A lot of people know Akamai Technologies as an accelerator of content delivery over the Internet, a bubble-era survivor that helps web sites work well at crunch time. That's the business that built the Cambridge, MA company, and a franchise it means to defend against interlopers like Amazon, which last month announced a content distribution strategy of its own.

But Akamai also uses its distributed server network to speed the delivery of applications, including software-as-a-service and enterprise apps that are not browser-enabled. CEO Paul Sagan said earlier this year that the "app acceleration" business was running at a rate of about $40 million per year in 2007, reflecting "significant growth," with more growth expected for 2008. As of late last year, Akamai CFO J.D. Sherman reported approximately 250 customers for the company's Application Performance Solutions, including Audi, Caterpillar, and Hitachi.

Rather than big data centers, Akamai relies on a network of thousands of servers distributed around the world, which reduces the distance data must travel to reach end users. Akamai's content delivery services have grown more sophisticated over the years, as web media boomed and technologies like Ajax created richer, more immersive experiences for users - and thus higher expectations for performance.

The applications line of services, which started in 2005 and requires some specialized technology of its own, was a logical next move for the company. The version for non-browser based apps was inaugurated last fall. The idea behind the latter is to set free the large volume of legacy software that is otherwise restricted to client-server or VPN access. "It's not that the private WAN needs go away, but more applications are getting delivered to users not on WAN," says Neil Cohen, Akamai's director of product marketing.

Those users include remote employees, business partners, and customers. "It's a natural progression that reflects the mixture of applications in the borderless enterprise. People want to deliver enterprise applications to anyone, anywhere, at any time." And they need more than speed, he says; availability, consistency, and security are high on the list of essentials. Bolting Akamai to the enterprise, he says, is a way of extending the realm of cloud computing to applications that would otherwise remain tethered in place.