Key Impacts
- Reduced help desk calls by 38%
- Reduced complaints about poor video quality by 23%
- Supported 19x increase in peak traffic
- Saved thousands in help desk costs
- Avoided additional infrastructure costs
- Enhanced customer experience
Outside The Classroom is a pioneering leader in online alcohol prevention. The company offers a suite of science-based prevention programs and tools—including its flagship product, AlcoholEdu®-that are producing dramatic results on more than 500 campuses nationwide. As of fall 2006, almost 750,000 students nationwide had completed the AlcoholEdu course and the company expects that number to increase to one million by the end of the 2006 school year.
Streaming audio and video form a significant portion of Outside The Classroom's online curriculum, creating heavy bandwidth demands during peak traffic periods. These demands placed a strain not only on Outside The Classroom's infrastructure, but also that of client high schools and universities. Deploying Akamai EdgeSuite Delivery helped reduce demands on the origin infrastructure, minimize the effect of heavy traffic on the client infrastructure, and provide a better user experience to student users. Help desk calls immediately dropped by 38%, an the company was able to significantly reduce the number of hours dedicated to troubleshooting and reporting. Thanks to Akamai, the company's Web site supported 20,000 students on a single day in August 2006-almost 19,000 more than its largest peak day in 2004-without any availability or performance issues.
"Since using the Akamai solution, the amount of traffic our site can serve has tripled, while performance has increased significantly. That has made for some very happy clients—both school administrators and students."
—Brandon Busteed, Founder and CEO, Outside The Classroom
