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Akamai intros App Accelerator

Akamai Technologies, the leading global service provider for accelerating content and applications online, today announced the general availability of Akamai IP Application Accelerator service, the first managed service solution designed to improve the delivery of any enterprise IP-based application delivered over the Internet. With the introduction of IP Application Accelerator, Akamai is broadening its Application Performance Solutions portfolio beyond the acceleration of Web-based applications.

The new service provides an optimized architecture for delivering all classes of applications to the extended enterprise, ensuring increased application performance and availability for remote wireline and wireless users. Applications delivered by any protocol running over IP, such as secure sockets layer (SSL), Internet protocol security (IPsec) user datagram protocol (UDP) and Citrix independent computing architecture (ICA) or accessed via virtual private network (VPN) can benefit from this service. Example applications include client/server, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), live chat, productivity, and administration functions such as secure file transfers.

Until now, these types of applications have largely been impacted by challenges associated with performance, availability and real-time sensitivity caused by Internet conditions such as “middle mile” latency and packet loss. Inefficient application delivery can inhibit revenue growth and prove costly to IT professionals tasked with optimizing application performance.

Today, enterprise IT departments are leveraging Akamai’s global platform to deliver and ensure adoption of a broad class of applications to an expanded user base consisting of employees, business partners and customers. Companies like AppRiver, Phase Forward and Talisma are choosing Akamai’s IP Application Accelerator to optimize the availability and performance of IP-based applications and to realize the benefits inherent in a managed service approach. These benefits include minimizing total cost of ownership and supporting users which lie outside of IT’s direct control because there is no need to install, maintain and support client-side software.

“As companies continue globalizing their operations, they need to extend the reach of their business-critical enterprise applications – such as supply chain management, customer relationship management and product lifecycle management – to a broader set of geographically dispersed employees, business partners and customers,” said George Hamilton, director of Enterprise Infrastructure for Yankee Group. "The ability to link the extended enterprise with any IP-based application without installing and maintaining more client software reduces administrative overhead and lowers the total cost of ownership."

AppRiver, one of the largest e-mail security and Outlook Exchange managed service providers to the business market worldwide.

AppRiver is using Akamai’s IP Application Accelerator service to optimize performance of its hosted Outlook Exchange service for its 14,000 wireline and wireless customers accessing the service from home, hotels, remote offices or business kiosks. “AppRiver isn’t just in business to provide applications – it wants to continue to deliver a superior customer experience and maintain a high customer retention rate,” said AppRiver CTO Joel Smith. “With Akamai, we can keep our customer satisfaction high and our quality of service consistent – all without expanding our infrastructure.” Scott Cutler, executive vice president for AppRiver added, “There is no way around it – there are outages on the Internet every day. And when those outages impact our customers, we get calls. Because of the dynamic routing capabilities of the Akamai network, e-mail is delivered to our customers even in the event of these outages. That means satisfied customers and an end to availability related support calls.”

Massachusetts-based Phase Forward, a leading provider of data management solutions for clinical trials and drug safety

Akamai IP Application Accelerator helps optimize the Web connection between Phase Forward’s hosted clinical trial electronic data capture solution and global sites. “Web-based, hosted solutions are dependent on reliable global Internet infrastructure,” said Rich Deyermond, Phase Forward vice president of global customer care. “Increasingly our customers are undertaking large global clinical trials in remote areas of the world. We have successfully deployed the Akamai IP Application Accelerator on several hosted trials being accessed remotely from within developing countries.”

Talisma Corporation, a leading provider of Customer Interaction Management (CIM) solutions

Talsima is leveraging Akamai to eliminate the performance and availability degradation that users experience when trying to access CIM. “Our commitment to helping businesses provide an exceptional customer experience through CIM requires that we optimize the latency and packet loss associated with delivering interactive applications on the Internet,” said Talisma Vice President of International Services and Support Raj Mruthyunjayappa. “As an example, online chat and VoIP are highly sensitive to real-time Internet conditions. Implementing Akamai ensures our clients’ customer service and support organizations can continue to engage in customer interaction without disruption.”

Gains in application performance are achieved using a number of techniques, many of which are unique to Akamai and include dynamic mapping, route optimization, high performance transport optimization and packet redundancy. These performance improvements are directly linked to a number of benefits, including:

Improved User Experience for Increased Adoption and Productivity

Global Reach to an Extended Enterprise – companies can extend all IP-based applications to their globally dispersed employees, business partners and customers without the time, expense and risk associated with expanding infrastructure or installing, maintaining and support client-side software.

• 100 Percent Network Uptime
• Simplified Deployment and Support – no need to install additional client-side software.
• Visibility for Management and Control – The Akamai EdgeControl Management Center portal offers fast, accurate and secure reporting tools for tracking application performance – including application response times, packet loss and availability.

“Hundreds of enterprises have chosen Akamai’s managed service approach to accelerate their Web-based applications since our Web-based Application Accelerator service was introduced two years ago,” said Willie Tejada, vice president, Product Management for Akamai Application Performance Solutions. “Now, enterprises can accelerate all of their applications with the availability of our clientless IP Application Accelerator service. IT professionals know what is important to the business end of the enterprise – increasing productivity by ensuring all classes of applications are optimized for the extended workforce while increasing operational efficiencies. Through optimized performance and availability of IP-based applications, enterprises can improve business outcome, call center support, faster access to critical business data, and ultimately, an improved bottom line.”

The Akamai IP Application Accelerator service is generally available today. For more information click here.

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