When 31-year old internet entrepreneur Daniel Lewin boarded the American Airlines flight 11 from Boston, little did he know that it would be his last trip. The co-founder of Akamai Technologies was on the first plane that crashed into the Twin Towers on 9/11?a day that changed life on earth. At around 9 am, the Boeing 767 burst into flames upon hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Centre, cutting short Lewin?s exciting journey on earth. Akamai had lost its biggest visionary, but the fire has not been doused within the company. Lewin was an Israeli-American who served in one of the counter-terrorism units of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and is said to have been killed by the terrorists, for physically taking them on.
Akamai, a firm that was founded in 1998, is on a strong wicket today globally and its managing director in India Siddarth Malik is a kindred soul. ?We have never allowed Lewin?s memories to fade away. His principles still guide us,? he tells me, as we settle down for a morning chat.
Akamai, for the uninitiated, is a world leader in providing cloud services for delivering and securing online content and business applications. It is an internet content delivery network that operates a network of servers around the world and rents space on these servers to customers who want their websites to work faster by distributing content from locations close to the user.
?I would like to see Akamai becoming an intrinsic partner to our customers in India,? says Malik, ordering coffee as we speak. ?From a business side we want to engage with the public sector to help them adopt cloud as well as work with government organisations which are providing online services to people across India. We also see a significant opportunity in the e-commerce segment which has grown from $2.5 billion in 2009 to nearly $500 billion in 2013,? he adds, opening up to the opportunities around him.
Akamai helps iTunes and Facebook running seamlessly by decongesting the network. It is today responsible for a substantial chunk (around 30%) of the world?s internet traffic.
Clearly, Lewin?s innovative spirit runs deep. ?For this reason (innovation) we have introduced an idea jam in our Indian operations this year, which provides every employee with an opportunity to put forth ideas that can be built and executed. The first such session was held last month, wherein we received over 160 ideas out of which 10 have been selected and will be implemented over the next six months. I want to see world class innovations from India being adopted by Akamai globally,? says Malik. ?We can deliver on the above only if we continue to invest in our human capital and provide a meaningful and professional atmosphere for all our employees to help them work at their highest potential,? Malik says.
Last week Akamai had announced the acquisition of Velocius Networks, a provider of quality of service (QoS) technology for optimising application traffic across enterprise networks, in a cash transaction. The acquisition is expected to complement Akamai?s hybrid cloud optimisation strategy for optimising IP application traffic across the Internet for remote and branch end-users.
The Velocius Networks QoS technology is expected to be integrated into Akamai?s existing technology to provide traffic prioritisation and shaping capabilities for IP traffic accessed over Akamai?s Intelligent Platform. This plan is designed to enable Akamai to offer enterprise-class service levels for customers accessing IP applications over the internet. Global CEO Tom Leighton sees the acquisition as an an important investment in engineering talent and technology that is intended to complement hybrid cloud optimisation strategy.
And India is a key part of that strategy. ?India has over 120 million internet users and is the third largest user base in the world. The market and technologies are both evolving rapidly. However our customers still face a huge challenge in terms of speed. As per the latest Mckinsey?s report, the average international bandwidth capacity for every 10,000 people is 28 Mbps versus 6 Mbps in India. Today consumers expect a seamless online experience for accessing all kinds of data across all kinds of devices. However, each device network and application comes with its own complexities,? says Malik. And Akamai has been fairly successful in solving these issues by reducing complications of this hyper connected world.