw, PhD – COO and Founder

Dr John Ellershaw is MetaCDN's Chief Operating Officer and Company Secretary. He handles day-to-day business management as well as strategic direction, sales and marketing. John has over 25 years of experience as an executive in small and large companies.

His background is in telecommunication and he was the general manager responsible for product strategy, development and marketing of Telstra's broadband access products. John has been Chief Technology Officer of another start-up company and led many development projects to commercial success.

You can contact John via email .

Anthony Glenning – Chairman

From 1999 to 2009, Anthony was an entrepreneur involved in a number of companies. Anthony was founder and CEO of Tonic Systems, a company that developed software for creating and managing presentations online. Tonic Systems was acquired by Google in 2007, where Anthony worked for the next 2 years within the Google Docs team. Anthony was also a founding, non-executive director of Cameron Systems, a company providing FIX protocol, software solutions to financial businesses, until it was acquired by Orc Software in 2006.

Prior to 1999, Anthony worked at Strategic Decisions Group as a management consultant specializing in high-risk, high reward decision analysis. Before that, Anthony was a staff engineer at Sun Microsystems, working on a range of projects including Energy Star power management compliance and the Java workstation. Overall, Anthony has spent a total of 14 years living in Silicon Valley and breathing entrepreneurship.

Anthony holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) (Hons) and a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) from the University of Melbourne, and a Master's of Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Anthony is a director and chairman of MetaCDN.

Robert Whatmough – Developer

Many moons ago, Rob and James went to university together, burning the midnight oil on occasion for various projects. After that questionable experience, he went on to development work for a number of companies working in the telco space.

Eventually boredom set in and after constant nagging from James, he was lured into joining MetaCDN and reliving ye uni days of olde.

When not stuck in front of a computer, Rob enjoys riding on two wheels (push and motorised forms), hiking, playing bass and losing pool games to Duncan.

Rob holds a Bachelor of Applied Science (Computer Science) from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).

Duncan White – Developer

Duncan is the token New Zealander in the MetaCDN team. After graduating from Victoria University in Wellington, Duncan began a career as a software developer in Aotearoa's capital before moving to Melbourne Australia.

With seven years coding (and three misguided years working as a business analyst), Duncan now specialises in sweet Java code and evil bash scripts.

In his spare time, Duncan enjoys hiking, cycling, and playing/watching/discussing football.

Duncan holds a Bachelor of Science (Mathematics and Computer Science) from Victoria University of Wellington.

Yudong Li – Developer

Yudong Li (aka featheast) joined the MetaCDN team as software developer at its inception while he was studying for a Master's degree at the University of Melbourne. He studied and worked in Wuhan, China for 24 years prior to permanently settling in Australia. While mostly focused on being a nerd facing the keyboard and monitor every day, he is also a crazy backpacker, a flight enthusiast and a big supporter of the Red Devils.

Yudong holds a Master of Computing in Distributed Computing from the University of Melbourne, as well as a Bachelor of Software Engineering and a Bachelor of Business and Management from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Hubei, P.R.China.

You can follow Yudong on Twitter.

Christof Zellweger – Developer (Intern)

After getting his undergrad degree (BSc in Computer Science, HSR, Switzerland), Christof worked as a software engineer for two years in the land of cheese and chocolate before he came to Melbourne to broaden his academic and personal horizons.

During his two years in the industry, Christof worked on various projects, mainly in the insurance and financial sector. Christof works for MetaCDN on a casual basis as much as possible while studying for his master's degree in Computer Science at the University of Melbourne.

Next to programming, he enjoys being physically active, travels the world, enjoys all kinds of movies and reads a lot.