Digital River Announces Agreement with Akamai Technologies - Brief Article

Information Superhighways Newsletter, July, 2001

Digital River announced an agreement with Akamai Technologies under which Digital River is integrating Akamai's content delivery services into its e-commerce offering to further enhance the availability, delivery, and performance of the dynamic Internet content it manages and serves for its client base.

This agreement will allow Digital River to provide its client base enhanced performance and reliability for the delivery of content by expanding its caching technology onto Akamai's network of more than 9,700 worldwide servers. Digital River will leverage Akamai's scalable network to move e-commerce site content closer to its end-users.

"Digital River has a history of setting world-class performance standards. This is just one of the reasons that Digital River has been able to sustain growth in a market in which our competitors are closing their doors," said Joel Ronning, Digital River's CEO. "By integrating Akamai's content delivery services with Digital River's e-commerce system, we can further decrease our average page load times, reducing them by up to 60 percent, driving site performance well above industry standards. For our clients, this means an even more predictable level of service. For their end-customers, whether they be consumers or business partners, it means reduced response times and enhanced shopping experiences."

In addition to benefiting clients and their end-customers, this agreement also benefits Digital River. The company can leverage the scalability of Akamai's network for future on-line expansion without having to incur additional equipment and costly build-out.