Key Impacts
- Reduced average page download times in Asia-Pacific from 12 seconds to 3 seconds
- Save more than $100,000 annually on infrastructure costs
- Supporting 650,000 unique visitors per month
- Frees company to quickly roll out new functionality
- Instills confidence in pursuing global expansion
Launched in 1999, Elance is the leading site for online work where businesses hire and work with qualified professionals around the world for projects such as Web design, marketing writing, and engineering. Elance facilitates the entire work process from hiring to collaboration to payment through its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.
As Elance began considering managed service options, Akamai quickly stood out. "When you want to deliver content to all corners of the world, the size of the delivery network matters. Akamai's global footprint really impressed us. In addition, while many companies can adequately deliver static content, only Akamai accelerates the delivery of dynamic content, which was critical for our system. As soon as the Akamai Web Application Accelerator (WAA) solution was in place, Elance saw a dramatic improvement in the delivery of both its static and dynamic content - even for users on dial-up in remote locations. Our average page download times went from 3 seconds to 1 second worldwide and from 12 seconds to 3 seconds in Asia-Pac" says Gandhi. "In the cloud computing model, lots of technology implementation, delivery, and maintenance is being handled remotely. While Akamai offers application performance services that speed up applications for users of cloud services, Elance provides tens of thousands of skilled professionals who are able to service customers in the cloud," explains Porteus.
"Thanks to the Akamai global network and WAA solution, we're aggressively growing Elance as the leading site for online work."
- Brad Porteus, CMO of Elance
