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Akamai Introduces Managed Internet Service for Delivery of Virtualized Applications and Desktops

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leader in powering video, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, today announced the industry's first managed Internet service for optimizing delivery of virtualized applications and desktops. Leveraging core technology from the Akamai IP Application Accelerator solution, the new targeted offering is designed to help enterprises realize the cost efficiency, scalability and global reach inherent with the Internet to deliver applications over virtual desktop infrastructure products offered by companies such as Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware.

Featuring customized integrations through professional services specific to virtual desktops, along with new, concurrent user-based pricing, Akamai's latest offering is focused on making it easier and more cost effective for enterprises to realize the intended return on investment of their virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

With virtual desktop connected devices forecasted to grow to approximately 66 million by the end of 2014, or 15 percent of all traditional professional desktop PCs1, enterprises are quickly adopting virtualization as a key component of their cost-containment efforts. Still, companies face major challenges to assuring the performance and scale of their VDI, including:

  • a user's proximity from a centralized virtualization environment has a direct impact on performance and availability;
  • high amounts of bandwidth are consumed by virtual protocols , e.g. virtualized desktop computing for 100 users in a branch can easily consume more than a T1/E1 of bandwidth on its own; and,
  • high cost and uptime issues associated with private-WAN connections in emerging territories where outsourcing and off-shoring are commonplace.

Deployment of virtualized applications and desktops over Akamai's globally-distributed network of over 50,000 servers is designed to ensure high performance regardless of a user's location. In addition, enterprises that adopt Akamai solutions can often eliminate the need to build out or upgrade costly private networks limited by preset reach and scale. Instead, Akamai allows for highly scalable and secure virtual desktop deployments to anyone, anywhere, across an Internet-based platform spanning 70 countries.

"We see the desktop virtualization market poised for significant growth and believe that our unique managed services model allows us to work with enterprises on large, global deployments of their virtual desktop infrastructure," said Willie M. Tejada, vice president, Application and Site Acceleration, Akamai. "We have seen good traction beyond browser-based applications since launching IP Application Accelerator, and this customized offering will allow us to focus even more on virtualization, meeting the needs of our enterprise clients through a user-based pricing model."

The Akamai IP Application Accelerator solution targeted for VDI is intended to allow enterprises to optimize application user performance-anywhere, anytime. With no requirement that customers make capex outlays or implement software changes or client-side software, Akamai's unique technology has been designed to transparently eliminate latency introduced by Internet routing, packet loss, and constrained throughput, which are all critical to providing acceptable virtualized user experiences. Performance improvements can be realized through several techniques including dynamic mapping, route optimization, packet redundancy algorithms, and transport protocol optimization.

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