REPEAT/Akamai and F5 Networks Form Strategic Alliance to Deliver 'Akamaizer' Functionality to Optimize e-Businesses' Networks

Business Wire, May 17, 2000

Business Editors

REPEATING...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 17, 2000

Companies integrate Internet content and applications delivery

services with Internet traffic and content management products

Akamai Technologies (Nasdaq:AKAM), a global provider of high performance services for the delivery of Internet content, streaming media, and applications, and F5 Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq:FFIV), a leading provider of high performance Internet traffic and content management (iTCM) products, today announced that the two companies are jointly developing a dynamic "Akamaizer," a product that optimizes e-Business networks by routing users to the closest available content on the Akamai network. The Akamaizer will be available as an add-in software module to F5's BIG-IP(R) Controller and as a standalone appliance. The integration of Akamai's dynamic Akamaization plug-in capability is designed to help e-Businesses offer customers the best and fastest Web experience by enhancing overall site performance, reliability, scalability, and manageability.

"Britannica.com houses a rich set of multimedia content, including over 10,000 illustrations, photographs, drawings, maps, flags, and more than 75,000 definitions," said Doug Shuck, CIO for Britannica.com, a mutual customer of both Akamai's and F5's. "With such high volumes of heavy content flowing through our site, we're always looking for ways to optimize site performance. We expect that the solution from F5 and Akamai will help enable us to give users exactly what they want--fast and reliable access to the right content."

The Akamaizer will be one of many features of BIG-IP (and a natural extension that can be leveraged by F5's other product offerings), that add another level of fault tolerance to mission-critical e-Business networks. BIG-IP, F5's flagship iTCM product, provides high availability and intelligent traffic management for local Internet sites--enabling maximum flexibility for enterprises to best service their users' requests. This unprecedented level of control allows businesses to optimize backend resources within their Internet infrastructure and improve the availability and performance of mission-critical Internet servers and applications.

How the 'Akamaizer' works

Akamai addresses the Web's speed and congestion problems by analyzing real-time Internet conditions to deliver all forms of content over the most efficient route to the edges of the Internet, reaching end users quickly and reliably. F5 complements this speed and intelligence by addressing the problem of maximizing the availability, performance, and scalability of mission-critical Internet servers and applications. The Akamaizer is unique in its ability to translate URLs into Akamai's ARLs (Akamai Resource Locators), on-the-fly. As a result, end-user requests are directed to access a portion of content from the Akamai server that can best service the request.

"Akamai's alliance with F5 represents a creative and innovative approach to providing the best end user experience while maximizing Web site performance," said Peter Danzig, vice president of technology, Akamai. "Working with F5 enhances Akamai's ability to continue to provide scalability to its global network. The combination of the two, F5's BIG-IP product and Akamai's distributed edge services, enables simple 'press-of-the-button' Akamaization to F5's 1,600 plus and Akamai's 1,000 plus customers."

"Businesses that view great service and user satisfaction as mission-critical to their success will appreciate the benefits that our alliance with Akamai brings to the market," said Carl Amdahl, chief technical officer at F5 Networks. "The Akamaizer optimizes existing `Akamaized' networks and empowers e-Businesses to deliver the superior service level that their customers demand."

Availability

The BIG-IP Controller with the Akamaizer feature will be available in Q3 calendar year 2000 as a special purpose controller, and as a standard feature in the BIG-IP Enterprise version.

About F5 Networks

F5 Networks is the leading provider of Internet Traffic and Content Management (iTCM) products. The Company's integrated suite of high-performance products automatically and intelligently manage Internet traffic and content to improve the availability and performance of mission-critical Internet servers and applications. F5 Networks helps companies avoid the risk of being burdened with ill-performing networks that do not meet end user expectations, while enabling network administrators to better control and predict the performance of their infrastructure. F5 Networks' products are designed to provide a new level of fault tolerance by shielding users from system failure; optimizing response times to user requests and data flow; and cost-effectively managing an organization's Internet infrastructure. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and has offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Columbus, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Washington, D.C., Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, The Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden and the United Kingdom. F5 Networks is located on the web at www.f5.com