Do your PLM users suffer from poorly performing and unreliable applications due to Internet-related issues outside your data-center? Trust Akamai to boost worker productivity and improve your bottom line. Want to know whether Akamai s Application Performance Solutions (APS) can help your enterprise with its PLM application? Ask yourself the following questions: Are you delivering PLM applications over the Internet to a geographically dispersed user base, including low-cost manufacturing areas in Asia-Pac? Do your manufacturing partners have difficulty collaborating with your product designers due to a poorly performing PLM application? Are your product deliveries delayed despite the use of a PLM system? Are the large design files within your PLM application taking a painfully long time to download? Would you like to improve the adoption of your PLM application by worldwide manufacturing partners? Would you like to reduce your infrastructure costs while expanding the global reach of your PLM applications? Akamai for PLM Acceleration: Akamai s Application Performance Solutions help global businesses accelerate their PLM applications over the Internet while providing the scalability, reliability and cost benefits associated with a managed service. A research report published by IDC, Determining the Return on Investment of Web Application Acceleration Managed Services, measured the average annual benefit experienced by an organization using Akamai s Web Application Accelerator at $42,831 per 100 users. When looking only at the IT cost reduction benefits, the payback period from deploying the service averaged 1.8 months for the surveyed companies, yielding an average return on investment of 582%. 1
PLM Examples with Akamai The following examples demonstrate how Akamai helps businesses improve the performance and availability of their PLM applications over the Internet. All of the test results are based on real business transactions not test environments where conditions are simplified to demonstrate artificial gains. Example: Global Apparel Marketer, Gerber Technologies WebPDM TM distributing apparel designs to manufacturing partners from a centralized IT infrastructure The company rolled out a PLM application to share apparel designs and communicate with manufacturing partners in countries with low labor costs, including Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam, while purposefully avoiding any additional infrastructure build-out. The company wanted to run the application from a centralized data center, and needed to ensure that apparel designs were delivered to manufacturing centers in a timely fashion. Delays would result in missed shipping deadlines, which would directly impact the company s bottom line After deploying Akamai s Web Application Accelerator, the company found that performance significantly improved in all areas, making the application more usable for its manufacturing partners, and enabling the company to meet aggressive timetables for delivering its apparel to retail stores. Partners enjoyed much faster login times, and were able to find design patterns much more quickly search time was reduced by almost 60%. In addition, download times for large design files improved by 66% faster, on average. 60% Improvement in Pattern Search Time 66% Improvement in File Download Time Internet-Only Akamai Web Application Accelerator Internet-Only Akamai Web Application Accelerator Example: Global Footwear Manufacturer, Custom PLM application improving collaboration with supply chain partners in China This manufacturer developed its own PLM portal to manage its design and manufacturing processes, which extended to users in Europe, Latin America, and China. To address application performance issues, this company initially looked to MPLS, setting up private line connections for their user sites in China. However, MPLS was not available in all geographic regions, and, where it was available, long deployment schedules and high costs made it an unattractive option. Where MPLS was deployed, it did not provide the anticipated performance boost. seconds 15 10 5 0 Internet-Only MPLS Akamai Web Application Accelerator 2
After deploying Akamai s Web Application Accelerator, this manufacturer found that application performance increased significantly. In fact, Web Application Accelerator outperformed MPLS, demonstrating that the company could roll out and maintain a PLM application over the Internet, without incurring the additional private line expense. With Akamai, application performance improved by 52% across all regions, as the average time to retrieve a single page dropped from approximately 12.1 seconds to 6.2 seconds. Example: Athletic Apparel and Footwear Company, SAP NetWeaver TM improving application performance and reliability for users in Asia-Pacific and Europe After relocating its datacenter and application servers, this global company found that SAP application performance suffered particularly for manufacturing partners in Asia-Pacific and Europe. Since the PLM application had been in place for some time, and was a critical part of the manufacturing process, it was essential to restore performance to a high level. After deploying Akamai s Web Application Accelerator, the company seconds found that performance improved significantly. The time required to complete a 12-step transaction improved by 78% internationally. Regional performance improvements in Europe and Asia-Pacific were 81% and 72%, respectively Example: On-Line Merchandiser, ENOVIA MatrixOne (a Dassault Systèmes Company) MatrixPLM TM improving application performance for manufacturing partners in China This company sells consumer goods 300 ranging from apparel and jewelry to kitchen appliances and consumer electronics and relies on its PLM application 200 to tie together manufacturing and supply partners around the world. When they rolled out the PLM application, manufacturing partners in China complained that 100 performance was too slow, hampering 0 their efforts. Attempts to address the Internet-Only Akamai Web Application problem by deploying appliance-based Accelerator solutions were unsuccessful, as users still complained about poor application response times. seconds 80 60 40 20 20 Internet-Only Akamai Web Application Accelerator Asia-Pacific Europe International The company then turned to Akamai s managed service approach, and found that performance improved dramatically. After deploying Akamai s Web Application Accelerator, the time required to complete a 13-step transaction improved in China by an average of 102%. Manufacturing partners were able to use the application, enabling the company to achieve the anticipated business efficiencies associated with the PLM application. 3
Akamai Application Performance Solutions Unlike traditional hardware appliances, Akamai s Application Performance Solutions extend beyond the data-center to address middle-mile performance bottlenecks, such as Internet congestion and service provider peering issues. Akamai s Application Performance Solutions also improve application availability. Akamai s fault-tolerant platform and patent-pending route optimization techniques address low latency and high application availability by dynamically steering traffic around problem spots on the Internet. The result is improved end-to-end application performance and high availability for PLM applications delivered over the Internet. Akamai s Application Performance Solutions (APS) portfolio currently comprises two service offerings that are designed to improve the performance, availability, and consistency of PLM applications delivered over the Internet: (1) Web Application Accelerator accelerates Web-based or Webified applications to employees, partners, and customers over the Internet. Application performance and reliability improvements are achieved through a variety of transport, route optimization and caching techniques. This managed service is highly scalable, provides on-demand capacity, and requires no additional IT infrastructure. (2) IP Application Accelerator provides an optimized architecture for delivering all classes of applications to the extended enterprise, ensuring increased application performance and availability for remote wireline and wireless users. cleint/server, desktop and virtualized aplications delivered by any protocol running over IP, such as SSL, IPSec, UDP and Citrix ICA will benefit from IP Application Accelerator. Akamai EdgeControl Akamai s EdgeControl Management Portal provides a convenient Web-based portal interface with advanced reporting capabilities for customers to monitor and customize their services. Application and user intelligence reporting within Web Application Accelerator includes the following: page views per second, dynamic route optimization, error codes, URL distribution, traffic handling (hits/sec), and an SLA monitoring tool. 4
Application and user intelligence reports are provided to customers within Akamai s Edge Control Management Center. 5
In addition to boosting performance, Web Application Accelerator can improve PLM application availability. Akamai s technology is designed to steer traffic around problem spots on the Internet to ensure that remote users located in areas, such as China, can access a PLM application running on an application server in Europe or the U.S. In this example, optimized Akamai routes were used more than 50% of the time (peak of 98%) instead of the default route determined by the Internet and border gateway protocol (BGP) rule-set. Enterprises should feel comfortable deploying Akamai s Application Performance Solutions to improve the global delivery of their business-critical PLM applications. Application Performance Solutions are backed by service level agreements (SLAs) that guarantee performance improvements and network availability. Learn More About Application Performance Solutions Want to learn more about Akamai APS? Product specifications, customer case studies, white papers, application performance examples, and technology podcasts are available on Akamai s APS Web page: http://www.akamai.com/html/solutions/web_application_accelerator.html About Akamai Akamai is the leading global service provider for accelerating content and business processes online. Thousands of organizations have formed trusted relationships with Akamai, improving their revenue and reducing costs by maximizing the performance of their online businesses. Leveraging the Akamai Edge Network, these organizations gain business advantage today, and have the foundation for the emerging Internet solutions of tomorrow. Akamai is The Trusted Choice for Online Business. For more information, visit www.akamai.com. Akamai Technologies, Inc. U.S. Headquarters 8 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142 Tel 617.444.3000 Fax 617.444.3001 U.S. toll-free 877.4AKAMAI (877.425.2624) Akamai Technologies, GmbH Park Village, Betastrasse 10 bd-85774 Unterföhring, Germany Tel +49 89 94006-0 www.akamai.com 2008 Akamai Technologies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited. Akamai and the Akamai wave logo are registered trademarks.other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners. Akamai believes that the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice. AKAM-PML-0108