Akamai Technologies Value Stock - Dividend - Research Selection

Akamai provides cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing content and business applications over the Internet. As a global leader in content delivery network, or CDN, services, our goal is to make the Internet fast, reliable and secure for our customers.

Our Strategy – Addressing the Needs of our Customers in the Internet Age

The Internet plays a crucial role in the way companies, government agencies and other enterprises conduct business and reach the public, but the world around us is rapidly evolving. In recent years, we have seen a dramatic increase in the use of social media for sharing photos, videos and ideas. More consumers are "cutting the cord" and consuming entertainment over the Internet rather than through traditional cable. Web pages are more complex with advertisements, videos, graphics and other third party content, causing speed and reliability to suffer. Online transactions and media are increasingly moving to mobile devices. More and more, government agencies want citizens to pay their taxes, submit applications and request information online. Security threats have grown more complex and arise more frequently. Enterprise applications are moving from behind the firewall to the cloud. Smart enterprises want to take advantage of these trends safely, profitably and intelligently.

What our customers want to do:

• provide consumers with superior online experiences when they access websites and applications from all types of devices from anywhere in the world;

• handle transactions securely and protect sensitive information;

• affordably present vibrant and engaging streaming content, including high definition, or HD, video, music and games;

• leverage the growth in the use of mobile devices to reach more consumers and provide dynamic experiences;

• scale and secure the enterprise network; and

• receive data about usage of their websites and applications.

What makes it difficult to achieve those goals:

• doing it yourself – building out data centers, coping with the technology changes, and dealing with sudden traffic spikes – is difficult and expensive;

• lack of a coordinated security system to protect against hackers, bots and other malefactors that want to steal assets and disrupt the functioning of the web;

• mobile networks tend to be slower and less reliable than the fixed line Internet and present other challenges;

• traffic congestion at data centers and between networks;

• it can be difficult to understand actual user experiences given myriad devices and locations; and

• coping with “last mile” issues – such as bandwidth constraints between consumers and their Internet access provider.