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February 14, 2000

Akamai Acquisition Will Aid Streaming Media Push
Intervu purchase will help facilitate online meetings and training, but quality is a concern

By Bob Wallace

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ompanies looking to deliver audio and video from their Web sites stand to gain from Akamai Technologies Inc.'s planned $2.8 billion acquisition of streaming media services company Intervu Inc.

The deal, revealed last week, will give Akamai customers improved streaming media services delivered over an international network of 3,000 distributed servers. Content distribution provider Akamai says it will be able to expand the reach, versatility, and usage of its fledgling streaming media service by combining Intervu's servers, management tools, customers, and staff. The service is aimed at businesses that want to enrich their Web sites with audio or video and those that want to use streaming content for online meetings, training applications, and product launches.

But quality of service is by no means assured. "We haven't yet decided if we will offer service-level agreements for streaming media services and if we did, what they would cover," says Ray Weaver, Akamai senior product manager. Assuring performance is difficult because content is delivered from servers on Internet backbones. Moreover, low-speed access affects the quality of streaming traffic.

Camille Currim, VP of systems at iVillage, an Internet portal for women based in New York, says she's counting on Akamai offering guarantees, but doubts audio and video distribution to homes will take off fast: "They're going to have to offer some degree of service assurance, but if the last hop to the customer is a 28.8K-modem connection, the user isn't going to have a great experience with the audio and video."

Akamai will charge by the megabyte, but refused to disclose prices. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter.

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