Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leading global service provider for accelerating content and applications online, today announced findings of research it has commissioned through Quocirca ( www.quocirca.com), a leading European analyst and research company, on the effectiveness and use of web-enabled applications by businesses in the UK, France, Germany and Scandinavia. The research study involved speaking to 400 IT and business decision makers from small and large enterprises within the consumer and packaged goods (CPG), information technology and communications (ITC), manufacturing and retail sectors.
According to the survey respondents, enterprise performance and availability thresholds are highly demanding: 58 percent of respondents expect response time wait to be within three seconds, 90 percent expect response time wait to be within five seconds. Eighty-four percent expect Internet availability of more than 99 percent.
The findings also show that European-based companies are becoming increasingly reliant on the public Internet as a cost-effective way to extend the reach of mission-critical, Web-based enterprise applications – such as portals, content management, supply chain management, customer relationship management and sales force automation– to geographically dispersed end users. Yet, since the Internet was not designed for use as a business platform, it does not efficiently meet user demands for reliable, fast access to business applications. This failure significantly reduces application adoption rates and increases costs as solving Internet latency and inconsistent availability has become a top IT priority throughout Europe. Improved performance and reliability of Web-based applications correlates to increased adoption, higher productivity and user satisfaction for greater branch office collaboration and supply chain efficiency.
European businesses are increasingly committed to Web-enabled applications as a cost effective way of delivering critical business applications – 42 percent of the organizations contacted have deployed Web-based applications.
Those that have used a managed service solution show a high level of satisfaction with performance improvement gains – 84 percent of users of managed services agreed that the service had improved Internet performance as expected.
The research also showed regional and industry variations in how web-enabled applications are being used and which solutions are being adopted by businesses so these performance issues can be addressed. Bob Tarzey, research director at Quocirca, said: "What was evident from the research is that many European businesses are Web-enabling their business applications. This is partly to reduce costs and improve efficiencies, but also in order to open up applications to external users and employees working remotely. However, problems with Internet performance can mean a failure to deliver a reliable and acceptable end user experience and there is a danger of undermining the purpose of this web-enablement. Whichever solution companies opt for to address these issues, resolving the reliability and performance of web-based applications is certainly one of the top IT priorities for many European businesses as they strive to deliver a web-based model for their business processes and applications."
David Keane, director of International APS Solutions at Akamai, said: "The results of the research clearly show that businesses in Europe are serious about Web-enabling their key business processes and applications. As a company that offers solutions to address the latency and packet loss problems across the middle mile of the Internet, we believe that only by delivering applications and content in a managed and efficient way across the Internet can application performance be properly addressed. As more businesses look for the best way to improve application delivery and reliability, Akamai's Web Application Accelerator service will enable the success of many businesses in Europe and around the world."
Akamai's Web Application Accelerator service leverages Akamai's globally-deployed platform comprised of more than 28,000 servers located on more than 900 networks across approximately 70 countries. The acceleration service leverages two types of specialized edge servers: edge servers located near customers' origin infrastructure and edge servers located near end users. The edge servers utilize the Akamai Protocol to provide global LAN like performance and availability to Web applications delivered over the Internet, enabling enterprises to centralize their infrastructure yet not compromise performance and availability of their applications whether their delivery requirements are coast-to-coast or global. No changes to Web applications, servers or clients translate to low risk and fast time to value.
Akamai and Web Application Accelerator are either registered trademarks or service marks of Akamai Technologies, Inc.