Akamai Optimizes Content Delivery

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

December 16, 1999 (2:31 PM EST)

By Chuck Moozakis,

Akamai Technologies on Thursday is taking the wraps off an application development platform designed to help businesses optimize how their Web content is delivered to customers.

Akamai's EdgeAdvantage "will allow us to shift from content delivery to content and application delivery," said Kieran Taylor, Akamai's senior product manager. "There is no reason why applications shouldn't be positioned closer to users."

EdgeAdvantage will support applications written under the proposed Internet Content Adaptation Protocol (ICAP), allowing them to run on top of 1,700 Akamai FreeFlow caching servers now installed in more than 100 networks worldwide.

ICAP, a standards-based protocol allowing disparate cache devices and application servers to communicate with each other, will be presented to the Internet Engineering Task Force early next year, Taylor said.

Taylor said EdgeAdvantage services could include such apps as transaction processing, virus scanning, customized ad insertion, and profiling. FreeFlow would take these applications and optimize how they are delivered-to a specific geographic region, for instance, or to a specific device such as a cell phone.

Taylor said the first EdgeAdvantage-developed services should be available to e-businesses in mid-2000.