Akamai Announces Research

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leading global service provider for accelerating content and applications online, today announced findings of research it has commissioned through Quocirca (www.quocirca.com), a leading European analyst and research company, on the effectiveness and use of web-enabled applications by businesses in the UK, France, Germany and Scandinavia. The research study involved speaking to 400 IT and business decision makers from small and large enterprises within the consumer and packaged goods (CPG), information technology and communications (ITC), manufacturing and retail sectors.

According to the survey respondents, enterprise performance and availability thresholds are highly demanding: 58 percent of respondents expect response time wait to be within three seconds, 90 percent expect response time wait to be within five seconds. Eighty-four percent expect Internet availability of more than 99 percent.

The findings also show that European-based companies are becoming increasingly reliant on the public Internet as a cost-effective way to extend the reach of mission-critical, Web-based enterprise applications such as portals, content management, supply chain management, customer relationship management and sales force automation– to geographically dispersed end users. Yet, since the Internet was not designed for use as a business platform, it does not efficiently meet user demands for reliable, fast access to business applications. This failure significantly reduces application adoption rates and increases costs as solving Internet latency and inconsistent availability has become a top IT priority throughout Europe. Improved performance and reliability of Web-based applications correlates to increased adoption, higher productivity and user satisfaction for greater branch office collaboration and supply chain efficiency.

The root cause of these issues is the inability to mitigate latency and packet loss effectively across the Internet’s “middle mile.” Inefficient application delivery can inhibit revenue growth and prove costly to IT professionals tasked with optimizing Web-based application performance while also striving for data center consolidation.

Other highlights of the research include:

The research also showed regional and industry variations in how web-enabled applications are being used and which solutions are being adopted by businesses so these performance issues can be addressed.

Bob Tarzey, research director at Quocirca, said: “What was evident from the research is that many European businesses are Web-enabling their business applications. This is partly to reduce costs and improve efficiencies, but also in order to open up applications to external users and employees working remotely. However, problems with Internet performance can mean a failure to deliver a reliable and acceptable end user experience and there is a danger of undermining the purpose of this web-enablement. Whichever solution companies opt for to address these issues, resolving the reliability and performance of web-based applications is certainly one of the top IT priorities for many European businesses as they strive to deliver a web-based model for their business processes and applications.”

Akamai Technologies Inc.