Akamai Announces Reseller Program; Company to Sign Qualified Partners for Resale of Freeflow Internet Content Delivery Services.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--September 22, 1999--

Akamai Technologies, which operates a global Internet content delivery service that speeds up Web performance, today announced the introduction of the Akamai Reseller Program. The program is designed for the resale of Akamai's FreeFlowSM Internet content delivery service through qualified partners, including major Web hosting providers. As part of the program's introduction, Akamai has unveiled details on partner qualifications, as well as the respective responsibilities and resulting benefits to both parties.

"Akamai's initial focus is on Web hosting companies as resellers because of the complementary relationship between their offerings and Akamai's Internet content delivery service," said Earl Galleher, vice president of sales and distribution for Akamai. "We believe that hosting firms are well suited to representing our services from both a product and technology perspective, and that the combined offer of Internet content delivery and Web hosting will result in increased customer satisfaction of both services."

The Akamai Reseller Program will include joint participation between Akamai and the reseller on business functions including marketing, sales, customer training, service activation, billing, and customer care. Akamai will also provide selected resellers with a service level agreement (SLA) that can be offered to major Web site customers purchasing FreeFlow through the reseller arrangement. Akamai is currently engaged in conversations with a variety of Web hosting businesses to discuss possible reseller arrangements.

"Akamai will deliver to our reseller partners the tools and resources needed to deliver the high level of excellence experienced by Akamai's direct sales customers," said Galleher. "The impact of Akamai's relationship with high-end Web hosting facilities will result in a new set of benefits for major Web site owners. It will allow Akamai's Internet content delivery service to be available to them through the same company that manages their source data. This gives content providers a single point of contact for their network, while allowing Web hosting facilities the benefit of expanding their customer relationships."

In addition to offering Akamai's unique service to their base of customers, Akamai resellers will be able to provide their clients with protection against outages from peak crowds overwhelming their hosted Web sites. This will ensure widespread customer satisfaction even if a Web hosting facility is serving multiple high-traffic customers.

Akamai's worldwide distributed network of servers will also benefit Web hosting facilities that lack international data centers. With over 900 servers deployed in 15 countries, Akamai provides Web management facilities with global reach without the need to spend additional capital for hardware or connectivity. In addition, using Akamai's approach, Web site owners are assured of full interaction with end users, such as placing cookies and serving personalized information, and can deliver dynamic content without concern for stale pages. Akamai's service also ensures that content owners have a real time view of end user visitation, versus alternatives which are limited to presenting only historical views.

In a separate announcement today, Akamai named Frontier GlobalCenter, the data and Internet arm of Frontier Communications, as its first Akamai reseller. The two companies have been working together since the beginning of the year when Akamai began the deployment of its servers globally, including placement of Akamai's equipment in Frontier GlobalCenter's data centers.

About FreeFlow

Akamai's FreeFlow service speeds up Web site performance and improves reliability by delivering Internet content from Akamai servers around the globe located close to Internet end users. Delivering embedded content or objects for content-rich Web sites, FreeFlow comes with a 100% guarantee for fast and reliable Internet content delivery. FreeFlow has been in commercial use since the beginning of April, and to date has delivered more than 30 billion hits for today's most successful Web sites. Additional benefits for Web site owners include faster downloads, peak crowd protection, and easy implementation with any Web server or site design.

About Akamai

Akamai Technologies is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Akamai provides a global Internet content delivery service that improves Web site speed and reliability and protects against Web site crashes due to demand overloads. Currently, Akamai has 900 servers deployed in 15 countries across 25 telecommunications networks, providing Akamai's customers with guaranteed global Internet content delivery service. Akamai (pronounced AH kuh my) is Hawaiian for intelligent, clever and cool.