I am a sucker for a good story or narrative and I think Akamai has one. Everyone is fixated on the service or the last mile, so who is working on the middle mile? Why, that would be Akamai. I met with David Keane, Application Acceleration Services (APS) International Sales, and Malcolm Rowe, UK Regional Manager, earlier this week and I was impressed by the story they can tell. Its really a tale in numbers:
Akamai was the hottest performing stock on Nasdaq in 2006- up 60%
2006 revenue was up 47% to $430m
It claims to deliver 20% of Web traffic
Akamai’s EdgePlatform consists of more than 20k servers
Those are impressive figures by any standard. But what really struck me was the fact that Akamai doesn’t seem to be part of “The Conversation”. That is, bloggers and influencers in my experience don’t really talk about Akamai. As we move beyond Web 2.0, though, and begin to demand dependability for our web services, we’re going to look for accelerators and networks that can offer service level guarantees. I believe what comes next will be bridges between enterprise and web scale. That’s a conversation Akamai can definitely be a big part of.
update: Net serendipity as usual. One way to join the conversation: Buy a BitTorrent client and get cited by Michael Arrington (today!).
disclosure: When I went to the meeting, I just expected an update, but on reflection its pretty clear RedMonk could help Akamai with its conversational marketing. So read this blog in the knowledge that while I am already impressed with Akamai’s numbers, I think we can help it join some more conversations.
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