Opens Dubai Office
Akamai Technologies, a global leader in content delivery network (CDN) services, has opened a Dubai office to support its rapidly growing business in the region. With established customers in the territory including media companies such as Selevision, leading airlines and financial and regulatory organisations, as well as partners such as du and Ooredoo, the new office will be the hub for Akamai’s business operations and customer support in the Middle East. “Akamai has been active in the Gulf region for many years,” commented Akamai vice president EMEA East. “Working closely with our key partners, while building the capacity of our globally-distributed platform in the region, Akamai is supporting local organisations across the media, finance, government and enterprise sectors. This is a strategic market for Akamai and, as such, we expect to double our team in Dubai by the end of the year through the addition of sales, sales engineering and security professionals for whom we are actively recruiting.” According to the Q4 2014 Akamai State of the Internet report, the adoption rate for high broadband (connections greater than 10 Mbps) has nearly doubled in the United Arab Emirates year-over-year, jumping from 5.4% to 9.2%. While the global average peak connection speed saw an increase of 8.4%, quarterly growth rates reached an impressive 50% in both UAE and Qatar. Internet connectivity in the region is growing fast, offering new opportunities for all companies doing business online but also raising expectations from online users. “As we see ever-increasing growth in the use of the Internet, the move to mobile and the cloud, and the explosion in digital media have all put new burdens on the Internet’s infrastructure, revealing weaknesses in performance, reliability and security,” explained Lindkvist. “The key insights that we gain by delivering a large percentage of web traffic ensures that Akamai is in a frontline position to help organisations in the Middle East harness the power of the Internet, while optimising and securing the delivery of all online content and business applications.”