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Akamai Technologies has announced a new product, Akamai Download Analytics, and upgrades to its Akamai Download Manager, to improve downloads for business and consumer customers.
Akamai on March 24 said the new and upgraded solutions enable “Akamai customers to create a customized and branded download experience, increase user engagement during the download process, improve conversion rates and garner business-critical download analytics reporting and data.”
“Akamai’s enhanced Electronic Software Delivery solution is designed to help companies address and meet the shifting requirements of today’s online software delivery market while managing costs,” Reynold Harbin, Akamai senior product line director, said in a statement. “By offering the latest download management technology to improve the performance and integrity of downloads, a new and fully customizable user interface, and the ability to inspect download behavior with download analytics, [Akamai makes it so that] customers using our delivery platform will now be able to fully optimize their end users’ download experience. The benefits are increased end-user engagement and improved software installation rates, enabling companies to drive success of the online channel for software distribution.”
Akamai said:
““Akamai Download Analytics is designed to provide Akamai’s customers with access to:-User engagement metrics, including download duration and completion rate-User analysis by geography, network and connection speed-User behavior data, such as start, stop, pause, and cancel-Content usage metrics, including bytes delivered and bytes per download-Powerful custom reporting, including the ability to define the data set, reporting dimensions, and metrics, filter using standard matching criteria applied against any dimension and a report customization interface.”“
The company statement also said:
““Gaining visibility into the effectiveness of electronic software download offerings is critical to maximize the value of an online channel. Software vendors face many challenges including software monetization, maximizing try-to-buy conversions, managing online distribution strategies, prioritizing online marketing efforts, and monitoring and allocating distribution costs. […]Akamai Download Analytics is designed to give companies a vast amount of insight, including completion rates, download duration, and user behavior, to make key business decisions on their electronic software delivery strategies.”“
Akamai described its Download Manager as “a desktop software application that is designed to enable users to download content quickly, easily and reliably.” The new version offers “a simplified, multifile workflow designed to enable software publishers to enhance the user experience while managing complex workflows for entitled software. The new enhancements to Akamai’s Download Manager are particularly important in cases where downloads need to occur in a specific order, authentication mechanisms need to be applied to multiple files, custom error messages need to be delivered, multilingual support is necessary, or a specific file needs to be called when all files have been successfully downloaded,” the company said.
Download Manager also features a “new, customizable user interface” that enables companies to “immerse users in their brand and promote additional offerings during the download experience. Advanced controls now empower the user to pause, stop or resume downloads at their discretion, giving them the option to restart a download at a later time or automatically recover from dropped connections or system crashes. By managing multiple parallel connections to maximize the available bandwidth, Akamai Download Manager is designed to improve performance, especially on high-latency or high-packet-loss connections. Download Manager is also fully compatible with existing security implementations, including SSL [Secure Sockets Layer].”
The company also said, “Electronic software delivery revenue is expected to grow to $67.2 billion in 2013 according to IDC.”
“Electronic software delivery has strong potential in today’s digital economy, given its impact on cost savings, ability to enhance a user’s experience with a brand and reduced environmental impact,” Amy Konary, research director of Software Pricing, Licensing and Delivery at IDC, said in a statement. “The technological and cultural barriers that held electronic distribution models back in the past are falling, and vendor initiatives to increase the amount of software delivered this way should create a period of rapid growth in the percent of software sales that are fulfilled electronically.”