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Qantas Airways Ensures Site Uptime and Improves International Reach and Performance Cost-Effectively with Akamai

Founded in the Queensland outback in 1920, Qantas Airways is the world's longest continuously operating airline. Today it is widely regarded as the world's leading long-distance airline and one of the strongest brands in Australia, responsible for an estimated $1.7 billion in revenue for the fiscal year 2009/2010. The airline is committed to continually improving the experience on its website, qantas.com, whether enabling travelers to book all parts of a holiday or to self-manage their travel experiences. Since the site was first launched in 1996, it has evolved into the airline's primary customer contact channel.

Qantas looked at a few different approaches, but decided on Akamai. "Not only does Akamai's Web Application Accelerator meet our needs for improving domestic and international performance, Akamai offers a range of additional services that support our business. With Akamai, we knew we could contain our infrastructure costs, while immediately leveraging site failover, streaming, and content targeting capabilities," explains Mr. Lonergan. Since going live with Akamai, the airline has reduced its web server farm by 50%, while supporting an 80% increase in traffic.

"Akamai enables us to ensure a site experience that is better than that delivered by our competitors. By improving site performance, we are able to generate more online revenue," explains Mr. Lonergan. In fact, Hitwise has recognized qantas.com as Australia's number one travel site, with an average of 8 million visits each month.

Akamai's technology automatically detects when the airline's origin server is not responding to requests, and displays an alternative site to visitors. When the origin server is back online, Akamai switches back to normal content delivery. "Akamai's Site Failover solution is both simple to use and cost-effective. It enables us to immediately provide an alternate online sales channel without purchasing additional infrastructure," explains Mr. Lonergan.

"Akamai is a key plank in our platform, enabling the performance and availability we need to achieve our goals in a cost-effective manner."
-John Lonergan, Head of qantas.com & Direct Channels, Qantas