Akamai Technologies only began targeting the financial sector as a specific vertical at the beginning of last year, when it put together a dedicated financial services institution (FSI) practice. This move reflects the evolution of things like the online trading of foreign exchange, but also the general evolution of online financial services.

Akamai currently has US customers in the areas of insurance, brokerage and asset management (including Morgan Stanley) using its Web Application Accelerator service, one of the two new services it has rolled out in recent years in a bid to move beyond classic content delivery network (CDN). To date, however, Akamai has enjoyed greater success in Europe, where it is being used by two major FSIs in retail banking and one in commercial banking (specifically for global cash management).

The company has also recently announced a contract with Easy-Forex, a Cyprus-based online foreign exchange (forex) platform for consumer/retail traders, with customers in some 150 countries. Easy-Forex is using the Akamai service to overcome congestion and performance issues for users in Australia, the Middle East and China, but also to improve security against denial-of-service attacks.

There are at least a dozen other websites targeting retail investors in the forex market, including the likes of Xpress Trade, Global Forex Trading and FX Solutions. Presumably, some of these companies will also now be target customers for Akamai, as they are all competing at least partly on the quality of their user experience.

Akamai is now also looking at companies offering mortgage and loan refinancing, namely retail banks that have mortgage financing, mortgage lenders that focus on the online channel and, in the US, loan comparison sites. Not surprisingly, given the current turmoil, their services are in considerable demand in both the US and Europe at the moment. As such, the number of hits on their websites is increasing, making them a suitable case target for Akamai's services.

The services that Akamai is providing here will be a combination of classic CDN, in which static content is cached regionally around the globe to be closer to the end user clicking on a site, and web acceleration, which will handle the timely delivery of the dynamic part of the site, such as price quotes and interest rates.

Akamai sees opportunity in the financial sector because budget-constrained institutions may seek to leverage their internet channel even more during a downturn to compensate for headcount reduction, while companies that are 100% web-based and with products that are in current demand, such as refinancing, stand to increase market share.

It is notable that, while Akamai has some US FSIs as customers, it has had most success in Europe, suggesting that cracking the US market is proving more challenging, perhaps on account of the general economic morass there. Datamonitor will be watching to see how demand for Akamai's services from FSIs in that region picks up.

It will also be interesting to see whether any of Akamai's traditional competitors in the CDN market which are currently focused entirely on the media and entertainment space, such as Limelight, see the company making headway in financial services and seek to emulate its success in this market. To do so, however, they will need the web acceleration part of the service, as well as just caching.

Rik Turner

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.