Akamai Announces Live Streaming For Adobe Flash Player Video

New offering for higher quality live video experiences using the Adobe® Flash® Player; Proven successful marquee events for Nickelodeon, Adobe and Stickam

CAMBRIDGE, MA— Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leading global service provider for accelerating content and applications online, today announced the availability of Akamai Live Streaming in the Adobe Flash FLV format for delivering live, real-time audio and video formatted for playback using the Adobe Flash Player. The solution includes support for On2 Technologies’ (AMEX:ONT) VP6™ codec used in the latest Adobe Flash Player, as well as for On2’s leading live Flash video software encoders.

Akamai’s distributed architecture is designed to reliably handle live online events and scale to support thousands of simultaneous viewers. Through a series of beta events, the service has already proven its ability to scale to support thousands of concurrent users. Akamai’s Live Streaming for Adobe Flash Player video leverages Akamai’s rich media delivery network to ensure an excellent experience for all audiences.

Akamai is also launching a dedicated Flash resource site including white papers, technical tips and development tools at www.akamai.com/flash. Learn more about Akamai Live Streaming for Adobe Flash Player video and sign up to be updated as soon as the service is available in July.

“Producing a live online broadcast is a complex undertaking. Based on customer demand across various industries and a need in the market for innovative ways to reach and engage with audiences through live streaming, Akamai’s goal is to not only to deliver high quality streaming, but to create a seamless end-to-end integrated experience that works flawlessly,” said Brad Rinklin, Vice President of Marketing, Akamai Technologies. “We are extremely excited to bring a solution to market that we have now proven by a series of large events. There is tremendous innovation in the streaming industry and Akamai is forcing the pace of innovation with the release and adoption of technology that continues to enhance the live video experience for consumers.”

As an Adobe Premier Authorized Flash Video Streaming Service Partner, Akamai and Adobe work closely together on all aspects of Akamai’s video streaming offering for Adobe Flash streaming video in order to ensure that customers will benefit from the latest in innovation as well as tight integration and ensured compatibility.

“As video on the web proliferates, Adobe’s goal is to bring rich interactive experiences to viewers around the world anytime, anywhere,” said Jim Guerard, vice president of Dynamic Media at Adobe. “Backed by the massive scale, reliability and performance of the Akamai platform, we can jointly offer our customers a complete set of tools to deliver truly engaging web video experiences.”

Over the past few months, Akamai has broadcast multiple live streaming events in Adobe’s Flash Player video format including Nickelodeon’s 20th Annual Kid Choice Awards, Adobe’s live coverage of the Amgen Tour of California bicycle race, Adobe’s CS3 launch, and live video broadcast events for leading social media community site Stickam.

Adobe
Sponsored by Adobe and Amgen, the annual Amgen Tour of California bike race along the California coast was delivered live in Flash on the Akamai platform and the Adobe Flash Media Encoder. Akamai supported six hours of events for eight days, and saw a peak of 8,000 connected end-users and 4 Gbps peak served. Akamai also provided support for the live streaming broadcast of the Adobe Creative Suite 3 launch event on March 27th, which drove close to 10,000 concurrent streams and capacity up to 6+ Gbps on the Akamai Live Flash Network.

Nickelodeon 20th Annual Kid’s Choice Awards
In March, Nickelodeon simultaneously aired the TV broadcast of its popular Nickelodeon 20th Annual Kid’s Choice Awards live on TurboNick, Nickelodeon’s broadband video service on Nick.com, over Akamai’s platform. The online coverage included the Awards, as well as backstage action and exclusive interviews with winners and presenters. Akamai’s Streaming service scaled seamlessly to support much higher than expected demand including 13,000 simultaneous Flash video streams at peak and 160,000 streams total.

“The ability to supplement our traditional TV broadcast events and create a unique cross-platform experience allows us to not only reach a wider audience, but engage all of our viewers in the way they choose,” said Jason Root, Vice President, Nick.com. “The live streaming helped lead Nick.com to one of its highest trafficked day ever, and Akamai was able to scale to meet the demands of multiple users flawlessly.”

Stickam
Stickam offers users a free video communications player to easily add dynamic, live video to people’s personal Web pages and blogs. In addition, Stickam broadcasts live events that everyone in their online community can tune into. Through Akamai’s Live Streaming solution, and using On2’s Flix Live VP6 encoder, Stickam was able to support a three-hour live video broadcast of a popular radio program, in Adobe’s Flash Video player format, scaling to more than 10,000 simultaneous streams at 600 Kbps each and 6.2 Gbps peak served.

“Live Flash streaming is rapidly growing in part because of the video quality inherent in VP6, and it is important that this quality be maintained all the way to the end user,” said Mike Savello, SVP for Flash business at On2 Technologies. “Akamai’s pervasive footprint and tight integration with our Flix products assures that users will get a compelling end-to-end live broadcasting experience.”

Akamai Live Flash Streaming features include:

* Proven Scalability for Live Flash Broadcasts: Akamai’s live Flash streaming service addresses the challenges associated with massive distribution of content and improve communication between Adobe Flash Media Servers for optimal scaling of live Flash broadcasts
* Tested End-to-End Workflow: Akamai has integrated closely with industry leading live encoders such as On2 Flix® Live for VP6 and the Adobe Flash Media Encoder, investing significant engineering and rigorous testing to streamline workflow, improve time to market and reduce the risk of manual errors.
* Detailed Analytics: Monitor and understand visitor metrics, volumes delivered as well geographic, player and format breakdowns for all live streaming broadcasts.