Akamai Unveils Web Applications on Demand; Search, Registration and User Prioritization among Initial Web Applications Businesses Can Deploy, Requiring No Fixed Infrastructure

Business Wire, Oct 18, 2004

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), a global leader of distributed computing solutions and services, is changing the way Web applications can be deployed and managed. Akamai introduced today a series of Web applications that businesses can rapidly deploy, without the need to purchase any hardware or other "fixed assets," and receive computing capacity when and where it is needed.

The initial Web applications that Akamai is making available via its EdgeComputing(R) service address common and often computing-intensive functionality found at many online businesses, including search, user prioritization, registration, and contests. Leveraging Akamai's global EdgePlatform, businesses receive on demand capacity based on adoption of the application and pay only for when the application is in use. Since there are no fixed assets necessary to deploy the application, a business can accelerate time to market at no financial risk, while reducing strain on its existing origin infrastructure.

"Akamai is further extending its global platform by offering a variety of core functional services often incorporated in Internet-based systems," said Sandra Rogers, Program Director of Web Services and Integration Software at IDC. "Akamai is focused on bringing to market Web services with flexible access models for enterprises to quickly build out service-oriented systems, leveraging its foundation for core provisioning and management."

Offering 'ready-to-deploy' applications provide a series of benefits including enabling businesses to focus on their core offerings -- not whether they have the infrastructure in place to test, manage, and distribute their business processing. Akamai is changing not only how enterprises look at Web application deployment, but also how independent software vendors (ISVs) can deliver "software on demand."

"Akamai is our preferred deployment model for taking applications developed on our rich client platform and making them available at high scale, on demand," said David Temkin, chief technology officer at Laszlo Systems, an open-source provider of a rich Internet application platform. "Our focus is on providing customers with rich and dynamic applications. Partnering with Akamai enables customers to bring these rich applications to market quickly, supported by world-class infrastructure that can be used when and where it is needed."

Akamai is offering a number of J2EE-based applications, powered by the Akamai EdgeComputing service. The following are available immediately:

--Site Search - uses the Lucene open source search application, enabling the processing of all searches to take place on Akamai's EdgePlatform, freeing up origin servers from the onslaught of computing cycles.

--User Prioritization - enables customers, when under conditions of extreme load, to ensure access to backend applications for high-value users or shoppers who have already begun a transaction process.

--Online Registration - enables companies to ensure registration data will be collected under conditions of extreme load, maximizing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and the ROI on marketing expenses.

--Contest - enables users to run online promotional contests deployed entirely on Akamai's EdgePlatform, leveraging its on-demand scale and global reach to support spikes in traffic. Using Akamai, marketers need only to generate the HTML page designs, insert them into the contest page flow framework, and launch the contest into production - a process that can be achieved within weeks.

'Applications on Demand' Delivers ROI For Customers

Customers that are currently utilizing applications powered by Akamai EdgeComputing are from a variety of industries, with significant traction within the retail and media & entertainment verticals.

When planning for a major television advertising campaign that was to launch at the end of May, GameZnFlix, Inc., an online movie and game rental company on the Web, realized its current infrastructure would not be able to support the volumes of end-user search requests that the commercial was to generate. Additionally, GameZnFlix did not have a robust search application in place to process those requests. GameZnFlix implemented Lucene powered by EdgeComputing to enable all of the search application's Java processing to be executed across Akamai's EdgePlatform, reducing the load on its origin servers.

"With only a limited number of weeks to prepare, we were able to quickly implement Lucene powered by EdgeComputing to put in place the infrastructure, computing resources, and management capabilities we needed to launch the ad campaign. With this solution we had complete confidence in our infrastructure and significantly reduced our expenses," said John Fleming, chief executive officer, GameZnFlix, Inc. "Rather than paying for new software licenses and hardware, EdgeComputing's innovative pay-as-you-go model efficiently served our needs."

Patron Solutions offers a comprehensive web-based ticketing service, www.neweratickets.com. End-users can access this on-line, real-time interface to purchase event tickets from theater companies, museums, professional sports teams, and concert promoters. Patron Solutions selected Akamai's User Prioritization powered by EdgeComputing service to help manage load to its enterprise transaction systems. If a customer decides to purchase an item via the neweratickets.com site but the origin server becomes overloaded, the user prioritization application manages user requests, allowing only the amount of purchasers the ticketing site can handle to be directed to the origin site. The remaining visitors are sent to an overflow site on the Akamai EdgePlatform to wait until the transaction processing systems can handle the requests. This approach enables Patron Solutions to provide a consistently available web presence without having to purchase and manage additional infrastructure.