Easy-Forex Accelerates its Online Foreign Exchange Trading Platform By 50% with Akamai Web Application Accelerator

Eliminating congestion and performance issues for users in Australia, Middle East and China and improving security against denial of service attacks are key business benefits of the relationship

Paris, France .- Akamai Technologies SARL, a subsidiary of Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the global leader in powering rich media, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, today announced that Easy-Forex www.easy-forex.com, the leader in online foreign exchange trading in more than 150 countries, has implemented Akamai’s Web Application Accelerator solution. Easy-Forex is using Akamai’s solution to maintain the consistent performance of its dynamic and highly interactive platform for users located in Australia, Middle East and China to ensure its constant availability even during periods of high demand. Using Akamai’s solution has boosted application delivery performance by 50% and gaining the capacity to scale on-demand has enabled Easy-Forex to support the increase in FX trading volumes precipitated by the recent global economic crisis. Since implementing Akamai, over 70% of requests for Easy-Forex’s services are now accelerated by Akamai’s Web Application Accelerator.

Satisfying the online trading expectations of users, regardless of where they are located, is a primary business requirement for Easy-Forex. However, the company’s monitoring of user online experiences revealed some worrying performance gaps. “We identified that congestion issues were impacting performance for users in Australia, Middle East and China,” explained Uri Strauss, Head of Operations at Easy-Forex. “The resulting slow page downloads and refresh rates had knock on consequences, in terms of deal closure and lost trade opportunities, for users located in these geographies.”

With more than three trillion US dollars traded daily on the global FX market, Easy-Forex was one of the first online trading systems to allow clients to trade FX as a consumer product. Developed to make online trading both easy and transparent, Easy-Forex’s platform gives traders direct access to global currency markets. Operating in real-time, the ’no download’ FX web application - offered in 10 languages - lets users log in and start trading immediately. The Easy-Forex platform contains a number of unique elements designed to help users make educated decisions: access to the most up-to-date market information - including live data feeds from Reuters - and trading tools that enable fast reaction to rapidly moving market conditions.

Running on the company’s globally-distributed, highly-scalable platform of more than 42,000 deployed servers in over 1,000 networks across 70 countries, Akamai’s dynamic mapping system directs user requests to an optimal Akamai server, and uses route optimization to identify the fastest and most reliable route to retrieve dynamic data held on Easy-Forex’s application servers in the US. For an online FX trading platform, this boost in performance has helped to promote user loyalty and sustain a growing customer base.

As Strauss explained, partnering with Akamai has enabled Easy-Forex to deliver the consistent response times and higher availability that have all helped to drive user take-up around the globe without any costly hardware build-out. “We’ve achieved a significant overall improvement in application performance, resulting in fewer dropped trades despite enhanced volumes - all of which has enhanced the reputation of Easy-Forex as a reliable online FX trading platform.”

“While performance was our first priority, with Akamai we gained the unexpected additional benefit of improved security against denial of service attacks, for example, all of which helps ensure we maintain uninterrupted service delivery,” he concluded.

“Easy-Forex has been revolutionizing foreign exchange (FX) trading in more than 150 countries worldwide,” explained Henri d’Oriola, Regional Sales Manager Southern Europe at Akamai. “With Akamai’s help, bandwidth and latency are no longer a major issue and, using the Web Application Accelerator, Easy-Forex has been able to confidently forge ahead with the launch of a new Web-based trading platform containing significant new Web 2.0 functionality, rich content, and media.”