The Yankee Group believes that the market for content delivery service providers will reach $875m by 2003. Companies like Akamai Technologies Inc and Sandpiper Inc are deploying their servers across multiple carrier networks, promising to speed web site performance by decentralizing content delivery.
In the thick of this holiday season, web sites that cannot scale to accommodate peak traffic loads or supply sluggish performance will not only lose revenue but will be penalized by Wall Street as well, said analyst Alex Benik. Any company that wants to have a successful commerce-enabled presence on today’s web must address its content delivery needs.
The rapid development of this market has not escaped the attention of the financial community. Content delivery, caching and load balancing vendors have been rewarded with what even Yankee describes as astronomical market valuations. Yet if Yankee is right about the trend, those valuations could be justified after all.
