Akamai Boosts Web, Mobile App Performance
Posted by
Robert Mullins
March 21, 2012
“So there is a tremendous opportunity to improve the performance of mobile web sites and applications,” he says, citing user surveys that 71% of consumers expect Web sites to open on a mobile phone as quickly as they do on a desktop computer, and that 77% of organizations today have mobile web pages that take longer than 5 seconds on average to open.
To improve mobile Web performance, Akamai is introducing Aqua Mobile Accelerator, that seeks to overcome the inherent limitation of mobile Web delivery such as the latency of cellular networks, the constant movement of users through cell coverage areas, and the myriad devices they are using such as cell phones with different designs and processors. It also takes into account whether the user is connected through their carrier network or a wi-fi hotspot.
Among the features of Aqua is what the company calls “Mobile Tuned and Caching and Acceleration,” which is tuned for mobile networks and is deployed near mobile gateways, Santos explains. Another feature, “Device Detection and Redirect in the Cloud,” determines whether the endpoint device needs to get the mobile version of the Web site or the desktop version, depending on the device and the connection.
Akamai produced a beta user of Aqua Mobile Accelerator for its launch, Lee Clancy, VP of consumer products, for Trulia, a real estate listings site. Home sellers or real estate brokers list properties and home buyers browse. They can also select several criteria for what they’re looking for in a home -- location, number of bedrooms, price range, etc. -- and they’ll get pinged each time a home becomes available that matches their criteria.
“You’ve all been there. You’re browsing a map on some Web site and you’re waiting for those tiles to load and they continue to not appear,” Clancy lamented in a short video. “We use Akamai to make sure there are no hiccups along the way.”
Akamai has been adding modules to its Terra Enterprise Solutions over time to meet growing demands placed on networks to do more work in the cloud, deliver more streaming video, connect to mobile devices and provide better security in the face of growing cyber threats, says Rick McConnell, executive vice president of products and development at Akamai. He presided at another Akamai launch event a few weeks ago in San Francisco at which the company announced a partnership with Riverbed Technology to jointly offer a solution to reduce the latency in software-as-a-service delivery environments.
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