uses see akamai disambiguation . akamai technologies inc. type public traded as nasdaq akam nasdaq 100 component s & p 500 component founded 1998 ; 18 years ago 1998 headquarters 150 broadway cambridge massachusetts 02142 usa key people george conrades chairman tom leighton co founder chief scientist ceo 1 industry internet revenue us 1.58 billion 2013 2 us 1.37 billion 2012 2 operating income us 414 million 2013 2 us 314.5 million 2012 2 net income us 293.5 million 2013 2 us 204 million 2012 2 total assets us 2.96 billion 2013 3 us 2.6 billion 2012 2 total equity us 2.63 billion 2013 3 us 2.35 billion 2012 2 employees 6 200 december 2015 4 website www.akamai.com alexa rank 100 dec 2014 update 5 type of site e commerce akamai content delivery to a user akamai headquarters in cambridge massachusetts usa akamai technologies inc. is a content delivery network cdn and cloud services provider headquartered in cambridge massachusetts in the united states . akamai s content delivery network is one of the world s largest distributed computing platforms responsible for serving between 15 and 30 percent of all web traffic . 6 the company operates a network of servers around the world and rents capacity on these servers to customers who want their websites to work faster by distributing content from locations close to the user . over the years its customers have included apple facebook bing twitter ebay google linkedin and healthcare.gov . when a user navigates to the url of an akamai customer their browser is redirected to one of akamai s copies of the website . the company was founded in 1998 by daniel m. lewin then a graduate student at mit and mit applied mathematics professor tom leighton . lewin was killed aboard american airlines flight 11 which crashed in the september 11 attacks of 2001 . leighton currently serves as akamai s ceo . akamai is a hawaiian word meaning intelligent or clever . contents 1 history 2 technologies 2.1 akamai intelligent platform 2.2 content delivery process 2.3 peer to peer networking 2.4 network operations command center 2.5 state of the internet 2.6 visualizing the internet 2.7 open initiative 2.8 primary domains 2.8.1 corporate 2.8.2 content delivery networks and domains 2.8.3 dns servers 3 customers 4 acquisitions 5 litigation 6 controversies 7 see also 8 notes 9 references 10 external links history edit akamai technologies entered the 1998 mit 50k competition with a business proposition based on their research and were selected as one of the finalists . 7 by august 1998 they had developed a working prototype and with the help of jonathan seelig preetish nijhawan and randall kaplan they began taking steps to incorporate the company . 8 in late 1998 and early 1999 a group of business professionals joined the founding team . most notably paul sagan former president of new media for time inc. and george conrades former chairman and chief executive officer of bbn corp. and senior vice president of u.s. operations for ibm . conrades became the chief executive officer of akamai in april 1999 and led the company from start up to sustained profitability and positive free cash flow before turning the reins over to sagan in 2005 . 9 10 11 the company launched its commercial service in april 1999 and was listed on the nasdaq stock market from october 29 1999 . 12 on july 1 2001 akamai was added to the russell 3000 index and russell 2000 index . 13 in 2001 co founder daniel m. lewin died in the september 11th attacks at the age of 31 . lewin was aboard american airlines flight 11 the first plane to crash into the world trade center . 14 in 2005 paul sagan was named chief executive officer of akamai . sagan worked to differentiate akamai from its competitors by expanding the company s breadth of services . 11 under his leadership the company grew to 1.37 billion in revenues . 15 sagan served as chief executive officer until co founder and current ceo tom leighton was elected to the position in 2013 . 16 technologies edit akamai intelligent platform edit the akamai intelligent platform is a distributed cloud computing platform that operates worldwide . it is a network of over 216 000 servers 17 deployed in more than 120 17 countries . these servers reside in more than 1 500 17 of the world s networks gathering real time information about traffic congestion and trouble spots . each akamai server is equipped with proprietary software that uses complex algorithms to process requests from nearby users and then serve the requested content . 18 content delivery process edit the content delivery process begins with a user submitting a request to a browser . when a user enters a url a dns request is triggered and an ip address is retrieved . with the ip address the browser can then contact a web server directly for subsequent requests . 19 in a content delivery network structure the domain name of the url is translated by the mapping system into the ip address of an edge server to serve the content to the user . 18 akamai delivers web content over its intelligent platform by transparently mirroring elements such as html css software downloads and media objects from customers servers . the akamai server is automatically picked depending on the type of content and the user s network location . receiving content from an akamai server close to the user allows for faster download times and less vulnerability to network congestion . akamai claims to provide better scalability by delivering the content over the last mile from servers close to end users avoiding the middle mile bottleneck of the internet . 20 peer to peer networking edit in addition to using akamai s own servers akamai delivers content from other end users computers in a form of peer to peer networking . 21 22 when users request a download of some large files served by this system it prompts them to download and install akamai netsession interface a download manager used to reduce download time and to increase quality . 23 however this software operates not merely as a download manager delivering content from the internet to the user s computer but also as a peer to peer server delivering content cached on the user s computer to other users computers . network operations command center edit akamai s network operations command center nocc is used for proactive monitoring and troubleshooting of all servers in the global akamai network . 24 the nocc provides real time statistics of akamai s web traffic . the traffic metrics update automatically and provide a view of the internet traffic conditions on akamai s servers and customer websites . 25 state of the internet edit the state of the internet report is a quarterly report akamai releases based on data gathered from its intelligent platform which provides global internet statistics such as connection speed broadband adoption attack traffic network connectivity and mobile connectivity . 26 27 visualizing the internet edit akamai s data visualization tools display how data is moving across the internet in real time . viewers are able to see global web conditions malicious attack traffic and internet connectivity . 28 in addition the net usage indices monitor global news consumption industry specific traffic and mobile trends . 29 akamai also offers the internet visualization application which allows users to view real time data on their mobile device . 30 open initiative edit on october 9 2013 akamai announced its open initiative at the 2013 akamai edge conference . open allows customers and partners to develop and customize the way they interact with the akamai intelligent platform . key components of open include system and development operations integration real time big data integration and a single point user interface . 31 primary domains edit akamai technologies owns about 60 other domains but the primary domains it uses include corporate edit akamai.com akamai s corporate domain content delivery networks and domains edit akamai.net akamaiedge.net akamaized.net akamaihd.net a content delivery network used by companies like ubisoft twitter and facebook to speed up their services edgesuite.net edgekey.net srip.net 32 33 akamaitechnologies.com a content delivery network used by companies like adobe akamaitechnologies.fr dns servers edit akamaitech.net akadns.net akam.net akamaistream.net customers edit on july 21 1999 at macworld expo new york apple and akamai announced a strategic partnership to build apple s new media network quicktime tv qtv based on quicktime streaming server . 34 both companies later announced that apple had made a 12.5 million investment in the company the previous month . 35 apple continues to use akamai as their primary content delivery network 36 for a wide range of applications including software downloads from apple s website quicktime movie trailers and the itunes store . 37 in september 1999 microsoft and akamai formed a strategic relationship to incorporate windows media technology in akamai s freeflow service as well as to facilitate the porting of the freeflow product to the windows platform ; this relationship exists to this day . 38 arabic news network al jazeera was a customer from march 28 2003 until april 2 2003 when akamai decided to end the relationship . 39 the network s english language managing editor claimed this was due to political pressure . 40 in june 2008 the newsmarket teamed with akamai to accelerate dynamic content and applications to global media ahead of the beijing olympics . 41 the bbc iplayer uses akamai to stream its recorded and live programs focused through an xml playlist . the entire china central television website cctv.com including its streaming video has been hosted on akamai s edge servers since late 2009 . 42 43 hulu uses akamai for hosting video . 44 mit opencourseware utilizes akamai s edgesuite for its content delivery network . 45 trend micro uses akamai for their housecall antivirus application . valve corporation s steam software service uses akamai s content delivery network for storing screenshots and icons uploaded by users . akamai provided streaming services to espn star india during the course of the icc cricket world cup 2011 . 46 rackspace s cloud files use akamai s content delivery network cdn for storing its customer s files . other customers include adobe systems airbnb amd autotrader.com espn hewlett packard hilton worldwide ibm j. c. penney lyst mtv networks nasa national academy of recording arts and sciences nbc sports pearson education red bull gmbh red hat yahoo . 47 akamai competes with cdnetworks cloudflare limelight networks maxcdn microsoft azure and edgecast networks . 48 acquisitions edit on feb. 10 2000 akamai acquired network24 communications 49 for an aggregate purchase price of 203 600 000 . 50 on apr. 20 2000 50 akamai acquired intervu inc. 51 for an aggregate purchase price of 2 800 000 000 . in july . 25 2000 akamai acquired calltheshots inc. for an aggregate purchase price of 3 700 000 . 50 on june 10 2005 akamai acquired speedera networks inc. for an aggregate purchase price of 142 200 000 . 52 in dec. 13 2006 akamai acquired nine systems inc. 53 for an aggregate purchase price of 157 500 000 . 54 on mar. 13 2007 akamai acquired netli inc. netli 55 for an aggregate purchase price of 154 400 000 . on apr. 12 2007 akamai acquired red swoosh inc. 56 for an aggregate purchase price of 18 700 000 . 57 on nov. 3 2008 akamai acquired acerno inc. 57 for an aggregate purchase price of 90 800 000 . 58 on june 10 2010 akamai acquired velocitude llc 59 for an aggregate purchase price of 12 000 000 . 60 on feb. 7 2012 akamai acquired blaze software inc. 61 for an aggregate purchase price of 19 300 000 . 62 on mar. 6 2012 akamai acquired cotendo inc. 61 for an aggregate