Sockeye Gets Smarter

Sockeye upgrades its data feed to improve the company's GlobalRoute service as it emerges from under the wing of key shareholder Akamai Technologies.

by Colin C. Haley of boston.internet.com [October 23, 2002]

Looking to differentiate itself in the "intelligent routing" sector, Sockeye Networks upgraded its GlobalRoute service with a new data feed to steer traffic on Internet protocol networks around bottlenecks.

"We now have the global infrastructure in place to pick the best route," said Valeri Marks, Sockeye CEO.

The service uses software developed in-house to analyze data from geographically dispersed servers to map the lowest-cost, best-performance routes for voice, data and video content. That's important for communications providers and enterprises, especially those who subscribe to two or more Internet services providers, a practice known as multi-homing.

With intelligent routing, users can cut costs by sending non-mission critical data over lower-priced Internet service providers and reducing networks engineering tasks. In addition, they can better guard against denial-of-service attacks by moving traffic to unclogged lines.

The new data feed replaces Sockeye's previous Internet monitoring system, which was based on data from, among others, Akamai Technologies, a 40 percent stakeholder in the company.

The gradual weaning from Akamai's technology was part of the plan since Sockeye spun out in 2001, Marks said. Akamai will continue to be a Sockeye business partner, reselling the service.

Sockeye is about to close a second round of venture capital financing, a portion of which will be used to market the improved service, Marks said.

In a recent report, Yankee Group, a Boston telecommunications research firm, predicted early success for Sockeye, in part because of its association with Akamai, but also because GlobalRoute is more of a service rather than a product. Pricing ranges from about $1,200 to $4,500 per month.

This is attractive for companies who want to test the functionality of intelligent routing without making a large investment. This leaves Sockeye, or its rival Opnix, as the two main choices.

As the market matures and more enterprises examine the technology, Sockeye needs to develop a product, Yankee said. Large companies like to have easy access to equipment in their own data centers and are wary of recurring monthly costs. Other companies jockeying for position in the space include Radware, netVmg, RouteScience, and Proficient Networks.

Marks said there is a product component to GlobalRoute, in that some of the equipment is customized by the customer with specific price and performance criteria.

"We continue to monitor what those service providers want and we can easily shift," Marks said. "It's absolutely something we want to be on radar screen."

— End