Cotendo offers an integrated suite of Web and mobile acceleration services, and has emerged as one of the more nimble players in the evolving market for content services. Akamai said the combination of the two companies’ technologies will increase the pace of its innovation in the areas of cloud and mobile optimization.

“As we look to accelerate growth across the dynamic landscapes of cloud and mobile optimization, we are excited to be joining forces with Cotendo,” said Paul Sagan, president and CEO of Akamai. “Cotendo’s technology, partnerships and people are a strong complement to Akamai. Together, we believe there is tremendous opportunity for our combined technologies as enterprises embrace the move to the cloud and seek solutions for an increasingly mobile world.”

“By combining our innovative technology and employees with Akamai, we expect our customers and partners will gain access to a comprehensive, global platform and wider portfolio of leading-edge services supported by some of the most experienced providers in the industry,” said Ronni Zehavi, CEO and co-founder of Cotendo.

Akamai (AKAM) has often expanded through acquisitions of competitors, including Nine Systems, Netli and Velocitude. Under terms of the agreement, Akamai will pay $268 million in cash to acquire all of the outstanding equity of Cotendo. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2012.

Founded in 2008, Cotendo is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. with a technology center in Israel. Cotendo currently has approximately 100 employees, with over 50 based in Israel.

“Simply put, Akamai needs to evolve,” Rayburn writes. “The market has changed and Akamai is not changing with it. They need to change their message, they need to open up to customers, they need to respond to RFPs faster and they have to stop operating their business with the attitude that no one can possibly compete with Akamai’s network technology.”

For the full story, read Pressure on Akamai Growing at StreamingMedia.com.

Akamai enables NobelPrize.org.  Akamai (AKAM) announced that Nobelprize.org, the official web site of the Nobel Prize, has partnered with Akamai Technologies, to become cloud enabled by using Akamai´s Dynamic Site Accelerator (DSA) for distribution and offloading the web site, as well as using HD Streaming for video on demand delivery. During the 2010 Nobel Prize announcements, the news captured worldwide attention and the live webcasts culminated in a total of 162,000 simultaneous unique visitors. The next announcements in October 2011 will reach a peak of simultaneous viewers, as well as another in December as they stream Nobel Lectures and the Nobel Prize Award Ceremonies. “The Nobel Prize captures international interest and we have experienced a continued increase in web site visitors during the past several years,” said Hans Mehlin, Director of Technology at Nobelprize.org. “We want to ensure that our visitors have a good experience – no matter where in the world they are located. Delivery of Nobel Prize announcements and other material on various media platforms has to be reliable. By using the Akamai DSA solution for distribution, we can confidently manage visitor peaks and provide our worldwide audience with a better experience.”

Telx and Hexagrid partner for hosted cloud solutions.  Telx  announced a strategic alliance with Hexagrid Computing, a developer of cloud enablement software solutions. The non-exclusive relationship empowers Telx’s managed service provider (MSP) and enterprise colocation customers in all 15 Cloud Connection Centers to build their own customized cloud environments using highly scalable, secure private cloud infrastructure and connectivity supplied by Telx’s Interconnection services and Hexagrid’s innovative cloud computing platform. The solution combines carrier-dense centers from Telx and the VxDatacenter cloud from Hexagrid, which optimizes kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) hypervisor technology as a comprehensive Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform. “As the cloud market continues to mature and more organizations look to strategically build and position clouds throughout the world, we believe it is imperative for organizations to have a strong connection backbone and data center partner to rely on,” said Joseph Seibel, CFO and VP of Strategic Development at Hexagrid Computing. “We are very excited to announce our partnership with Telx for delivering enterprise class private hosted clouds that only a provider with such a highly connected data center environment can offer.

Verizon Wholesale selected by Global Gossip.  Verizon (VZ) announced that Australia-based Global Gossip has selected Verizon Global Wholesale for a robust cloud computing platform that supports the worldwide communications services provider’s 300 sites across Australia, Europe, Fiji, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S.  The platform will be delivered through Verizon’s Computing-as-a-Service and gives Global Gossip the flexibility to quickly accommodate new functionality and growth. ”As business needs evolve, companies like Global Gossip rely on Verizon Global Wholesale to deliver the high-performance cloud services they need, freeing them to focus on their core goal of providing quality services to their own customers,” said Patrick Sullivan, sales leader for Asia-Pacific at Verizon Global Wholesale.

PDI selected by PeakColo. Power Distribution Incorporated (PDI) introduced PeakColo as its newest customer. PeakColo is utilizing the company’s newly announced PowerMap solution across its five data centers to automatically upload individual circuit-based power statistics and secure power management information in the cloud—eliminating the need for handheld meters. Delivered from the data centers in Denver and Phoenix PeakColo offers Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). “Energy costs are quickly getting out of control. When you combine rising prices with the expanding size of today’s data centers, it’s easy to see why efficient energy management is so critical,” said Luke Norris, Founder/CEO of PeakColo. “To help our customers maximize their investments in virtualization and cloud services, we needed to keep a close eye on our pass-through energy costs. That’s why we turned to PDI.”

Fox Sports signs on with Level 3. Level 3 Communications (LVLT) announced that FOX Sports is using Level 3’s Vyvx VenueNet+ services to support the delivery of all Major League Baseball games that it broadcasts for the 2011 season. Combining voice, video and data services VenueNet+ will reduce operational complexities for FOX Sports and enable more advanced communications options for the event delivery process. “After using Level 3’s VenueNet+ services for the 2010 football season – including the Super Bowl, which was one of the most-watched events in history – we were truly impressed with the simplicity of the panel as well as the tremendous operational capabilities it enabled,” said Jerry Steinberg, senior vice president of Field Operations with FOX Sports. “We’re pleased to work with Level 3 to provide viewers with top-quality broadcasts for the 2011 baseball season.” Level 3 also announced that they have signed an agreement with Information Television Network (ITV), a producer of health and wellness broadcast programming based in Florida, to provide bandwidth support for the company’s expanding production needs.

AEG Digital Media Has Record Month with Akamai.  AEG Digital media, provider of complete webcast management and digital media services, announced today that it teamed with Akamai Technologies (AKAM) to deliver almost 170 million streams and more than 2,400 terabytes across the Akamai HD Network in April, the largest month ever for events enabled across the two companies’ platforms. Fueling the 14.7 billion online viewing sessions during April 2011 alone were the Royal Wedding and Coachella Music and Arts Festival events. “More media companies are taking advantage of the fantastic opportunity to engage viewers and add value to programming through digital broadcasts of live events,” said Suzanne Johnson, Director of Marketing at Akamai. “We have seen the numbers grow exponentially over the last year and expect that to continue as new devices and platforms emerge. The scale and power of the Akamai HD Network is behind many of these popular events to optimize the highest quality viewing experience on a global basis.”

Octoshape selected by Tennis Channel.  Octoshape and B2 Broadcasting announced they have been chosen by Tennis Channel as the exclusive provier of video streaming services for the 110th French Open. B2 Broadcasting is providing the on-site encoding services, as well as the enhanced multi court video player experience. The encoded video signals are acquired using the Octoshape Infinite Uplink technologies and streaming to the audience is delivered through the Octoshape Infinite Edge technology suite. “The French Open is a fantastic event for B2 to leverage our Octoshape partnership and our core broadcasting competencies in providing a robust broadband player for Tennis Channel,” said Paul Dingwitz, CTO B2 Broadcasting.

Cotendo selected by Conduit. CDN and service company Cotendo announced that Conduit, one of the world’s largest networks for application publishers, has adopted Cotendo’s suite of services as its primary tool for accelerating content delivery and enhancing content management to serve the needs of 260,000 publishers and 230 million users. Cotendo’s global network and traffic management services, such as CDN Load Balancing, Site Assure and Advanced DNS (ADNS), have enabled Conduit to offload on average 70-80% (and for some services up to 90%) of traffic from origin servers. “We are able to add new services and applications with confidence because Cotendo handles the traffic,” said Conduit’s Chief Technology Officer Dror Erez. “We can quickly introduce new programs without worrying about performance.”

Limelight acquires Clickability. Limelight Networks (LLNW) announced the acquisition of Clickability, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider of web content management (WCM) tools. San Francisco-based Clickability helps enterprise marketers and online publishers create, manage and publish content globally; track visitor experiences; and implement branding, social media, and demand generation campaigns on a website. Clickability content and marketing tools complement the Limelight platform and deepens the relationships with publishers, enterprises, and agencies by providing them with streamlined workflows, differentiated performance, and global scale. “This acquisition expands Limelight’s total addressable market in cloud-based services by $1 billion, and the web content management segment is expected by Gartner to grow to $1.7 billion by 2014,” said Jeff Lunsford, chairman and chief executive officer, Limelight Networks. “Limelight has built a track record of successfully integrating other high-value, high-margin cloud-based services. We look forward to continuing that success with Clickability as they begin to leverage our technical and operational infrastructure.”  The transaction was completed with a combination of Limelight Networks common stock and cash and is valued at approximately $10 million.

MLB.com adds Level 3 to CDN mix.  Dan Rayburn reveals some CDN usage of Level 3 by MLB.com, instead of having Akamai as a sole provider. After seeing an increase in content trace routes Dan called MLB and they said that the reason for using Level 3 CDN was to provide the best performance for the end user and not due to price. Dan estimates 25 to 30 percent of MLB.com’s traffic is now going over Level 3′s CDN. Additionally, Twitter seems to be exclusively using the Level 3 CDN. With recent earnings reports from both Akamai and Level 3, it appears that Level 3 is growing while Akamai reported that growth had “moderated”.

Meru announces AP400. Meru Networks (MERU) announced the AP400 Mobile Edge access point platform, the industry’s first first three-stream 802.11n quad-radio AP platform. The new AP400 was designed specifically to manage a smooth and accelerated transformation of the enterprise edge network from a wired Ethernet switch architecture to the new Mobile Edge. The AP400 Mobile Edge platform also leverages Meru’s patent-pending Orthogonal Array Beam Forming technology and next generation sub-carrier level beam forming to deliver Adaptive Optimization. Zeus Kerravala from Yankee Group commented that “enterprises are becoming more mobile by the day. The workforce is no longer attached to their desks accessing applications via a wired connection. Optimizing mobile devices and providing a flexible and reliable network from anywhere will be the next challenge on the IT horizon, forcing enterprises to rethink the way the network edge is designed. Meru is offering enterprises a clear migration path to a new wireless edge with the introduction of the AP400 platform, while enabling much needed cost savings and a more efficient workforce.”

IBM SmartCloud

The IBM SmartCloud offers a mix of private, public and hybrid clouds based on IBM hardware, software, services and best practices. The Enterprise implementation of SmartCloud allows a business to expand on internal development and test efforts with a reduction of application tasks from days to minutes via automation and rapid provisioning.  The Enterprise+ implementation adds the ability to provide a core set of multi-tenant services to manage virtual server, storage, network and security infrastructure components.

Client adoption, new software and  Cloud Standards

IBM announced increased client adoption of its cloud computing software and services with more than 20 million end-user customers worldwide, making it one of the world’s largest providers of software-as-a-service (SaaS).  Client additions include American Airlines, CARFAX, Frito-Lay, IndiaFirst Life Insurance Co., Shriram Transport Finance Company Ltd., and 7-Eleven.  To help accelerate adoption new software was introduced to help companies build their own cloud computing platforms to delivery business benefits in a wide range of industries such as banking, insurance, retail and communications.  IBM Workload Deployer provides a single platform to enable clients to provision all the middleware and application components they need to run Web workloads in the cloud across multiple systems in a simple and repeatable fashion. IBM also announced that they have joined more than 45 leading cloud organizations to form the new Cloud Standards Customer Council, which is managed by OMG.

IBM teams with Akamai

IBM and Akamai (AKAM) announced new offerings designed to speed the delivery of Web and cloud applications to the employees, partners and customers who rely on them. The offerings are part of a multi-phase initiative that integrates IBM WebSphere technology with Akamai’s (NASDAQ: AKAM) application delivery network. IBM plans to introduce IBM WebSphere Application Accelerator for Hybrid Networks, which will create a hybrid network between private enterprise networks and the public Internet. Clients seeking to increase the speed and reliability of their interactions with public cloud and software as a service applications will benefit from this offering. “Enterprise users of cloud-based or software as a service applications are often subjected to unacceptable performance and availability,” said Willie Tejada, vice president, Application and Site Acceleration, Akamai. “Together, IBM and Akamai have the technologies needed to address the challenges posed by these increasingly popular application delivery models. The availability of the public and hybrid network products will also help customers bring their WebSphere applications to market faster, more efficiently, and at less cost.”

IBM JumpStarts Cloud Ecosystem

IBM announced that they are making available two pricing and financing programs to help IBM Business Partners and start-up companies more easily build their own cloud applications and infrastructures with IBM technology. To complement the way that Cloud Application Providers receive payments from their own clients IBM will provide the option of acquiring IBM software for use in their SaaS offerings as a monthly rental subscription.  Additionally they will offer low-rate financing programs available from IBM Global Financing, the lending and leasing arm of IBM.  “More and more clients are asking IBM and our partners to provide them with cloud capabilities around the globe, ranging from the flexible delivery of software applications to building private and public clouds,” said Jim Corgel, general manager, Independent Software Vendor (ISV) and Developer Relations, IBM. “IBM’s business partner community is essential to our ability to support these demands, and we are committed to providing the industry’s best resources and opportunities to help our partners grow their business through the cloud.”

Challenges

A consolidation project of this scale will certainly be a challenge to coordinate across agencies and efforts could be delayed by the sheer complexity and of funding sources being identified. Terremark COO Bruce Hart told Government Computer News that he didn’t “think [Federal CIO] Vivek Kundra has done an adequate job to date to identify the source of funding for all of this, because data center consolidation is a fairly expensive proposition.  Compared to moving applications such as e-mail to a cloud computing environment, data center consolidation is going to take serious cash.”

DISA cloud services

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) operates 14 data centers around the world with approximately 3.7 petabytes connected by the broadband Defense network, the Global Information Grid (GIG).  Nextgov points out that DISA is ‘uniquely positioned’ to become the leading provider of cloud computing services to the Defense Department for both unclassified and classified data, according to the agency’s chief technology officer Dave Mihelcic.

DISA provides secure application hosting, storage, and bandwidth to military departments and agencies. It developed the Department of Defense’s native cloud platform, known as the Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE). The agency described the RACE transition in a presentation at Data Center World in 2009, saying the cloud model could  save hundreds of millions of dollars in IT costs for the defense department.

DISA serves the Army and Navy

The Army signed an agreement for DISA to host their email and the Naval Sea Systems Command runs its Web services and ship system design in the DISA cloud.  The global network operated by DISA moves the applications closer to end users through their GIG Content Delivery System.  The service is based on technology developed by Akamai to serve major commercial Web outlets with a network of distributed servers. To offer an alternative to remove users Mihelcic said that they are developing a data center in a transportable shipping container that houses servers and routers and easy-to-hook-up power connections.

When compared with commercial providers Mihelcic is hopeful that DISA stands out as a clear (and more secure) choice for other governmental agencies to select when looking to the cloud.

Rackspace extends support to the cloud. Rackspace (RAX) announced that it is offering a managed cloud offering, made up of cloud servers with a managed service level, providing businesses with proactive monitoring, troubleshooting and guidance on how to leverage cloud computing. Additionally Rackspace will extend its Fanatical Support into the cloud, by combining 24x7x365 managed service level with its highly scalable on-demand Cloud Servers offering. Features of the managed cloud include 24x7x365 rapid response to monitoring alerts, a variety of operating systems to choose from, technical guidance for growth and optimization, administrative level access, and anytime, anywhere accessibility. “Although the first era of the cloud was for developers and early adopters, now the rest of the world wants to use this incredible technology, and Rackspace is making this possible,” said Pat Matthews, senior vice president of cloud at Rackspace. “Many businesses want the help and expertise to make cloud computing work for them. We listened to our customers and now provide unmatched service in the cloud so companies can focus on what they know best — their core business — while Rackspace takes care of the rest.”

Akamai selected by Diesel and protecting against DDoS. Akamai (AKAM) announced that Diesel, the international lifestyle brand, has selected Akamai’s Dynamic Site Accelerator and Media Delivery solutions to accelerate and distribute the contents of its website to customers.  Instead of further investing in internal resources Diesel relied on Akamai’s global network and guaranteed the maximum usability of its website.  “Fashion brands’ websites typically include rich media content, like catwalk videos and collections images”, stated Henri D’Oriola, Director Southern Europe, Akamai Technologies. “Diesel is a prestigious and internationally recognized brand and has the need to offer all the people interested in its style a top quality online experience, with no slowdowns. Now, thanks to Akamai’s technology, all Diesel fans around the world can fully enjoy and dive into the brand’s philosophy”.  Akamai also announced that it shielded several leading retailers from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks during the three-day period following Cyber Monday. The attacks, which were highly distributed, caused some of the websites to experience up to 10,000 times their normal daily traffic. With protection from Akamai, the retailers were able to sustain the attacks, allowing them to stay in business during some of the busiest shopping days of the year.

Nimsoft selected by Basefarm.  Nimsoft announced that Basefarm, a Northern European provider of operational and IT services, is deploying the Nimsoft Monitoring Solution (NMS) across its infrastructure of 3,000 servers and the services and the applications running on those servers.  Basefarm’s clients span a broad range of industries and NMS will replace a variety of open source and commercial solutions previously used for monitoring.  “NMS will be a key technology enabler as Basefarm expands its offerings to address clients’ rapidly evolving cloud strategies,” said Bjart  Kvarme, CTO at Basefarm.

Raritan updates dcTrack. Raritan announced that its dcTrack data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software solution is now available as a VMware-ready virtual appliance.  In addition, platform operating system and database licensing costs are eliminated, along with their associated integration costs.  With version 2.4 dcTrack provides easy, point-and-click access to asset information and Visio-like visualization tools to help improve data center utilization.  “It eliminates the complexity of multiple spreadsheets, floor plans and connection diagrams by incorporating all data center information into a single consolidated solution for better correlation and analysis. This makes moves, adds and changes, and capacity management easier, faster and more accurate.  It helps improve data center efficiency and productivity, thereby lowering the cost of data center operations,” said James Cerwinski, Manager Software Products at Raritan.

CDN market leader Akamai (AKAM)  saw its shares decline about 5 percent, sliding $3.58 to $51.56. “It’s no secret that Netflix has a multiple vendor strategy,” Akamai told Rayburn in an email. “We continue to have an ongoing relationship with Netflix but we don’t comment on the specifics of customers, contracts or other providers.”

In early 2010 Akamai reportedly gained at least 51 percent of Netflix traffic by becoming their primary CDN.  Level 3 recently announced that it added 1.65 Tbps of capacity to its CDN in the third quarter and added five new network locations, including two in Canada. In the third quarter earnings call for Limelight, the company announced that Netflix had extended its contract for another three years. Limelight does not have CapEx plans for expanding its CDN, while Level 3 will spend $14 million in CapEx in just the fourth quarter.

See Rayburn’s story at the Business of Online Video for more details.

Equinix reports third quarter results. Equinix (EQIX) reported quarterly results for the quarter ending September 30, 2010.  Reported revenues in the third quarter were $330.3 million, or a 12 percent increase, which was the high end of the range given earlier in the month when the company announced revenue projections would be lower.  Equnix spent $143.9 million in capital expenditures, while it had $715.4 million in cash and cash equivalents. Net income was $11.2 for the quarter and adjusted EBITDA was $146.5 million, an increase of 11 percent over the previous quarter. After the revised guidance in early October Equinix stock plunged under $75 a share, but has since gradually climbed back up and gained more than $6 on Wednesday, closing at $83.  A positive outlook for 2011 was delivered with Equinix expecting revenues greater than $1.5 billion for the year.

Savvis reports third quarter results.  Savvis (SVVS) reported its third quarter 2010 financial results Wednesday with revenue of $214.9 million, compared to $213.2 million in the third quarter of 2009. “The company-wide changes and improvements we have made over the past year, specifically in sales and marketing, are now flowing through to our results. Based on the strength we continue to see in bookings, installs and renewals, we expect to continue on this path throughout 2011,” said Savvis CEO Jim Ousley.  Adjusted EBITDA was $59.7 million for the third quarter 2010, up 9 percent from $54.7 million in the second quarter.  Cash capital expenditures were $56.6 million and Savvis closed the quarter with $88 million in cash.  Revenue from colocation was up slightly from the second quarter, with managed services revenue making a larger jump to account for 46 percent of revenue with $81.5 million.

Akamai reports third quarter results. Akamai (AKAM) reported financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2010.  Revenue grew 3 percent from last quarter at $253.6 million and net income was $39.7 million.  “Akamai performed very well in the third quarter, and we believe we have solid momentum heading into our seasonally strongest quarter of the year,” said Paul Sagan, CEO of Akamai. “We continued to make key investments to support our customers’ online businesses and successfully meet the growing demand we have been seeing for our portfolio of cloud-based services.”  Akamai stock gained almost $2 during the day Wednesday and another $1.91 in after-hours trading.

Active Power reports third quarter results.  Active Power (ACPW) announced results for its third quarter ended September 30, 2010.  Revenues improved 15 percent from last quarter to $18.5 million, which was a 116 percent increase from the third quarter of 2009.  Active Power achieved the first quarterly net profit in its 18 year history, recording a net profit of $55,000 during the third quarter. During the third quarter Active Power shipped 97 flywheels in UPS systems at an average selling price of $88,000, compared to 56 shipped during the third quarter of 2009. They also completed a new $12.5 million revolving credit line to help finance working capital and business growth. “This quarter was highlighted by a substantial increase in revenues from our data center infrastructure solutions and a number of large repeat orders from our data center and technology-centric customers,” said Jim Clishem, president and CEO of Active Power. “Quoting activity and interest in our products continues to grow as companies are increasingly focused on solutions that reduce energy costs and floor space requirements, while also improving reliability.”