This morning, we announced LimelightSITE(tm), a new service platform designed for “whole web site” delivery.

What is “whole web site” delivery? It’s the efficient transmission of all of the elements that make up every page of a web site, with the goal of ensuring that the end-user has a brilliant experience with the web site. These elements can be smaller-sized objects like text, scripts, thumbnails, or code for a media player, personalization items (like a profile picture), or larger objects like training videos or interactive product demonstrations. Prior to today, Limelight Networks has offered only object delivery with our LimelightDELIVER and LimelightSTREAM products. This means our technology was best suited for, say, streaming a two-hour high-definition movie on behalf of a content publisher. The whole site delivery provided by LimelightSITE means that now we have services for optimally delivering that movie, all of the elements that surround that movie on the web page (the player, logos, graphics, text), and all of the items on the other pages on that web site.

One of the key features introduced with LimelightSITE is our Limelight OriginDirect(tm) routing technology. This innovation helps speed the retrieval of site objects from a data center by using our private, global fiber-optic backbone to bypass “middle-mile” Internet bottlenecks. Here’s an analogy to understand how OriginDirect speeds up both the retrieval and the delivery of the objects that make up a web site:

Think of the public Internet as an eight lane highway, and the cars on that highway as the objects that make up a web site. These objects have to travel from their starting point (the originating server that stored the objects) to a destination (a web browser where they can be viewed or interacted with). When there’s no traffic on the road, things work great. The cars drive up and down the highway and get to and from their destination in the expected time (or, to step back from the analogy, the objects are retrieved and delivered as expected and the web page loads quickly in a browser).

But what happens when the Internet gets congested, or, for the analogy’s sake, there’s traffic on the highway? The cars have to slow down because of the congestion ahead, and they will arrive at their destination later than expected. Stepping back again from the analogy, that delay in the real world means that a web page will load slower than expected, which more than likely could lead to a frustrated site visitor, a poor product demonstration, or even a lost sale. So avoiding traffic is an important key for making visitors happy and generating sales from a web site.

Some of our competitors will try to make up time by “optimally routing” a car around the traffic jam on the highway. They can’t actually avoid the traffic altogether, because their cars still have to travel on the same public roads on which the traffic jam is occurring. However, they’ve spent years developing complex, mathematical algorithms that may tell the car to get off the highway a few exits early and take side streets to avoid the traffic. However, despite their experience and even though it eventually finds a path around the congestion, the fact remains that car still has to travel on the road where the traffic is, and its forward progress will be impeded just by the mere presence of traffic on that road. The end result is that the car still arrives late, just not as late as if it had just stayed on the main road and waited for the traffic to clear up.

Rather than trying to maneuver our way around a traffic jam using math, Limelight Networks decided to avoid the road altogether. That’s how OriginDirect works.

At the heart of OriginDirect is Limelight’s global fiber optic backbone, part of our highly complex hardware and software network infrastructure that we’ve spent the past 8 years building, expanding and tuning for optimal performance. This backbone is essentially a private, global Internet that only Limelight Networks customers have access to. So while cars on the public roads are trying to route around traffic, our customers are driving virtually unimpeded to their destination on our own, privately operated and maintained highway. This means our customers’ objects encounter less traffic, have more predictable arrival times, and ultimately much more certain, consistent performance for heir web site experience.

We’ve got over 1,300 customers that today realize the benefits of this backbone and our other services, including over 100 in the enterprise, e-commerce, financial services, and public sectors.If you are interested in talking with us about LimelightSITE, don’t hesitate to email us.

For more information on LimelightSITE, including a list of key features, read the press release here.

Join Limelight Networks Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Mike Gordon tomorrow, Thursday March 26th at 2pm EDT, on a live webcast, “Powering Cable’s Next-Gen Internet TV Play,” produced by Multichannel News.

Large cable operators are looking to enhance their traditional TV services with a huge lineup of on-demand Internet video programming – content that’s otherwise not available online today. But is the infrastructure in place to support the delivery of these high-value video assets?

Cable operators and programmers need an efficient, secure way to distribute HD-quality video over the Internet, to millions of customers with ultra-fast broadband pipes.

The Webinar will discuss :

• Opportunities operators and cable programmers have to deliver a rich, next-generation “Internet TV” experience
• The infrastructure and technology required to realize the vision
• What key issues and challenges, from security to cost-efficiencies, CDNs face in serving operator and programmer needs

In addition to Mike, the other panelists are:

Rich DiGeronimo, VP of Product Management
Charter Communications

Jeremiah Zinn, Senior VP, Digital Products
MTV Networks

Peter Roberts, VP, Operations for Advanced Services
Starz Entertainment

Moderated by:
Todd Spangler, Technology Editor
Multichannel News

You can register for this free event here.

Back in January, we announced that Limelight delivered President Barack Obama’s inaugural address live over the Internet to an estimated 2.5 million viewers – over two full Nielsen ratings points of viewing audience. Well, we hit another home run during the Obama inauguration.

Using LimelightSTREAM, HBO delivered “We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial”, on Sunday, January 18. Limelight was the exclusive CDN provider for HBO during the 2 hour, live event. Limelight’s scalability and network capacity was able to deliver a consistent and high quality stream to a broadcast quantity audience across our global network. Working with a short timeline, Limelight’s Professional Services team tested and re-tested the live stream to make sure the event went off without a hitch.

“In the spirit of the most accessible inauguration in history, HBO opened its signal on the linear network and also streamed the ‘We Are One’ inaugural event on HBO.com,” said Alison Moore, vice president, brand strategy and digital platforms, consumer marketing, HBO. “By partnering with Limelight, we knew that this historic event would be seen in the highest quality on our site, which HBO audiences have come to expect.”

Not long ago Limelight CSO Mike Gordon talked in detail about the fragmentation of consumer audiences. We watch different shows, view media on different devices, and relate to content in different ways. We also travel with our own entertainment, so what used to be a road trip with the family now often ends up with everyone watching their own videos on portable media players or listening to their own music. Particularly as we close in on the holidays, there’s a certain amount of isolation enabled by technology that’s hard to ignore.

Fortunately there’s also a major upside to all of the connectivity we now have, like more consistent interaction with family members throughout the day. Here’s how a recent Pew Research report put it:

“…Those with the most technology are more likely to share moments with family members while they are online and to exchange some kinds of family communications such as checking in with other family members and coordinating activities…”

In addition, the more we have the ability to connect at any time and any place, the more we can come together around certain moments in time. During the holidays, for example, we can share family photos, chat with online video, exchange gift ideas, and even throw virtual snowballs at each other. We can be present for each other, even when we’re physically apart.

In the final stretch of 2008, it’s nice to think about the ways our technology investments are having an impact on human connections, literally and figuratively. That iPod or HD camcorder you get this year? Take a moment to remember the powerful connections that come with it. Limelight Networks alone has infrastructure in place with the ability to deliver more than two terabits per second worth of video, photos, music, and more online. Remember that you get access to that delivery system and many others any time you connect a device to the Internet; that you collapse a world of distance every time you share a photo or watch a video online.

And then forget all about the technology and just enjoy the holidays.