Webmaster News – CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM) and OpSource™ today announced that Akamai’s recent strategic agreement with OpSource to provide Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) with complementary solutions is helping their joint customers significantly improve the time-to-value of cloud-based applications, while remaining cost effective for IT departments looking to avoid traditional data center capital costs.
Using the award-winning Web operations services of OpSource On-Demand™ along with Akamai’s market-leading solutions for optimizing application delivery outside the data-center, helps ensure a best-in-class design for cloud delivery. OpSource On-Demand enables SaaS and Web companies to quickly and securely deliver their applications and services over the Web to consumers and businesses alike. Going far beyond full-featured managed hosting, it includes the application management, compliance and business services that are necessary for on-demand business success. Leveraging both the OpSource and Akamai solutions means that SaaS ISVs can more quickly deploy their software and accelerate their applications on the Internet, while improving availability, scalability, and security on a global scale.
“As enterprises aggressively pursue SaaS and other emerging cloud-based services as an effective business model in today’s challenged economy, Akamai and OpSource are providing ISV’s of any size with a highly efficient, zero capital expenditure solution for ensuring global quality of service,” said Willie M. Tejada, vice president, Application and Site Acceleration, Akamai. “This new relationship with OpSource, as well as Akamai’s continued commitment to introduce functionality for optimizing the cloud, will help our SaaS customers succeed at what they do best – develop innovative software.”
Akamai and OpSource entered into a two-way referral agreement at the end of 2008. The companies’ complementary offerings provide joint customers the ability to outsource their Web infrastructure and application management in order to focus on their core business and driving increased revenue. In addition, SaaS ISVs leveraging OpSource can proactively incorporate Akamai’s acceleration capabilities early in the application or software development cycle. This enables SaaS ISVs to architect their on-demand applications upfront to best leverage Akamai’s distributed platform for optimizing delivery in the cloud.
“As more and more companies enter the SaaS space, one thing is clear: ISVs must have efficient, secure Web operations so they can concentrate on bringing innovative solutions to the marketplace. By offering ISVs the power of Akamai and OpSource solutions, we are giving companies a leg up in a challenging economy,” said Richard Dym, CMO, OpSource. “We are always looking to bring our customers the best technology possible, and working with Akamai lets us do just that. We are excited to see how we can work together to advance cloud computing in the years to come.”
Joint customers of Akamai and OpSource, such as Serena Software, have begun to receive the application delivery and data center hosting support they need to ensure ease of deployment, speed time-to-market, and ensure a positive customer experience.
“Serena provides software on premise and on demand to over 15,000 customers around the world,” said Atul Kumar, Vice President of SaaS Operations at Serena Software. “Our software enables teams of programmers to become more efficient by standardizing and automating development processes across both mainframe and distributed environments. Leveraging both Akamai and OpSource provides us the ease of management, global scale and performance we require to ensure our on demand customers have the best possible experience.”
Through enhancements to Akamai’s Web Application Accelerator service, Akamai is also announcing today new functionalities geared toward the business models and scaling needs of SaaS ISVs.
These product enhancements include:
* New access control functionality enabling end users to access the SaaS ISV’s offerings from secure enterprise locations.
* Improved visibility into customer traffic helping SaaS ISVs better understand customer adoption and behavior patterns.
“Akamai’s Web Application Accelerator for SaaS is designed for SaaS ISVs to help them grow, ensure access to proper users, and integrate with the complex security needs of enterprises engaged in business-to-business,” continued Tejada.
In addition to Akamai’s total number of SaaS customers growing by 50 percent in 2008, SaaS-related traffic on Akamai’s global platform has grown by almost twenty-fold over the last three years.
A closer look at Akamai-accelerated SaaS transactions reveals the global nature of enterprise application users. Akamai is currently serving SaaS transactions to geographically-dispersed users residing in over 200 countries, up from 150 countries one year ago. Presently, forty percent of SaaS transactions delivered over the Akamai Platform are executed outside of the United States, emphasizing the need for SaaS providers to develop application delivery strategies for a global user community. This number has increased from 25 percent one year ago.
The data on SaaS transactions running across Akamai’s globally distributed computing platform is based on a diverse range of SaaS applications including customer relationship management, supply chain and supplier relationship management, project portfolio management, human resources and talent management, e-learning and marketing solutions, among others.
About OpSource
OpSource™ delivers Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Web applications for on-demand companies, with hundreds of applications, millions of users and billions of transactions supported daily. OpSource On-Demand™, the leading Web operations solution, is defining how Web-based software is delivered. By choosing OpSource as their Web application delivery partner, companies are freed from investing in and managing the complex and costly infrastructure and services necessary to deliver applications over the Web. They can instead focus their resources on developing, marketing and selling their applications and services. Further, by using OpSource Connect™ companies can leverage Web services such as OpSource Billing CLM™, OpSource Analytics™ and OpSource End User Support™ and integrate their applications with other SaaS applications over the Internet as well as with enterprise applications behind the corporate firewall. OpSource On-Demand is suitable for companies at any stage of growth, with any type of on-demand application. Headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., OpSource has Web application delivery centers in Virginia, London and Bangalore. For more information about OpSource, visit www.opsource.net.
About Akamai
Akamai® provides market-leading managed services for powering rich media, 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, interact, and collaborate. To experience The Akamai Difference, visit www.akamai.com.
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