Akamai and IBM WebSphere Team to Amplify Web Applications Delivery; Announcing the 'Akamai Ready' Initiative

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), the leader in powering video, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, today announced a multi-phase collaboration with IBM to enable optimal technology configurations and integrations between Akamai's Web application acceleration services and IBM WebSphere software. Akamai and IBM will collaborate on technologies to provide WebSphere customers with the performance, scalability and security benefits of Akamai's global edge delivery platform.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100225/AKAMAILOGO )

As part of this initiative, WebSphere DataPower Appliance with Application Optimization can be configured to leverage Akamai's Web Application Accelerator service and has shown ground breaking performance for delivering rich web applications to users all over the globe. Pre-set configurations are available today to optimize for performance and security.

"IBM and Akamai have been engaged in providing collaborative solutions to customers for over seven years," said Tom Leighton, chief scientist and co-founder, Akamai.  "During that time, Akamai has focused on developing advanced capabilities for caching, acceleration, scalability, security, authentication and route optimization.  Working together to amplify core application delivery capability in the cloud, Akamai and IBM are combining solutions to help customers bring applications to market faster and more efficiently, at less cost, and with far greater performance."

As both companies focus on cloud computing, including virtualization and distributed caching, this combined solution will provide customers elastic scalability of applications from the end user to the edge of the enterprise and all the way into the data center. As a result, customer can realize key benefits such as consistent response times even in the face of peak load demands, and greater ability to consolidate and reduce overall Web application infrastructure.

"The Akamai Ready initiative can provide significant cost savings by optimizing Web application delivery from edge of the enterprise to the end users," said Jerry Cuomo, IBM Fellow, Vice President and CTO, WebSphere.  "We continue to optimize selected WebSphere products to integrate with Akamai's Web acceleration services, which gives our customers the ability to elastically scale application deployments without associated capital build out enabling them to react more rapidly to business opportunities and changes."

To learn more about extending WebSphere into the cloud, Akamai's Dr. Tom Leighton will present "Amplifying WebSphere Applications across the Internet" on Wednesday, May 5th, during the main stage presentations at Impact 2010, taking place in Las Vegas.  Akamai will also be exhibiting (Booth D1) throughout the event, and will be showcasing a live display of its Network Operations Command Center (NOCC).

Akamai will also be presenting the following sessions in conjunction with IBM.  Session details follow:

About IBM WebSphere

For more information on all of the new products and services, or for details on how IBM is helping clients and Business Partners to make smarter, faster decisions by using BPM and SOA, visit: www.ibm.com/software/websphere

The Akamai Difference

Akamai® provides market-leading managed services for powering video, dynamic transactions, and enterprise applications online.  Having pioneered the content delivery market one decade ago, Akamai's services have been adopted by the world's most recognized brands across diverse industries.  The alternative to centralized Web infrastructure, Akamai's global network of tens of thousands of distributed servers provides the scale, reliability, insight and performance for businesses to succeed online.  Akamai has transformed the Internet into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, interact, and collaborate.  To experience The Akamai Difference, visit www.akamai.com.  

Akamai Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act

The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai's management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, the effects of any attempts to intentionally disrupt our services or network by hackers or others, changes in IBM's technology or to Akamai's technology such that they are no longer inter-operable, failure of our services to operate as expected, unexpected termination of Akamai's relationship with IBM, either Akamai or IBM failing to provide the resources and commitment to make the collaboration successful, a failure of Akamai's network infrastructure, and other factors that are discussed in Akamai's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.

SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.