EdgeComputing delivers on-demand Internet infrastructure, enabling Rutgers to launch on-line learning tool to global businesses

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Tuesday, December 2, 2003; 12:00 AM

Cambridge, MA - December 1, 2003 - Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), the world's largest on demand distributed computing platform for conducting profitable e-business, today announced that Rutgers University has selected the Akamai EdgeComputingSM service for application delivery and edge processing of its unique online corporate training tool to be syndicated for wide-spread use by global businesses.

Available at www.esh.rutgers.edu, Rutgers University has teamed up with Corporate Matters, Ltd. to provide an online edition of the award-winning sexual harassment prevention program entitled Eradicating Sexual Harassment (ESH). The three-hour interactive course is the first of its kind to identify, measure and change the perceptions that often leave employees vulnerable to sexual harassment. Rutgers is monetizing the training course for use by corporations, government agencies and other universities, providing features that track employee completion of the program.

With Flash interfaces, video streaming, and an interactive framework, the e-learning application made this human resources tool a computing-intensive effort. To properly meet user-satisfaction requirements on a global scale, while relieving its origin infrastructure from anticipated heavy computing cycles, Rutgers faced a costly and complex task. It was vital not to jeopardize accuracy of test results feeding into its database servers, yet a centralized model of delivering content required 'capacity guestimation' for the purchase of a significant amount of additional hardware, and even then global reliability was not guaranteed.

Instead, Rutgers selected the Akamai EdgeComputing service, which enabled all of its application's Java processing to be executed at edge servers across Akamai's global platform. Avoiding the need to purchase any additional hardware, Rutgers now runs its e-learning application in a distributed fashion, dramatically freeing up its origin servers from the onslaught of computing cycles, while ensuring that its content is always available, and always high-performing, regardless of where it is being accessed.

"With EdgeComputing, we can now fully concentrate on our application and database, while freeing up money to focus more on functionality and enhancements," said Rich Novak, executive director of Rutgers' Continuing Education and Distance Learning. "EdgeComputing's innovative on-demand model of computing means we effectively pay per use of the application. This changes the economics of information technology, allowing us to innovate without risking large investments in fixed assets."

"It is vital that this corporate training tool remain reliable for its users," said Rick Anderson, director of computing within the same department at Rutgers. "Our strategy is to make this online course available to large businesses, universities and government agencies, with potential clientele all over the world. Akamai's established global network, and ability to distribute the interactive application in an on demand fashion, has vastly improved the quality of this project, while saving us significant expense. We are already looking at this technology for other projects."

EdgeComputing is an evolution of Akamai's market-leading content and application delivery services and enables a business' Java application code to run at the edge points of a massively distributed network. Akamai's global network is comprised of more than 14,000 distributed servers, providing customers with on-demand scale and application computing capacity when and where they are needed.

"Rutgers is leveraging the Internet to effectively syndicate content that is tailored for large-scale customers," said Keith E. Johnson, vice president, public sector at Akamai. "Their use of EdgeComputing for this e-learning model is an excellent example of how our on-demand platform can be used to ensure cost-effective, global reach of Web-based applications. We are excited to work with them on this training tool."

About Eradicating Sexual Harassment (ESH)
The Eradicating Sexual Harassment course is built around a "soap opera" shown in several parts. After each episode, participants complete scales to explore their perceptions of the characters and their empathy for them. This is the "private voice," what a person really thinks and feels. Simultaneously, the "public voice" of the law and company policy are introduced. Through personalized feedback and assessment, the program helps bring the public and private voices into alignment, which our research shows is the best way to prevent sexual harassment.

About Akamai
AkamaiŽ - The Business Internet, is the world's largest on demand distributed computing platform for conducting profitable e-business. Overcoming the inherent limitations of the Internet, Akamai's services ensure a high-performing, scalable, and secure environment for organizations to cost effectively extend and control their e-business infrastructure. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Akamai's industry-leading services, matched with world-class customer care, are used by hundreds of today's most successful enterprises and government agencies around the globe. For more information, visit www.akamai.com.

Akamai Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act
The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai's management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, lack of market acceptance of our services, the effects of any attempts to intentionally disrupt our services or network by hackers or others, failure to have available sufficient transmission capacity, a failure of Akamai's network infrastructure, and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.

Contacts: Jeff Young Media Relations Akamai Technologies Inc. 617-444-3913 jyoung@akamai.com Caryn Brownell Media Relations Akamai Technologies Inc. 617-444-2524 caryn.brownell@akamai.com