“Since implementing the Akamai solution, the number of successful
software downloads has grown by 50%, month over month.” —Jerry Zolit, Program Manager, Philips Medical Systems Global Customer Services KEY IMPACTS • 50% month over month growth in successful software downloads • Realizes 91% average download completion rate • Improved site performance and download speeds by 50% in Europe and Asia • Increased confidence in Web site • Enabled competitive advantage The Situation Philips Medical Systems, one of the world’s top three medical device companies, is a market leader in medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring systems. This equipment can be complex to maintain, yet is critical to patient care. The company’s eSupport portal—known as InCenter—plays an important role in supporting the delivery of equipment and application software to thousands of customers, field engineers, and service partners in almost every country around the globe. The Challenge InCenter was launched in 2004 to support the dissemination of equipment documentation and software to customers and field engineers around the world. But the company quickly discovered that its platform struggled to support document files larger than 20 MB and software files larger than 250 MB. Philips found that it sometimes took a long time for site visitors from regions like Asia and Europe to access files. The result was selective adoption of the support portal by customers and engineers who then turned to the service (call) center. Philips support personnel had to separate large software files into sub-files, a cumbersome and expensive process. This negatively impacted the customer experience, requiring end users to download multiple files for a single software release. In addition, some customers and engineers requested documentation on CDs, which increased Philips costs. “We understood the limitations and costs associated with distributing software and documentation via DVDs, but we were also aware of the Internet performance issues that were beyond our control,” explains Chris LaFratta, director of engineering programs for Philips Medical Systems Global Customer Services. The Goal Philips Medical Systems needed to meet five key requirements to support its objectives: • Ensure Scalability The company needed to support large traffic spikes every time a new product release, patch, or update was made available. • Improve Performance In order to ensure adoption of its portal and software downloads, InCenter needed to quickly deliver downloads to site visitors around the world, especially in Asia and Europe. • Improve Customer Satisfaction Philips wanted to deliver the most up-to-date software updates and equipment information as quickly as possible to its customers and field engineers—regardless of Internet conditions. • Reduce Costs to Support Customers The company wanted to reduce the costs associated with providing software downloads, producing and sending out documents and DVDs, and supporting customers via its call center. • Track Software Distribution As part of a regulated industry, Philips Medical Systems must ensure the integrity of software it provides and be able to produce records of completed downloads. Why Akamai Supporting Unpredictable Traffic Patterns Philips Medical Systems realized early on that it did not make sense to build its own infrastructure. "It’s impossible to predict when we'll experience spikes in traffic and for how long. It would have been costly to expand our infrastructure and, in the end, it would have been underutilized for long periods of time. Our IT team explored a few options and strongly recommended Akamai,”explains Jerry Zolit, program manager, Online eSupport Portal Global Customer Services. With Akamai in place, Philips Medical Systems can scale to support any surge in traffic. In just over four months, Philips handled a 300% increase in site traffic, peaking at 1.2 TB served with a 91.2% download completion rate. (continued on back) COMPANY Philips Medical Systems Andover, MA www.medical.philips.com INDUSTRY Software & Technology SOLUTION Akamai Electronic Software Delivery Akamai Web Application Accelerator