London, UK - 30th July 2001 - British businesses are ploughing money into their web presence without measuring what they are getting from it, according to a new survey commissioned by Akamai Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of distributed application and content delivery services.

According to the report, Uncovering the Web Strategist, over one third of the UK businesses polled expressed a false optimism when it came to their consumer-facing web strategy. However, over two-thirds believe that cutting back on further investment will directly impact their organisation and so are likely to continue to invest in their potentially flawed strategy despite the fact that an economic downturn could be around the corner.

The report, which focused on web strategy decision makers within British organisations with a turnover in excess of £100M, discovered that:

• 84% of UK firms still don't believe the current economic market conditions will affect their current web strategy or future web investment
• 30% admit that, to date, they haven't measured the success of their web strategy (i.e. Return on Investment - RoI)
• Of the 64% who claim they have considered RoI, 45% confess that they don't know what that ongoing investment is!
• 33% admit they don't even know when their consumer website will break even!
• 69% believe that cutting back further web investment will have a negative impact on their organisation

Ian King, general manager of Akamai, Northern Europe, said: "In today's economic climate, it's shocking to see just how many UK businesses still hold a blind faith in their web strategy but have little evidence to support its success. It is imperative that the board knows exactly what the returns on its investments are but UK plc seems to have an extraordinarily lax attitude when it comes to the web. Over one in three UK businesses are completely unaware of the impact their web strategy is having on their overall business and that's a dangerous position to be in. UK firms are right to invest in their future within the New Economy but if they don't get their strategy right they won't be there to enjoy it."

Additional research findings into web strategy ownership and measurement support the need for a more focused approach:

Web Strategy lacks clarity

• 84% of businesses have a clear objective to attract new customers through the web but only 43% of them are tracking new visitors and 36% have no direct performance targets for the number of unique hits or page impressions
• Although 82% of companies have a clear objective to strengthen their overall brand recognition using the web, only 24% have a direct performance target for this and a 36% of them don't even measure brand!
• 53% of UK firms were dissatisfied with their chosen technologies for their web platform even though 47% took advice from business consultancies

Who's in control?

• Only 5% of IT Directors are directly responsible for web strategy which suggests web strategy is perceived as a business issue rather than a technology one
• Even though 92% of board members have ultimate responsibility for their company's web strategy, only 49% have a web strategist reporting to them
• Only 31% of web strategists are totally focused on doing this specific job. 23% have a wider role in ebusiness, 21% in marketing and 16% have an IT remit
• The ebusiness function has built a new breed of individual. He/she has primarily migrated from a marketing (48%) or IT function (48%). Only 26% of web strategists directly belong to marketing and only 24% to IT

The report indicates that the web strategy is still finding its place within the overall business but there's a distinct lack of focus in many UK organisations. It suggests that there is an urgent need for someone to take control with the ability to combine business acumen and know-how of web technologies, and to more closely link the web strategy to the overall corporate strategy.

"The main objective for all businesses today must be to get more value from their existing and future web investment by applying an ROI process through each phase of the web strategy. Web strategists should look to how they can achieve this in the most cost-effective way. One option is to reduce Internet overheads by offloading the most cost-intensive aspects of the web to proven specialists such as Akamai and so benefit from our economies of scale. This allows web strategists to spend more time and money focusing on the core business," said King.

The research conducted earlier this month by Vanson Bourne in conjunction with Computing, the newspaper for the networked economy, polled over 120 UK companies with a turnover of £100m or more across four of the most influential British industries - finance, retail & travel, media & publishing and FMCG & OTC.

Vanson Bourne investigated who within the organisation is responsible for making decisions on web strategy, how much businesses are investing, when they started, how they use the web and how they measure success (RoI). As well as comparing the strategies of businesses in different industries, the report compares attitudes towards transactional sites vs. non-transactional sites.

About Akamai
Akamai is the leading provider of distributed application and content delivery services. These services enable companies to reduce the complexity and cost of deploying and operating a uniform Web infrastructure while ensuring unmatched performance, reliability, scalability and manageability. Akamai's services give businesses a distinct competitive advantage and provide an unparalleled Internet experience for their customers. Akamai's intelligent edge platform for content, streaming media, and application delivery comprises more than 11,600 servers within over 820 networks in 62 countries. Akamai is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and has European subsidiaries in London, England, Paris, France, and Munich, Germany - which also serves as Akamai's European headquarters. For information on Delivering a Better Internet^SM, visit www.akamai.com.

Akamai Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act
The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai's management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, general economic conditions, any material, unexpected increases in Akamai's use of funds, the dependence on Akamai's Internet content delivery service and technology products, lack of market acceptance of new services, a failure by us to successfully enter into any license, technology development or other technology partnership agreement within the time periods expected by us or at all, a failure of Akamai's network infrastructure, and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.