Central Desktop, a leading SaaS-based social technology platform for next-generation business teams to interact, share and manage their daily work activities, today announced it has chosen Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKAM), the leader in powering rich media, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, to meet increased global demand for its SaaS-based approach to managing day-to-day business operations.

“Investing in Akamai allows us to confidently scale and service any business regardless of their size or geographic distribution,” said Arnulf Hsu, CTO and co-founder, Central Desktop. “Our investment in Akamai is another key differentiator for us in the crowded collaboration market. Few SaaS vendors in our market, if any, are taking scale and performance as seriously as we are. As we grow, we’re confident that Akamai will continue to help support our vision to continually reduce costs and IT-hassle associated with on-premise solutions through leveraging SaaS architecture.”

More and more smart companies of all sizes are selecting SaaS solutions for cost savings, low risk and elimination of IT hassles. Central Desktop is committed to supporting these businesses now and into the future with enterprise-grade security, performance and scalability regardless of size or location.

“Adoption of SaaS for mission-critical business operations is growing across all market sectors, and organizations need a highly efficient and cost effective solution that can guarantee global scale and performance,” said Willie M. Tejada, vice president, Application and Site Acceleration, Akamai. “Our solutions help enable SaaS businesses to focus on their core innovative software while Akamai focuses on ensuring infrastructure availability and quality of service.”

Akamai’s site and application acceleration services leverage Akamai’s globally-distributed platform to deliver consistent, improved performance for SaaS consumers worldwide. Many Akamai customers serve their applications to users in over 100 countries. Akamai also helps to improve the end-user availability of SaaS applications by applying its proprietary SureRoute technology to avoid Internet trouble-spots.

The economic trends that are driving more rapid acceptance of SaaS are coming to a head. As the only integrated, business-grade social technology platform delivered solely as a service, Central Desktop is accessible via the Web from anywhere at any time. While many traditional software companies are cutting costs, Central Desktop is rapidly growing to meet customer demand.

For more information on how Akamai helps enable the business models for SaaS providers, please visit www.akamai.com/html/forms/thinkstrategies_saas.html.

About Central Desktop

Central Desktop delivers a pure web-based social technology platform for next-generation business teams to interact, share and manage their daily work activities from anywhere at any time. Built collaboratively over the last three years with direct feedback from its users, Central Desktop’s collaboration software platform provides enterprise-grade functionality without enterprise solution resource requirements.

Central Desktop serves organizations in technology, media, marketing & communications, professional services, architecture & design, manufacturing and many others. Its social technology platform consistently delivers a 30% increase in productivity while decreasing the total cost of doing business. Key Central Desktop customers include; The Barack Obama Presidential Campaign, iSoldit, Gymboree, NXTV, Chapters of the Project Management Institute and the California Office of HIPAA Compliance.

Founded in 2005, Central Desktop is a privately-held company located in Pasadena, California. For more information, visit www.centraldesktop.com.

© Central Desktop. All rights reserved. Central Desktop and the Central Desktop logo are all registered trademarks of Central Desktop. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

About Akamai

Akamai^® provides market-leading managed services for powering rich media, dynamic transactions, and enterprise applications online. Having pioneered the content delivery market one decade ago, Akamai's services have been adopted by the world's most recognized brands across diverse industries. The alternative to centralized Web infrastructure, Akamai's global network of tens of thousands of distributed servers provides the scale, reliability, insight and performance for businesses to succeed online. Akamai has transformed the Internet into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, interact, and collaborate. To experience The Akamai Difference, visit www.akamai.com.

Akamai is a registered trademark of Akamai Technologies, Inc. in the USA and other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.