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Boston Globe - Akamai, IBM to launch service
By Hiawatha Bray
Globe Staff, 01 May 2003
Teaming up to better deliver Web applications
Cambridge-based
Akamai Technologies Inc., which helps customers
distribute Internet data globally, is teaming up with IBM Corp. to improve
the delivery of network-based software
applications.
The new service, called Akamai EdgeComputing, is set to be unveiled today
to improve the performance of ''Web services''
-- programs that automatically interact with other programs over the
Internet. IBM is one of the leading competitors in
the Web services market. Its WebSphere product competes with rival software
from Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems
Inc., among others.
Web services are hosted on business websites, for use by customers and
suppliers. For example, a Web services program can
accept a customer order, then automatically relay the information to the
company's shipping and accounting departments.
This kind of Web services application is generally run on a computer at the
company's offices. In Akamai EdgeComputing,
users of IBM's WebSphere will be able to have Akamai host the application
on any of the company's 15,000 servers
scattered around the world. These ''edge servers'' are now used to store
copies of Web pages and other data from popular
sites like the news service CNN. Because Internet users get the data from a
server close to them, instead of CNN'sAtlanta headquarters, they get faster network performance.
The IBM-Akamai system aims to provide the same performance boost for Web
services applications, by having them run on
computers close to the edges of the network.
''Instead of having all of my servers munching all of the data . . . I can
let Akamai's capacity handle that,'' said Bob
Sutor, IBM's director of WebSphere marketing.
Along with better performance, Akamai EdgeComputing is expected to save
money for users, who will be able to hand off the hosting of Web services
to Akamai, instead of having to purchase increased server capacity of their
own.
No financial terms were disclosed for the new IBM-Akamai service, which is
now available on a trial basis. It will be
offered for sale later this year by IBM's Global Services business unit.
Akamai yesterday posted a first-quarter net loss of $8.6 million, or 7
cents a share, narrowing its loss of $55.6
million, or 48 cents a share, in the January-to-March period last year. The
company's revenue grew 3.4 percent in the
first quarter to $36.6 million, its first sequential quarterly revenue
increase in a year.
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