CDN Wrap: Akamai, Limelight, Abacast Go East

Written by Ryan Lawler

Friday, September 5. 2008 at 04:25 PM EDT Post a comment

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Akamai Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), Limelight Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: LLNW), and Abacast Inc. are making inroads in the Asia-Pacific market, with expansion plans and deals announced earlier this week.

Akamai expands in Korea
Akamai opened up a new office in Seoul and will be expanding operations there as the company plans to sell directly to Korean companies. In addition, Akamai has hired industry veteran Chung Yun Yeon to lead market development in the region.

Akamai had previously sold to Korean enterprises through a reseller agreement with Samsung Networks. Through that partnership, Akamai already has gained the business of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (Korea: SEC), AhnLab Inc., NHN Corp., and Nexon Corp.

Akamai's business in Korea has grown sevenfold over the last four years, which may be why the company decided to go it alone and attack the market head-on.

Limelight grabs another gaming console
Limelight continued its dominance of content delivered to gaming consoles with the announcement that it is being used to transmit interactive content to the Nintendo Wii console.

Nintendo chose the CDN's LimelightDELIVER service for the transmission of news, weather, and other interactive alerts to gamers worldwide. With the announcement, Limelight delivers content on all three major gaming platforms -- Microsoft Xbox, Sony PlayStation 3, and now the Wii.

Abacast delivers Olympics video via P2P
Abacast's live peer-to-peer (P2P) video distribution services chosen for online video coverage by Korean broadcaster SBS. The company powered SBS's Olympics Website, providing 1.5 Mb/s Windows Media streams to more than 12,000 simultaneous viewers.

Abacast wasn't the only provider to work with SBS. CDNetworks Co. Ltd. also delivered Olympic video streams for the broadcaster through its partnership with live P2P firm Octoshape.