Key Impacts
- Global sub-second response times for NetRatings applications with no capital outlay
- U.S. and global application availability increased to 100% and 99% respectively
- Protected and increased revenue
- Enhanced customer and sales force satisfaction
NetRatings, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTRT) provides the industry's global standard in Internet media and market research. The San Jose-based company offers Internet information services, data and tools that help media, advertising and eCommerce customers understand what users are doing on the Web. NetRatings’ primary product, NetView, encompasses more than 35 pre-defined reports and a custom query capability featuring in-depth measurements of Internet user behavior at home and at work. The NetRatings services deliver real-time information from large databases to 700 client companies in 13 countries (including the EU nations, Brazil, and Hong Kong), where the Internet usage of 150,000 randomly recruited panelists is tracked and measured. Just as AC Nielsen (NetRatings’ majority owner) measures TV viewing habits, NetRatings measures Internet usage.
The NetRatings applications are engineered to return data to the user in five seconds or less, but over time users were experiencing far slower response times and considerable downtime. NetRatings needed a comprehensive technology solution that would accelerate application performance while permitting the transmission of enormous amounts of data. The company needed to protect and increase its revenue stream without spending millions on building and staffing new data centers. Akamai Web Application Accelerator was the answer. Web Application Accelerator enabled NetRatings to cancel its plans for duplicate data centers in New York and Europe, saving at least $5 million over three years. Thanks to Web Application Accelerator NetRatings’ U.S. customers, partners and employees now enjoy nearly 100 percent application availability — and overseas uptime has increased from 95 percent to more than 99 percent.
"We had a serious Internet performance problem that was hurting customer satisfaction with NetView, our premier Web usage measurement service. We were preparing to build distributed data centers when Akamai introduced us to a completely new and transparent solution for delivering Web applications globally from a centralized data center. Akamai enabled us to stop our costly data center expansion while consistently delivering sub-second response times to our end users around the world."
—Dave Muir, NetRatings' Senior VP of Engineering and Operations.
