CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct 6, 2003 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), the world's largest on demand distributed computing platform for conducting profitable e-business, today announced that it has reached a milestone in the signing of the 500th customer of its EdgeSuite(R) service during the third quarter. As an integrated suite of services for secure content and applications delivery, content targeting, and business intelligence, Akamai EdgeSuite has defined how businesses are successfully leveraging the Internet as a shared medium for the distribution of their information and applications.

With over 500 businesses from Akamai's recurring customer base now relying on EdgeSuite, the service has evolved as the industry's leading solution for high-performing, scalable and secure content and applications distribution. Akamai has seen significant adoption for its EdgeSuite service across many market segments, including automotive, financial services, government, high-technology, travel and hospitality, media and entertainment, and retail.

EdgeSuite is currently implemented by nearly half of the businesses that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average, by five of the top ten Fortune 500 companies, and by a growing list of today's leading financial institutions. Web sites that rely on EdgeSuite also include 50 percent of Internet Retailer's Top 50 retail sites in 2002, and five of the top ten government agencies on the most recent Keynote Government 40 Index.

During the third quarter of this year, the Akamai EdgeSuite service continued to attract leading brands and institutions across all industries, including the following new customers: AIRBUS, AirTran Airways, a subsidiary of AirTran Holdings, Inc., Baylor University, Chicago State University, Commonwealth of Massachusetts Information Technology Division, Drugstore.com, DYMO Corporation, Food and Drug Administration, IDC, Ohio Wesleyan University, Reuters, and Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey, to name a few.

"I want to thank all of our customers who have made this significant milestone possible for Akamai," said Michael Ruffolo, executive vice president, Global Sales, Services and Marketing, Akamai. "Without question, EdgeSuite has become a 'must-have' for leading enterprises, Web-250 companies, and government agencies that are serious about doing business on the Internet. Achieving this milestone in under three years of commercial availability is testament to the importance of this suite of services."

The Akamai EdgeSuite service is an important industry advancement in how content and applications are dynamically processed and delivered over the Internet. Akamai's secure, distributed computing platform relieves the performance issues associated with centralized infrastructure, and dramatically reduces many of the concerns businesses have in using the Internet for mission-critical applications. EdgeSuite customers benefit from mitigation of denial of service attacks, network outages, or other means of planned or unplanned site downtime, enabling them to safeguard their brand and customer loyalty at all times. This value proposition is being adopted across multiple industries, including the following examples:

Retail

Many of the most recognized retailers in the world today have purchased Akamai EdgeSuite and subsequently have seen conversion rates increase by 15-20 percent on an ongoing basis. Around peak-shopping seasons, new product launches, and other promotional periods, EdgeSuite customers routinely witness increases in online orders by 100 percent or more, while saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in infrastructure costs.

    --  Based on analysis conducted by several retail customers,
        EdgeSuite's impact on download times for 'browsing' and
        'buying' pages have been found to improve a retailer's
        'visitor-to-buyer' conversion rates by over 15 percent, while
        improving 'add-to-cart' rates by over 8 percent.

    --  EdgeSuite has also been shown to have a major impact on Akamai
        customers' 'cost-per-customer-served.' After implementing the
        EdgeSuite service, retailers have shown the average
        cost-per-customer-served was reduced by 90 percent, due to
        shifting service calls from expensive call centers to online
        self-service - even while online orders increased by as much
        as 150 percent during the same period.

    Software

Roughly half of the world's top 20 software firms, and the majority of today's leading antivirus companies rely on Akamai's EdgeSuite offering for reliable, secure, and scalable software delivery. Akamai's international deployment enables the most critical software updates to be accessible in all regions, while saving software businesses millions of dollars in data center costs. EdgeSuite:

    --  has supported the largest software downloads in Internet
        history, and consistently delivers multiple Gigabits per
        second of traffic during antivirus updates; and

    --  recently enabled a leader in software development to benefit
        from a 91 percent reduction in download time and 95.92 percent
        error reduction for a 78 MB file distributed globally.

    Automotive

Five of the top ten global automotive manufacturers rely on the Akamai EdgeSuite service for distribution of information to customers, partners and suppliers. EdgeSuite:

    --  enabled an automotive leader to decrease its origin server's
        central processing utilization rate from 15 percent down to 8
        percent despite traffic peaks increasing by ten times normal
        levels during a major launch;

    --  distributes content, including collateral, training, and HR
        information, to dealers through a secure extranet for a
        leading Asian manufacturer; and

    --  supports live and on demand streaming in connection with
        global marketing efforts for today's leading automotive
        companies.

During its nearly three years of commercial use, the Akamai EdgeSuite service has experienced wide-spread use as enterprises leverage the Internet for their day-to-day business operations. In addition, EdgeSuite continues to be instrumental to the delivery of the Web's most prominent events - powering the largest Webcasts in North American and European history, supporting today's largest software downloads and movie trailer releases, and serving a majority of today's most popular media outlets in support of ongoing peaks in user traffic around major news events.

"Akamai Technologies continues to dominate the content delivery services market," said Michael Hoch, research director, Internet Infrastructure, Aberdeen Group. "With its mature services line - EdgeSuite, Akamai offers customers the well-proven benefits of higher performance, whole-site delivery, lower bandwidth costs, and scalable, secure IT infrastructure. Companies that want to 'extend and control' their e-business operations without increasing the associated infrastructure and management costs, should strongly consider Akamai."

About Akamai

Akamai(R) - The Business Internet, is the world's largest on demand distributed computing platform for conducting profitable e-business. Overcoming the inherent limitations of the Internet, Akamai's services ensure a high-performing, scalable, and secure environment for organizations to cost effectively extend and control their e-business infrastructure. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Akamai's industry-leading services, matched with world-class customer care, are used by hundreds of today's most successful enterprises and government agencies around the globe. For more information about the Akamai EdgeSuite service, visit http://www.akamai.com/en/html/services/edgesuite.html.

Akamai Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act

The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai's management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, lack of market acceptance of our services, the effects of any attempts to intentionally disrupt our services or network by hackers or others, failure to have available sufficient transmission capacity, a failure of Akamai's network infrastructure, and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.

SOURCE: Akamai Technologies, Inc.

Akamai Technologies, Inc.
Media Relations
Jeff Young, 617-444-3913
jyoung@akamai.com
or
Caryn Brownell, 617-444-2524
caryn.brownell@akamai.com

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