Akamai Bolsters Rakuten's eCommerce Business

Akamai Japan, a subsidiary of Akamai Technologies, Inc., a company engaged in powering video, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, announced that its Dynamic Site Solution has been adopted by Rakuten Ichiba, an Internet shopping portals operated by Rakuten Inc. in Japan, to accelerate the performance of its eCommerce site.

In a release, the Company noted that Rakuten Ichiba is also leveraging Akamai to help extend its infrastructure by offloading a large amount of its web content to the Akamai globally-distributed network.

Osamu Kurokouchi, Group Manager of Network Development and Operation, Rakuten, said, "As online shopping continues to grow and gain popularity in Japan, our customers are looking for ways to improve their use of images and rich media content such as videos on their sites that help engage shoppers and better describe their products' features. We need to renew and augment our servers several times a year in response to such increasing customer needs. However, as it is important for Rakuten to preserve a good balance between IT costs and business scale, the expansion of server infrastructure was a big strain on our business, especially considering that the volume of transactions on Rakuten Ichiba can expand dramatically. Therefore, we evaluated different services and eventually turned to Akamai for help."

"With Akamai in place, we can spend less money and effort on infrastructure related tasks. It enables us to re-direct our resources to eCommerce development activities that improve our online shopping experience and increase our sales, allowing us to offer more stable, high-quality online customer services to our customers. Since switching to the Akamai services, we have experienced no problems at all."

"We are excited to partner with a top global eCommerce organization like Rakuten. With the growth of eCommerce globally, it is critical for Rakuten to provide a fast, reliable online shopping environment for their customers," said Pedro Santos, Chief Strategist, eCommerce, at Akamai. "With the increasing number of consumers interacting online nowadays, they have less patience to wait for a site to load when searching for a specific product. We believe that by leveraging Akamai, Rakuten can not only accelerate the delivery and performance of their dynamic site, but can also provide the best possible online shopping environment for users who expect a responsive and interactive site."

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