Akamai is offering a new service to meet the needs of companies thinking about moving traffic out of centralized data centers, but unsure how they'll track Web site usage on distributed networks.

The content delivery service provider is teaming with NetIQ, which acquired WebTrends earlier this year, to offer SiteWise, a service that lets users track and analyze Web site visitors. SiteWise is based on NetIQ's WebTrends Live technology, which is a fully managed, hosted service that provides real-time reports on visitor behavior and preferences.

Instead of analyzing server log files, the WebTrends technology gets information directly from the visitor, says Jeff Seacrist, product line manager for NetIQ. Users add a line of Java code to their Web sites to trigger the data collection, he says, making analysis on a distributed network easier.

Akamai, for instance, uses 650 telecommunication networks to support some 9,700 servers in 56 different countries. Content is distributed across the network and served from the closest servers to the user.

Information such as where visitors come from, which parts of the site they frequent and how long they stay is sent to servers in a NetIQ data center and turned into reports. No personal information is collected, Seacrist says.

Akamai's SiteWise customers can access more than 100 types of reports through the Akamai customer portal, which also gives them real-time access to other Akamai services.

Most content delivery networks offer geographical and performance-related reports, but analysts say Akamai is going a step beyond with SiteWise by giving users access to customer-focused analysis.

McAfee.com CIO Doug Cavit is an Akamai customer who also uses WebTrends technology. Akamai parses log files for him to feed into his WebTrends application server. "Certainly the concept of being able to have them give us analytics in a way that we don't have to do it ourselves is compelling," he says.

His concern is that real-time analysis, such as that offered with SiteWise, could impede his site's performance because of the hundreds of thousands of visitors it receives each day. Sometimes visits can top one million, he says, and transferring real-time data could create a bottleneck. Most sites, however, wouldn't face that problem because they don't handle as many visitors, Cavit says.

Greg Howard, principal analyst at the HTRC Group, says the SiteWise service is a natural complement to Akamai's EdgeSuite services, which can deliver not only static content, but also dynamic pieces, such as streaming media, from the edge of the network.

Enterprise customers can expect other content delivery networks to begin offering business intelligence services, says Guy Creese, research director of Internet analytics at Aberdeen Group. He says a service such as SiteWise is a big step toward integrating all the pieces in a content network. The analytical piece will let companies see how their Web sites are being used and decide what makes sense to push out into a distributed environment.

The SiteWise service, which is available immediately, can be used as part of Akamai's EdgeSuite service or can be purchased separately. A spokeswoman says the cost ranges from a few thousand dollars per month to tens of thousands of dollars per month.

» posted by ITworld staff

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