Virgin America Flies with Akamai for Site Performance

Reducing transaction times by 40 percent and providing faster and more reliable web and mobile experiences

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Nov 19, 2013, 06:30 ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leading provider of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and business applications, today announced that Virgin America, the California-based airline, has adopted Akamai's Aqua Web Experience Solutions to enhance its customers' online experiences. With Akamai's Dynamic Site Accelerator and Mobile Detection and Redirect services, Virgin America is now delivering more efficient and reliable website and mobile experiences that have resulted in transaction times that are nearly 40 percent faster than without Akamai.

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Virgin America has more than a million monthly unique visitors to their site. The airline had been encountering high page-load times on the website that impacted both overall customer satisfaction and conversion rates. In keeping with its stated aim to reinvent the air travel experience – including the booking experience – for guests through better fares and innovative perks, Virgin America went live with Akamai in February 2013 to boost its web- and mobile-based experiences. Since implementing Akamai's solutions, Virgin America has offloaded 89 percent of its web traffic to the Akamai platform and has seen faster performance in the airline's East Coast markets and a more consistent experience for guests across the system. Leveraging Akamai's mobile solutions, Virgin America has also been able to increase the performance of its mobile capabilities and provide a better mobile shopping experience for all of its end users.

"We turned to Akamai because high page-load times – particularly on the East Coast – were an issue for some of our site visitors and customers. Akamai helped us improve the performance of virginamerica.com by serving the cacheable parts of our site from servers physically close to our guests," said Dean Cookson, Virgin America CIO. "Implementation of the Akamai solutions took two months from last December, and the team at Akamai was very helpful in assisting us with the solution. The shift to the Akamai solutions has resulted in faster site performance in our East Coast markets and a better, more consistent web experience for our guests, regardless of their locations."

The Dynamic Site Accelerator, Mobile Detection and Redirect and Enhanced DNS services are all built on the Akamai Intelligent Platform. Mobile Detection and Redirect identifies mobile device requests and delivers mobile-optimized experiences with increased speed and reduced latency, while the Dynamic Site Accelerator delivers fast, globally-consistent performance. Akamai's Enhanced DNS is designed to provide unparalleled reliability, scalability and performance of domain name system resolution.

"Today's airlines rely heavily on their online systems to communicate with their customers. Their websites must combine performance and availability with functionality and efficiency, and customer experience is everything, especially when competitors are only a click away," said Mike Afergan, senior vice president and general manager, Web Experience Unit, Akamai. "Customers like Virgin America leverage our solutions to deliver fast, secure and reliable mobile experiences to their travel customers, allowing them to stand apart from the competition and build brand loyalty."

About Virgin America

Headquartered in California, Virgin America offers guests attractive fares and a host of innovative features aimed at reinventing air travel. Virgin America was named "Best Domestic Airline" in the Conde Nast Traveler 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 'Readers' Choice' Awards and "Best Domestic Airline" in Travel + Leisure's 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 'World's Best' Awards. The airline's base of operations is San Francisco International Airport (SFO)'s sleek and sustainable new Terminal 2. The airline's new aircraft offer interactive in-flight entertainment systems and power outlets near every seat. Virgin America offers Gogo™ WiFi on every flight and hosts the largest in-flight entertainment library in the North American skies via the touch-screen Red™ platform. For more: www.virginamerica.com.

About Akamai

Akamai® is a leading provider of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and business applications. At the core of the company's solutions is the Akamai Intelligent Platform™ providing extensive reach, coupled with first class reliability, security, visibility and expertise. Akamai removes the complexities of connecting the increasingly mobile world, supporting 24/7 consumer demand, and enabling enterprises to securely leverage the cloud. To learn more about how Akamai is accelerating the pace of innovation in a hyperconnected world, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.