CDN News: Limelight, Akamai, EdgeCast

Here’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the content delivery network (CDN) sector:

EdgeCast helps Imgur with 2 billion views a month.  EdgeCast Networks announced that Imgur, an online image hosting and discovery service, has realized significant gains in site delivery speed using the EdgeCast global network. Turning to the EdgeCast CDN in June 2011 after Imgur experienced rapid growth, the company was able to leverage EdgeCast’s global presence and gain network capacity, quickly reduce bandwidth and server costs all while creating a high quality and consistent experience for its end users. Using the EdgeCast network, Imgur currently averages more than three million unique visitors a day and two billon page views each month. “Within a month of launching the site, we were beginning to see huge spikes of user growth and image uploads,” said Alan Schaaf, founder of Imgur. “Our users are currently uploading more than 500,000 images a day, and our success depends on the site’s speed and being able to continuously provide fast upload times. With EdgeCast, we can continue to scale, enable more users to share as much content as they want and feel confident that the site will always stay live.”

Limelight enhances video platform offering. Limelight Networks (LLNW) announced the release of several upgrades to the Limelight Video Platform (LVP) and Limelight Dynamic Site Platform (LDSP) integrated offering. Enhancements include the ability to publish videos across multiple online and mobile sites and manage video channels from within the LDSP interface. Additional enhancements within the LDSP interface include the ability to associate video assets with other web content, access all video channel management features, and publish and un-publish video channels. "As websites become the primary source of information for consumers and business buyers, publishers and marketers more than ever are tasked with providing engaging, relevant, and timely content," comments David Hatfield, Senior Vice President, Limelight Networks. "Managing, publishing, and delivering this content using disparate point systems is cumbersome and costly. To meet the challenges they face today, marketers and publishers require a powerful, unified system that allows them to quickly and cost-effectively manage a digital presence that drives site traffic and builds brand loyalty."

Akamai selected by Siemens.  Akamai Technologies (AKAM) announced that Siemens Industry, a division of Siemens AG, is using Akamai Web Application Accelerator in support of the company's global deployment of Microsoft SharePoint.  As a long time Akamai customer Siemens called will experience a globally-accessed SharePoint application with features such as dynamic caching, routing and connection optimization as well as security help ensure quick and reliable application delivery over the Internet. "Leading Enterprises and Governments have already begun to change the economics of how they deliver their most critical applications to their customers, suppliers, and employees,” said Mark Vargo, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Akamai EMEA. “The benefits are profound. Using Akamai, it makes the public Internet feel like a private extension of their own infrastructure, giving them a massive competitive advantage not only economically but with their ability to react quickly to changing demands – it makes large enterprises nimble again. Siemens is one of the most innovative companies leading others in how to take advantage of this new way of cloud computing and we are proud of this partnership.”