Akamai Unveils Emerging Mobile Business Unit to Address Needs of Mobile Network Operators and Mobile Device Manufacturers

Company to Showcase Its New Akamai Mobile Edge Technology with Cisco at Mobile World Congress 2015

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Feb 26, 2015, 06:30 ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 26, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leading provider of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and business applications, today announced the formation of a new business unit intended to design and develop new technologies to directly address the needs of mobile network operators (MNO) and mobile device manufacturers. The new organization, headed by Vice President and General Manager, Lior Netzer, was created to serve as a center of excellence for inventing, incubating, and launching new mobile products designed for mobile networks and device manufacturers; as well as develop new mobile edge technologies intended to enhance and differentiate existing Akamai products through tighter integration with mobile networks.

One of the first innovations being introduced by the Emerging Mobile Business Unit is the Akamai Mobile Edge (AME). A cloud-based software platform, AME is designed to simplify the integration of the mobile ecosystem through a single interface that externalizes valuable network assets to third-party applications and mobile web development. The approach is intended to allow MNOs to more easily develop new and smarter mobile CDN services by becoming more content-aware and to allow Internet services to more intelligently deliver content by becoming network and device-aware.

Akamai will demonstrate the first integration of AME with Cisco at the Akamai booth at Mobile World Congress 2015, Hall 3 – Booth 3B30. The demonstration is intended to showcase a scenario, involving Mobile Network Aware Video. Akamai plans to leverage the policy intelligence of Cisco Policy Suite for Service Providers to deliver video content to the subscriber's device that is network-aware in an effort to provide a great end user experience. It is intended that the end-user will continue to see uninterrupted video playback regardless of the underlying network load and independent of the handset capabilities.

Other applications that may be possible through the development of AME include:

Predictive Video over Cellular – Designed to help MNOs more effectively use their off-peak cellular capacity, while better managing demand for video traffic and providing an ideal video quality experience, Predictive Video over Cellular is designed to make use of cellular load prediction to pre-position personalized video content to the mobile subscriber's device based on available cellular capacity or over a Wi-Fi connection.

Mobile Performance Analytics – Based on Akamai's proven Real User Monitoring capabilities and media viewer diagnostics technology, Mobile Performance Analytics is intended to provide MNOs with performance data collected from actual end‑user devices. Combing web performance data with media analytics can help MNOs better understand how websites load and videos play on the end-user device and provide a more accurate representation of the subscriber experience.

"The Emerging Mobile BU is all about taking what we've learned during the past 15 years of making the Internet fast, reliable and secure and applying that knowledge and expertise to the cellular network," explained Netzer. "Technologies such as the Akamai Mobile Edge, and the services it can support, are an important way in which Akamai can help MNOs and others in the mobile ecosystem provide an exemplary subscriber experience."

About Akamai
Akamai^® is the leading provider of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and business applications. At the core of the Company's solutions is the Akamai Intelligent Platform™ providing extensive reach, coupled with unmatched reliability, security, visibility and expertise. Akamai removes the complexities of connecting the increasingly mobile world, supporting 24/7 consumer demand, and enabling enterprises to securely leverage the cloud. To learn more about how Akamai is accelerating the pace of innovation in a hyperconnected world, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.