Complementary Technologies Leverage Edge Side Includes (ESI) to Streamline the Creation, Testing and Delivery of Dynamic Content and Applications

Akamai Technologies, Inc. AKAM, the leading provider of outsourced e-business infrastructure services and software, announced today an expansion of its ongoing technology alliance with Interwoven Inc. IWOV, the leading provider of Content Infrastructure, that will result in the industry's first integrated solution for managing and delivering ESI-based content and applications.

Integrating complementary technologies, Akamai and Interwoven are now jointly leveraging the open specification Edge Side Includes (ESI), a simple mark-up language used to define Web page components for dynamic assembly and delivery from distributed servers at the Internet's edge. A customer using Interwoven TeamSite and the Akamai EdgeSuite(SM) offering will now be able to use TeamSite software to virtualize application fragments to be cached and delivered via Akamai's global network. As Interwoven's Content Infrastructure software and Akamai's content delivery services integrate with application server technologies from leaders such as BEA, IBM and Oracle, this becomes the first time that all of the elements that make up a Web infrastructure solution -- content infrastructure, application serving, and content delivery -- can communicate through a unified layer of technology.

"As an open specification, ESI is unifying the multiple layers of technology to interconnect the various components of Web Infrastructure," said Frank Florence, senior vice president of Business Development at Interwoven. "Through the integration of TeamSite with Akamai's EdgeSuite service, which is the first content delivery solution to go to market with ESI, joint customers can leverage their content infrastructure to maximize EdgeSuite's benefits of higher availability, faster page loads and reduced infrastructure cost."

ESI technology enables Interwoven TeamSite customers to off-load the burden of assembling dynamic content to Akamai's network of over 13,000 servers. Interwoven TeamSite Templating software, an XML-based publishing solution that empowers all members of an organization to contribute content, will facilitate the inclusion of ESI tags and metadata thereby accelerating the creation of dynamic Web pages that can be delivered from the edge. Through the integrated solution, application fragments and ESI content managed within TeamSite can also be tested and previewed, behind the firewall, to improve efficiency and ensure quality prior to deployment for run-time delivery via Akamai's network.

"Enabling Interwoven's TeamSite and the Akamai EdgeSuite service to communicate through ESI creates one interconnecting layer of technology that will dramatically reduce Web infrastructure complexities, and speed the process by which customers deploy content and applications," said Mike Ruffolo, executive vice president at Akamai. "By leveraging ESI, Interwoven will be the first content infrastructure solution to offer customers a seamless user experience when creating and testing content and applications delivered at the Internet's edge."

The integrated solution is slated to be available later this quarter.