Sockeye Drops Akamai Technology For In-House Solution

Sockeye is also recruiting solution providers.

Sockeye was spun out of Akamai in 2001 and has since been accessing Akamai's 13,000 servers on more than 1,000 networks to run its intelligent routing service, called GlobalRoute. In its place, Sockeye has developed a patent-pending global topology data feed that determines the performance of available paths before rerouting IP traffic.

Akamai remains an equity investor in Sockeye as well as a referral partner, said Brendan Hannigan, vice president of marketing at Sockeye, based here.

"We needed to introduce new capabilities specifically for route optimization, and we felt it would be best to develop that in-house," said Hannigan. "On the technology front, we are exclusively in control now."

Sockeye is seeking network and professional services integrators, application developers and service providers to sell, implement and in some cases private-label its service, Hannigan said. Technology integration firm Diversified Data, Danvers, Mass., and optical IP service provider Origix, Minneapolis, have signed with Sockeye so far.

"We get three or four calls every day from vendors asking us to become a channel partner but decided to work with Sockeye because they gave us the ability to extend our service offerings to existing clients," said Tom Cullen, vice president of professional services at Diversified Data.

The solution provider plans to integrate Sockeye's GlobalRoute service with EMC, AT&T and Precise Software solutions. Diversified Data already is in discussions to roll out GlobalRoute to a large financial services firm and a computer supplies distributor.

"The integration of Sockeye, which finds the best route based on costs, time of day or heaviest flow, works particularly well and creates a total solution with Precise Software's ability to drill down and identify the cause of latency issues," said John Pierce, president of Diversified Data.

Sockeye is providing partners with marketing collateral, technical and sales training and joint sales calls, Hannigan said. The search for partners will focus largely on the Northeast, with Sockeye choosing partners in specific regions, he said.