1. Why does Akamai need to geographically disperse its servers to deliver its customers’ Web Content? a. This is because of the purpose of Akamai, which is to solve the congestion on the Internet crowed. Therefore, Akamai’s current products are using this technique that a cloud platform made up of over 150,000 servers within over 1,000 networks in 78 countries around the world. These servers allow the platform to identify and block security threats and instant device-level detections, etc. So that the local server will first receive the load then provide to local users.
This ill reduce the 15% up to 30% of web traffic and Latency (delay). The last but not the least, this has data verification and acknowledgement to make sure the information is safe. 2. If you wanted to deliver software content over the internet, would you sign up for Akamai’s service? What alternatives exist? a. Yes, I would. First of all, the case is to deliver software content over the internet, which means this product will in a certain size and will be download by users from different areas, even different countries.
What is more, even we assume that there is likelihood that the software ould not as big as a HD movie, but as the information and technology flows, there will be more likely update my software in the future. Therefore, software such as Akamai would be very necessary. So that use Akamai software would guarantee the data is reliable, scalable, transmit in a fast speed, flawless, and secured with report feedback. To be more realistic, when a employee search for “Faster internet delivery software”, Akamai comes at one of the Tops link on Google. Plus, many good feedback remarks. b.
There are Blue Coat, Limelight, Sawis, and Mirror Image Internet (In the book). 3. What advantages does an advertiser derive from using Akamai’s service? What kinds of products might benefit from this kind of service? a. First of all, Akamai provide more accurate and comprehensive knowledge with worldwide coverage, allow them to integrate a simple program to their web server and application server, allow them to retrieve the very latest information based on Akamai database, allow them easier to communicate with other companies through Akamai network, last but not the least, deliver ads based on local region. . 1) Local commercial, products sales; 2) religion products; 3) Periodical products; 4) price ange based on location products would benefit the most. As talked about in the book and last questions. Advertiser can deliver ads based on country, region, city, market area and so on. Corresponding to the real-time web activity. 4. Why don’t major business firms distribute their videos using P2P networks like BitTorrent? a. Because most major business is different than BitTorrent. First of all BitTorrent is a torrent software, which relies on P2P network to allow users to participate on the same download task.
What is more, BitTorrent’s seed providers, most of time, are individual sers. In order to upload a movie, or a music piece, P2P does not require user to purchase software. Major business firms would not use P2P networks because it will slow down the internet traffic when the website reaches a large size of customers browsing at the same time. What is more, Akamai have a big coverage of worldwide internet servers, which guarantee the business partners can receive the latest, safest, stalest and fastest information. The Akamai also is easy to collect the user data and bad internet impression will lose possible customers. . Do you think Internet users hould be charged based on the amount of bandwidth they consume or on a tiered plan where users would pay in rough proportion to their usage? The answer is yes. However, it is depends on the scenarios. When a company or the service provides is charged to use software such as Akamai, the users should be charged based on the amount used. However, even in the real world, YouTube and Facebook is free to use, but the built-in commercial is the income of the company. This is a circle that users watch the video and the commercials, the website provider pay for web traffic
Software Company and profit from the commercials. One of the examples is High bandwidth instance videos are charged. Porter’s Five Forces Models on Akamai 1) Rivalry among competitors As mentioned in the book, there are many competitors doing the same work as Akamai. There are Blue Coat, Limelight, Saw’s, and Mirror Image Internet. Competition currently is on the price. Because this is a red ocean, competitors provide very similar products to reduce the internet traffic. As we can read form the book that Akamai has different types of products.
The higher switching costs and ifferentiate products is one of the ways to reduce the direct completion. As mentioned in the book, Akamai is the first move company leading the technology, which takes the most of the market share and big market revenue. Intensity is high 2) New market Entrants There is still a possible that new entrants could enter the field. But this will cast a big amount of money and time to enter this market as new company, however, if big computer companies such as Google, CSCO have advantages to release a differentiate but relevant function product.
But with big market share and market evenue, Akamai has big royal customer groups which guarantee Akamai will not be influence by the new market entrants. What is more, this technology is first introduced by Akamai’s founders; therefore, there might be a legal barrier for new entrants. Distribution channels access is possible for new entrants, but it is hard. Threat of new entrants is middle level 3) Substitute Products There are a lot of substitute products in current market. Because the purpose of Akamai is to provide a faster transmitting information service to users and solve the bandwidth problems.
The new technologies and current technology been understand by other companies can easily conduct a similar products with different built-in functions and lunch with a new name a lower price. There are a big number of products that provide the same function in current market. Some of them are specific on certain area such as advanced routers from CSCO. So as the prices, based on the different use in different areas, the prices are different. Because of all these different types of the alternatives, I think The threat of substitutes is high 4) Suppliers servers.
In order to conduct higher and better software applications, the Akamai’s employees have power to command his or her wages. As long as the current servers can afford the current work, there is no need to update the servers. Therefore, The power of Suppliers low 5) Customers Currently, the Akamai did a good Job of providing a good internet bandwidth solution for customers. The cost of the product and relative of total cost seems fairly good, as online shopping, social network, and HD videos are mostly expected on the internet, Customers need the fast services of network.
Differentiation products are made to guarantee the need of customers. Since the Akamai already build up a big coverage of the worldwide use of customer groups, customers need Akamai to reach the newest, fastest, safest and latest information. Therefore, the bargain power of customer is not big. Unless some of the customers are not focus on Akamai areas services. Only under the condition that the service is comparable and switching to a new application require low costs. Then the customer’s power is high. But in currently, I think The power of customers is low to medium.
