Web 2.0 is Here - Is Your Web Infrastructure Ready?

By Akamai Technologies Inc

The shift from static business-to-consumer (B2C) Web sites to interactive B2C Web sites—essentially the evolution from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0—has paved the way for increased interactivity between businesses and consumers. Those businesses that can deliver on the promise of a more engaging, meaningful, and useful experience have the opportunity to strengthen their consumers' loyalty to the brand. However, without being able to rapidly, reliably, and securely deliver rich interactive content, the benefits afforded by this new level of interactivity will go unrealized.

Many enterprises have long relied upon content delivery networks (CDNs) to help ensure the scalability, performance, and availability of their static Web sites. Unfortunately, traditional CDNs have not evolved to meet the delivery challenges posed by today's sophisticated interactive content.

A brief look at the evolution of the delivery of content to distributed users provides insight into the reasons that today's Web sites offer a new level of interaction between businesses and consumers. In the 1980s, enterprises relied upon the client/server model to deliver rich content to users. A fat-client GUI played a key role in the consumption of this content. While successful in its own right, this model required a significant investment in administration and infrastructure maintenance.

With the advent of the Internet in the 1990s, organizations could deliver content to a broader audience without these time-consuming and costly maintenance requirements. While the Web interface essentially served as a thin client, the ability to deliver rich content was still limited by Web technologies, Web browser functionality, and end user access speeds. The result is that yesterday's Web sites were mainly composed of static content that rarely changed—each site visitor was largely a passive consumer looking for information.