Akamai Technologies, Inc.

is a cloud services provider headquartered in Cambridge,

Massachusetts, in the United States. Akamai's content delivery network is one of the world's
largest distributed computing platforms, responsible for serving between 15 and 30 percent of
all web traffic. The company operates a network of servers around the world and rents capacity
on these servers to customers who want their websites to work faster by distributing content
from locations close to the user. Over the years their customers have included Apple, Facebook,
Bing, Twitter and healthcare.gov. When a user navigates to the URL of an Akamai customer,
their browser is redirected to one of Akamais copies of this website, almost entirely invisible to
the vast majority of its users.
The company was founded in 1998 by Daniel M. Lewin (then a graduate student at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and MIT applied mathematics professor Tom Leighton,
together with Jonathan Seelig, Preetish Nijhawan and Randall Kaplan. Lewin was killed aboard
American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed in the September 11 attacks of 2001. Leighton
currently serves as Akamai's CEO. Akamai is a Hawaiian word meaning intelligent or
witty.

ABOUT AKAMAI
In a faster forward world, innovation doesn't wait for technology. Akamai is the global
leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, making the Internet fast, reliable
and secure for its customers. The company's advanced web performance, mobile
performance, cloud security and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how
businesses optimize consumer, enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device,
anywhere.

COMPANY HISTORY
Akamais beginnings lie in a challenge posed by World Wide Web inventor Tim
Berners-Lee at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in early 1995. The
father of the web foresaw the congestion that was soon to become very familiar to
Internet users, and he challenged colleagues at MIT to invent a fundamentally new and
better way to deliver Internet content. What he may not have foreseen was that posing
the problem in an academic setting would ultimately result in a commercial service that
has revolutionized the Internet.
MIT Professor of Applied Mathematics Tom Leighton, who had an office down the hall
from Dr. Berners-Lee, was intrigued by the challenge. Dr. Leighton, a renowned expert
on parallel algorithms and architecture was head of the Algorithms Group at MIT's
Laboratory for Computer Science. Dr. Leighton recognized that a solution to web
congestion could be found in applied mathematics and algorithms and he assembled a
team of researchers to tackle the problem.
After obtaining his undergraduate degrees in computer science and mathematics from
the Technion, Danny Lewin came to MIT in the Fall of 1996 to work with Dr. Leighton.
Shortly thereafter, Mr. Lewin began making rapid and important progress on a variety
of techniques for improving Internet performance. Working with the team, Dr. Leighton
and Mr. Lewin developed the mathematical algorithms necessary to intelligently route
and replicate content over a large network of distributed servers, technology that would
ultimately solve what was becoming a frustrating problem for Internet users.

BUILDING A BUSINESS
In 1997, Dr. Leighton and Mr. Lewin began exploring the possible commercial use of
their technology. Together with Preetish Nijhawan (a student at MITs Sloan school)
they entered the esteemed annual MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition in
September of that year. Over the course of the 9-month competition, the $50K team
grew substantially and their business plan was selected as one of six finalists among
100 entries. The distinction signaled that Internet content delivery had serious market
potential and on August 20, 1998, Dr. Leighton and Mr. Lewin incorporated Akamai,
with Jonathan Seelig (a student at the Sloan school) and Randall Kaplan joining the
founding team. Akamai obtained an exclusive license to certain intellectual property
from MIT, and development efforts began in the fall of 1998. Most of the companys
early employees were students who had worked on the project at MIT.

 In late 1998 and early 1999, experienced Internet business professionals joined the
team. Most notably, Paul Sagan, who was a former President of Time Inc. New Media,
a founder of Road Runner cable modem service and who helped launch NY 1 News,
became chief operating officer and eventually president of Akamai (later serving as
CEO from 2005 2013). George Conrades, former chairman and chief executive
officer of BBN Corp. and senior vice president of U.S. Operations for IBM, assumed
the helm as Akamais first chairman and chief executive officer in April 1999.

LAUNCHING COMMERCIAL SERVICE

The company grew rapidly and delivered its first live traffic (a pixel buried deep in the
Disney site) in February of 1999. In March, Akamai gained significant market exposure
when it enabled the delivery of March Madness for ESPN and a Star Wars trailer for
Entertainment Tonight, both of which experienced historic levels of user demand.
Akamai launched commercial service in April 1999 and announced that one of the
world's most-trafficked web properties, Yahoo!, was a charter customer.

NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION

(NBA) IN PARTNERSHIP WITH AKAMAI
NBA COMPETING ON A GLOBAL STAGE
The NBA made the commitment to expand the reach of their business by utilizing web
content to build and spread their brand. The NBAs partnership with Akamai provides
an amazing competitive advantage in the entertainment industry by delivering web
content reliably to an exceptionally large base of customers through many platforms,
and is a huge reason for their success and stability in such a competitive environment.

The NBAs web content is a vital part of their effort to reach out to new potential
customers as well as enhance their relationship with existing customers by
differentiating their product from their competitors and providing more than just the
3

games. Using Akamais services to help distribute their product over the Internet helps
the NBA strengthen their customer intimacy. Akamai helps deliver the NBAs web
content to an enormous amount of customers all over the globe. Akamai increases the
scope, reliability, and reach of the NBAs web content, thus delivering more fans, and a
more loyal customer base. Akamais drive to create solutions to web browsing recently
lead to the release of mobile accelerator software which increases the speed of loading
web content on mobile devices such as cell phones, providing the NBA yet another
competitive advantage in reaching the many consumers accessing content primarily on
mobile devices (Lohr, 2012, Impatient Web Users).

AKAMAI ON PROVIDING QUALITY SERVICE TO NBA

"Fans are looking for video, RSS feeds and Widgets. As demand for these assets increases, we
need a network partner like Akamai to distribute them in an efficient way."
-Michael Glideman , Sr. VP & CIO , NBA
The NBA leverages Akamai to meet peak online traffic demands and effectively maintain
employment and infrastructure costs, enabling them to deliver high quality online experiences
to their users on any device, anywhere.

Akamai enables the NBA to get more from its media by providing a simple, automated
solution for managing more than 45,000 media assets, assigning business policies and
publishing content to multiple distribution channels.

The NBA chose Akamai because it's the only solution to combine an enterprise-class
rich media management solution with the unmatched reach and reliability of Akamai's
global delivery platform.
During the 2007 season, the NBA began relying on Akamai to effectively manage,
control and distribute more than 195 million online video streams on a global basis and
since their relationship with Akamai began, NBA.com's traffic has increased
exponentially.
Akamai's suite of products has helped the NBA reach record traffic levels over 35
million unique global users per month while effectively maintaining employment and
infrastructure costs.
Furthermore, the reach and stability of Akamai's network has allowed the NBA to grow

advertising revenues by 500% since 2001.

SOURCE: www.akamai.com