What industry changes are on the horizon that might have an impact on the significance of current or future key success factors|My homework helper

Posted: January 28th, 2023

Need help answering the following 3 questions using the article attached. (3 pages in length) 5 resources, APA format

  • What are the company’s key success factors?
  • What opportunities and threats appear to be challenging for the company?
  • Are the key success factors likely to be the same in the future?
  • What industry changes are on the horizon that might have an impact on the significance of current or future key success factors?
  • What recommendations can you make for the future for the company, specifically with regards to its opportunities and threats?This case was prepared by Cate Reavis, Associate Director, Curriculum Development, under the supervision of Professor Donald Lessard. Professor Lessard is the Epoch Foundation Professor of International Management.

    Copyright © 2017, Donald Lessard and Cate Reavis. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.

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    16-175 September 22, 2017

    Akamai’s Localization Challenge Donald Lessard and Cate Reavis

    The Internet makes it too easy to feel like you can go global.

    — Charley Dublin, VP, Engineering, Intelligent Platform

    Our technology works in every market, and a big part of our value proposition is that we will make the experience for the user of the Apple store in Japan comparable to the experience in the United States. We know how to sell to companies with global reach.

    — Keith Oslakovic, Senior VP

    In late 2011, Charley Dublin was a few months into his new position at Cambridge, Massachusetts- based Akamai as vice president of engineering for the company’s intelligent platform. Dublin was taking on his new role while continuing to carry out his responsibilities as vice president of international support and services. In his dual role, one of Dublin’s core objectives was to help solve what he had termed “Akamai’s localization challenge.” Akamai was a content delivery network (CDN). The company provided customers including Apple, Amazon, and Netflix content delivery and cloud infrastructure services to accelerate and improve the delivery of content and applications over the Internet. These services included the delivery of live and on-demand streaming video capabilities, static and dynamic website content, and tools to help people conduct business and reach current and new customers. In 2011, Akamai had over 100,000 servers in 1,976 networks across 78 countries. The company was responsible for moving up to 30% of all Internet traffic and 75% of people who viewed something on the Internet came in contact with

    AKAMAI’S LOCALIZATION CHALLENGE Donald Lessard and Cate Reavis

    September 22, 2017 2

    Akamai’s technology every day. With 60% market share and $1.6 billion in revenue, Akamai was the largest CDN in the world (Exhibit 1). Dublin was taking on new responsibilities as the company was facing increasing competitive pressure by new local entrants in non-U.S. markets where Akamai was expanding, as well as “arbitrage” by a number of its major multinational customers. Dublin had had his eye on the company’s localization challenge for some time. In 2009, right as Akamai began setting financial growth goals outside of the United States, Dublin laid out the issue for senior management showing how the company’s market share dropped off with distance from the United States. In certain key non-U.S. markets, Akamai’s once dominant market share position was being consumed by local competitors who just four years earlier didn’t exist (Exhibit 2). As Dublin said to senior management, “We can’t say we are a global company until and unless we orient our metrics to account for the local perspective. We think of ourselves as the global leader, and are, but we are getting beat by the competition at a local level. We must orient towards the local level to maintain our global position.” Akamai’s CEO charged Dublin and the international leadership team to come up with a solution.

    Content Delivery Network

    A CDN was a network of proxy servers1 deployed in geographically dispersed data centers to provide Internet content to end users, ensuring that they received the information they requested in a shorter, uninterrupted period of time. For example, instead of having to route a movie download from California to a viewer in New York, a CDN would hold a copy of the movie in a server close to New York, thereby speeding up the download time and reducing loading glitches for the eager viewer.2 As one analyst explained, CDNs were part of the road crew that worked the Internet’s information superhighway.3 In 2011, two billion people (or 29% of the world’s population) were connected to the Internet.4 New opportunities for CDNs arose in the mid-2000s with the rise of video streaming, gaming, social media, and the growing sophistication of the smart phone.5 Web pages were becoming more dynamic and customizable based on what a user was searching for (e.g. travel sites). CDNs began offering their distributed servers to run software that enabled websites to display dynamic elements more quickly and reliably.6 They were also offering cloud computing services. The majority of demand for

    1 A proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application) that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers (

    2 J. Bonasia, “Going with the Data Flow,” Investor’s Business Daily, August 24, 2009.

    3 Ibid.

    4 Akamai Annual Report 2011, p. 3.

    5 20% of traffic on Cyber Monday in 2011 came from mobile devices, Akamai Annual Report 2011, p. 3.

    6 Eric Van Den Steen, “Akamai’s Edge (A),” Harvard Business School, Case Study No. 9-712-455, April 18, 2013.

    AKAMAI’S LOCALIZATION CHALLENGE Donald Lessard and Cate Reavis

    September 22, 2017 3

    CDN services came from the ecommerce, high-tech, media and entertainment, and government sectors.7

    Infrastructure

    Most CDNs centralized their servers at important nodes (connection points) of the Internet, renting space in data centers, paying for power, cooling, security, and network connections (bandwidth) linking fiber optic lines from thousands of carriers.8 Akamai, which pioneered the CDN industry, took a different approach. By operating a decentralized system of servers that were located as close as possible to the end user – what the company referred to as being at “the edge of the Internet”9 – Akamai enabled a more efficient transfer of locally-cached data, therefore a superior experience for the user. (Figure 1) Figure 1 Akamai Content Delivery Network

SOLUTION

There are several industry changes that are expected to have an impact on the significance of current or future key success factors. Some of these include:

  1. Increased automation and use of artificial intelligence: As automation and AI become more prevalent, the ability to quickly analyze and process data will become a key success factor for companies.
  2. Greater emphasis on sustainability and environmental responsibility: Companies that can demonstrate a commitment to sustainability and environmental responsibility are likely to be more successful in the future.
  3. Growth of e-commerce: The continued growth of e-commerce is likely to change the way that companies operate and will make the ability to reach customers online a key success factor.
  4. Greater importance of cybersecurity: As technology becomes more integrated into every aspect of business, cybersecurity will become an increasingly important success factor.
  5. Increased focus on customer experience: Companies that can provide personalized and seamless customer experiences are likely to be more successful in the future.
  6. Remote work: Remote work will become more important as companies have to adapt to more flexible and mobile workforce.

These are just a few of the changes that are expected to have an impact on key success factors in the future, and it’s likely that new trends will emerge as well.

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