IP Communications Featured Articles

If you've ever shopped online, downloaded music, watched a Web video or connected to work remotely, you've probably used Akamai's (News - Alert) cloud platform. Akamai Technologies, Inc. is a provider of the Akamai Intelligent Platform, a cloud platform to securely deliver high-performing user experiences to any device, anywhere.

Akamai and Verivue (News - Alert), a developer of high-performance IP platforms that enable network operators to distribute, deliver and control enormous amounts of IP-based media traffic, announced today that the two companies have signed a definitive agreement for Akamai to acquire Verivue in a cash transaction. The acquisition is expected to complement Akamai's Aura Network Solutions and accelerate Akamai's time-to-market in providing a comprehensive, licensed content delivery network (CDN) solution for network operators.

Aura Network Solutions (News - Alert) is a line of managed and licensed CDN offerings designed specifically for network operators to build their own Operator CDN capabilities, allowing them to monetize their network and reduce costs. The solutions are designed for both fixed line and mobile operators. As consumer adoption of Internet video and other media continues to grow, networks around the world are experiencing an explosion in traffic growth, resulting in congestion across an operator's network from aggregation, to backbone, to interconnect.

In response, operators are increasingly turning to CDN technology to offer new content services, provide a superior Quality of Experience (QoE) for their subscribers, and reduce network infrastructure costs. Most important is the emerging opportunity for network operators to become valuable stakeholders in the content distribution value chain, and in the process, increase their revenues and customer loyalty.

According to market research firm IDC (News - Alert), network operators worldwide are looking at ways to leverage on-net CDNs to improve the performance of their own digital cable and IPTV premium services and extend their managed multiscreen offerings. Operators can position their on-net CDNs and other network resources as optimized on-ramps that content publishers, OTT content aggregators, application developers, and set-top box vendors can use to reach a critical mass of potential viewers and provide a better end-to-end experience for their end users.

"Verivue has done an impressive job of building a licensed content delivery infrastructure and getting it deployed with several important operators," said Mick Scully, vice president and general manager of Akamai's Carrier Products Division, in a statement. "We believe that Verivue's technology will complement our roadmap for creating a comprehensive Operator CDN solution. Akamai has relationships with hundreds of network operators, and we offer them instant federation with our global Intelligent Platform. We believe joining forces with Verivue will allow us to help operators maximize content revenues and network efficiencies as the flood of media and video traffic increases."