Streaming Media - June/July 2008 - (Page 27) To accomplish application acceleration, you must control both ends of the network connection: the one close to end users and the one close to the application/content owner’s origin. In order for Akamai to accomplish this, it needs to have an edge server region close to the end user and an edge server region close to its customers’ origin infrastructure. In both cases, the goal is to get within 5 to 10 milliseconds away from both the origin and the user, thereby creating a binodal overlay network over the public internet. In addition, application traffic is bidirectional as opposed to unidirectional, like most traditional CDN traffic, so optimizations need to happen both ways. From what Akamai tells me, this illustrates the importance of a large distributed network for application acceleration and highlights why CDN vendors with a large data center approach will have a fundamentally difficult time entering this space. as Akamai stated, most of the company’s application delivery contracts are 24 months in length and include performance service-level agreements. Conclusion Some will say that hardware- and software-based application delivery products such as those offered by Cisco, Citrix Systems, Inc., and Juniper Networks, Inc. will be able to compete with Akamai for those who want to deploy it themselves. For a small percentage of customers, that is true, just like it is for those who may want to do their own video hosting or content delivery. But for the majority of customers who need application delivery, it isn’t practical or (in most cases) even possible to put an appliance close to every location where an employee, business partner, or customer can access a web browser. By controlling both ends of the network (both near the data center and near application users), Akamai is providing optimizations to improve application availability and response times that extend far beyond those limited to a footprint within a data center. If there was one thing I walked away with from this meeting, it is that Akamai is laser-focused on customers who have business problems, need to apply their own business rules around their content, need very detailed analytics, need geographic reach, need multiple services, and are trying to solve the entire ecosystem problem from creation to distribution. I didn't see or hear anything that gives me any reason to think that they are losing market share. They have some competition for video delivery, but most of those competitors are still very small and don't have a wide product portfolio. And when it comes to doing more than just pushing video bits, Akamai clearly has a handle on the market and, more importantly, the solutions customers will need a few quarters from now. [Note: Since another version of this post first appeared on my Business of Online Video blog (http://blog./streamingmedia.com), I’ve been asked several times about my visit to Akamai and my coverage of CDNs in general. Akamai did not pay for my trip to Cambridge; I paid for my own plane ticket. And no, Akamai did not see the blog post before it went live and have to "approve it," as some are asking. Finally, as I have said before, I have never bought, sold, or traded any stock in ANY public company, ever.] Compatible Content So, what kinds of content can take advantage of application delivery? Enterprise employees will find that many web applications they use on a daily basis can make use of the service, including expense management systems such as Oracle, contact management systems such as Siebel and Salesforce.com, learning management systems, and even web-based email. Many industryspecific applications can also utilize application delivery, including ad-campaign management tools such as DoubleClick DART, supplier/distributor inventory management applications, and project management software such as Autodesk. In addition, consumers are heavy users of many web applications that can employ the service, including online commerce sites, tax sites such as HRBlock.com, travel-booking sites such as Expedia.com, and sites that allow visitors to post user-generated media for online photo- and video-sharing. Akamai’s application acceleration technology also works with a wide range of application architectures, including service oriented architecture applications where communication is done machine-tomachine with no browser rendering, and Web 2.0 AJAX/FLEX class applications. Money Issues People also constantly ask me about how Akamai’s application delivery service is priced and what it costs. I don’t yet know the cost because I need to collect more data from customers before I can talk real numbers. But I do know that users are charged on a monthlysubscription-per-functional-application basis and that, Dan Rayburn (mail@danrayburn.com) is executive vice president of Streaming Media. Comments? Email us at letters@streamingmedia.com, or check the masthead for other ways to contact us. WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM 27 http://blog./streamingmedia.com http://WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM
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