Report: Akamai To Announce P2P Service

Here's an interesting example of how a blog post can uncover information about a widely-followed public company: Yesterday Dan Rayburn wrote a post titled "Is Akamai Announcing a new P2P Delivery Service Next Week?" The post addressed speculation that Akamai (AKAM), the leading content delivery network, was set to unveil an attention-getting new service during its company analyst summit.

Within hours, Dan had heard from several Akamai customers saying the company is issuing invitations to a Nov. 6 event announcing the launch of the P2P delivery service.

In its quarterly analyst call yesterday afternoon, Akamai president and CEO Paul Sagan was asked about the reports of a P2P offering. Sagan noted that Akamai has been public about its interest in the peer-to-peer market (which Akamai refers to as "client delivery") but "we don't have any product or service announcements to make right now."

Sagan expanded upon Akamai's approach to the P2P market, saying that in the wake of Akamai's acquisition of P2P company Red Swoosh, it was "very optimistic about that client technology becoming an addition to our content delivery networking." The full transcript of the call is available at Seeking Alpha. Here's an excerpt of Sagan's comment son P2P:

Sagan also said P2P is a concern for many ISPs, who are critical partners for Akamai. Significantly, the company also raised its full-year revenue forecast to $625 to 629 million, from a previous range of $615 to 625 million.