Case Study: A+E Networks achieves faster deployments and lower video delivery costs with Fastly

A+E devs deploy in milliseconds & cut video delivery costs with Fastly

A+E Networks, the streaming media company behind brands like A&E, HISTORY, and Lifetime, needed a faster, more visible way to manage increasingly complex video delivery as traffic surged across web and mobile. Its legacy CDN setup relied on manual configuration and professional services, making deployments slow, rollbacks painful, and multi-CDN operations difficult to control. A+E Networks turned to Fastly for an edge cloud platform to help its developers move faster and improve streaming performance.

Fastly implemented Media Shield, On-the-Fly Packager, Origin Shielding, and real-time logs to give A+E Networks API-driven control, faster deployments, and better observability. The results were significant: configuration changes now propagate in milliseconds instead of hours, rollback times dropped from hours to moments, and A+E Networks saved an estimated two to three weeks of work in just three to four months using Media Shield. Fastly also helped reduce origin traffic, improve caching, manage traffic spikes, and lower streaming costs while supporting a smoother viewer experience.

A+E Networks

John Cool

Vice President, Digital Media