Akamai enables 2 - 24X performance improvement for enterprise

BANGALORE, INDIA: Akamai Technologies, Inc., the leading global service provider for accelerating content and applications online, has announced the results of tests conducted within SAP's Enterprise Services Community Networking Lab (ENL). The report validates that Akamai's Web Application Accelerator service delivers significant gains and consistent performance for users of the SAP NetWeaver platform and SAP applications based on an enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA).

Tests revealed 10 - 24X performance gains under conditions of high packet loss and consistent 2-5X performance gains under normal Internet conditions. By leveraging the Akamai Web Application Accelerator service, IT departments can ensure fast and reliable network performance for SAP applications delivered over the Internet to users located anywhere in the world, even when served from a single, centralised data center.

Akamai was the only member of SAP's Enterprise Services Community (ES Community) that opted to test its Web Application Accelerator solution outside of the WAN-simulated lab and over real-world Internet conditions. Akamai delivered these gains by overcoming Internet conditions that included cases of greater than 400 millisecond latencies and packet loss reaching nearly 90 percent.

Based on the tests in the production-grade SAP ENL environment, the report concludes the Akamai solution:

• Accelerates multi-step, highly dynamic business process transactions by 25 - 75 percent, reducing response times in some cases from 10 seconds to six seconds.

• Improves user experience of those using the SAP NetWeaver Portal from 25 - 100 percent, cutting response times in some cases from 32 seconds to less than 16 seconds.

• Provides 2- 24X improvement in file download performance, shrinking response times in one example from 58 seconds to less than three seconds under conditions of high packet loss.

• Delivers up to a 15X improvement in consistency, as measured by standard deviation improvement.

"This prevents the Internet from being a cost-effective and highly agile network to reach global users. The ENL test results validate that Akamai enables enterprises to effectively use the Internet to run SAP business applications in support of mission-critical business processes that are accessed through applications such as customer portals, supply chain management, product lifecycle, collaboration platforms and business-to-business commerce."

A member of SAP's ES Community from its inception in April 2006, Akamai has teamed with SAP to develop best practices for deploying SAP applications over the Internet. The Internet is playing an increasingly mission-critical role in today's extended enterprise environment as a highly cost-effective and agile network platform for linking partners and customers across corporate boundaries using enterprise SOA-based business processes.

The results revealed that the public Internet is highly unpredictable and delivers extremely variable latencies with high levels of packet loss – conditions that lower user adoption rates and ongoing business process transaction success.

Subsequent tests indicated that SAP NetWeaver and enterprise SOA-based applications leveraging Akamai's Web Application Accelerator service benefited from dramatic performance improvement and a consistent user experience by addressing Internet bottlenecks independent of the application.