This is a Information Technology Question: PLEASE READ BELOW AND WRITE IN DETAIL. This case study examines issues surrou

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This is a Information Technology Question:
PLEASE READ BELOW AND WRITE IN DETAIL.
This case study examines issues surrounding consistent deliveryof content in a global environment. The NBA chose Akamai as itscontent delivery provider. You probably receive content from Akamaion a regular basis when you surf the web and might not have evenknown it. Akamai's business model involves delivering content wherethe user is not aware that the content is coming from a variety ofContent Delivery Network (CDN) nodes. How can organizations whereyou work leverage a CDN?
UPDATE: While this case study is still valid, the NBAhas changed directions (sort of) and entered into a new partnershipwith Microsoft to provide both live and on-demand streaming ofgames. They will still use Akamai, but Akamai has now integratedits Content Delivery Network with Microsoft's Azure platform. Thesethings happen frequently in our business environment. While the NBAhas changed its strategy, the principles behind their formerpartnership with Akamai remain relevant.
Instructions:
Read the Case Study included at the bottom of this page. Answerthe 5 questions at the end of the Case Study and submit youranswers in a single MS Word document via Canvas. Your answer foreach question should include at least one supporting argument foryour answer or position. Be sure to clearly supportyour argument justifying your position.
CASE STUDY
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is the leadingprofessional basketballleague in the United States and Canada with 30 teams. The NBAis one of four NorthAmerican professional sports leagues. The other leagues are theMajor LeagueBaseball, the National Football League, and the National HockeyLeague. Whilefocused on the North America, the NBA has a large internationalfollowing and istelevised in 212 countries and 42 languages around theworld.
Increasingly, fans want and expect high quality game videos,RSS feeds, widgets, andFantasy leagues. NBA.com has an inventory of over 400,000digital assets, including15,000 videos. Last year, there were over 850 unique visits toNBA.com from 20 countries.Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM) is a company thatprovides a distributedcomputing platform for global Internet content and applicationdelivery. Akamaiis headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company wasfounded in 1998by MIT graduate student Daniel Lewin, along with MIT AppliedMathematics professorTom Leighton and MIT Sloan School of Management studentsJonathan Seeligand Preetish Nijhawan. Leighton still serves as Akamai’s ChiefScientist, while Lewinwas killed aboard American Airlines flight 11 which was crashedin the September 11attacks of 2001. Akamai is a Hawaiian word meaning smart orintelligent.Akamai’s primary service is provided by its proprietaryEdgeNetwork. Akamai transparentlymirrors content—sometimes all content, including HTML and CSS,andsometimes just media objects such as audio, graphics,animation, and video—fromcustomer servers. Large firms deliver their content to over240,000 Akamai servers in130 countries in 2019. These local Akamai servers cache (store)this content awaitinglocal demand. Akamai’s network is intelligent enough not todistribute content to alocal server until and unless there is local demand.
When you click on an online video at NBA.com, the domain nameis the same, but theIP address points to an Akamai server rather than the NBAserver. The Akamai server isautomatically picked depending on the type of content and theuser’s network location.Akamai’s EdgePlatform is one of the world’s largest distributedcomputing platforms.The benefit is that users can receive content from whicheverAkamai server is closest tothem or has a good connection, leading to faster download timesand less vulnerability tonetwork congestion or outages. The Internet was never designedto handle large volumesof video simultaneously streaming from a single corporateserver to all Internet devices.However, this content can be sent to the “edge” of the networkwhere Akamai serversare located, and on a local or regional basis, stream thiscontent on demand from localservers. Akamai’s 216,000 distributed servers allow it tomonitor global Internet trafficpatterns, attacks on the Internet, and latency (delays causedby excessive Internet traffic).In addition to image caching, Akamai provides services whichaccelerate dynamicand personalized content and streaming media. Akamai’spersonalization product iscalled EdgeScape, a geolocation service. Much Web contentdelivered by Akamai ispersonalized to the user’s location and Internet service types.This allows Akamai’scustomers to gain insight into where end users are coming fromand what kind ofInternet service they are using. Armed with this knowledge theycan customize Webcontent for individual end users through a wide range ofcriteria, making their sitemore relevant and compelling to everyone who visits.
For instance, Akamai knows your:Internet service provider:Country Code: USRegion Code: NYCity: NEWYORKArea code: 212Latitude: 40.7128Longitude: 74.0092County: NEWYORKTime zone: ESTNetwork: verizonThroughput: vhigh
Akamai Stream OS is another service that runs on Akamai’sEdgePlatform. It enablesthe NBA to get more from its media by providing a simple,automated solution formanaging more than 500,000 media assets, assigning businesspolicies, and publishingcontent to multiple distribution channels. NBA.com and NBAMobile reached acombined 16.7 billion page views and 4.2 billion video views in2015. The NBA’s newGame Time mobile app set a new record with 7.5 million globaldownloads in 2015.Since implementing Akamai Stream OS, NBA.com’s traffic hasincreasedexponentially, with over 60M unique users in 222 countriesaccessing NBAWeb content each month.Akamai’s suite of products has helped the NBA reach recordtraffic levels whileeffectively maintaining employment and infrastructurecosts.The reach and stability of Akamai’s network have allowed theNBA to growadvertising revenues by 500 percent since 2001.
CASE QUESTIONS
1. Using Porter’s competitive forces model, analyze the NBA’smarket situation. Howdoes the use of Akamai help the NBA compete in this market?
2. Using Porter’s generic strategies model (Table 3.4), what do youthink is the NBA’s overallstrategy or strategies?
3. Why is it important that all fans in the world have the sameexperience?
4. Why is it important that individual franchise owners can build,manage, and distributeon the NBA platform their own content?
5. The NBA relies on a number of "partnerships” to deliver itsproduct (live & recorded games, merchandizing, etc.). Who arethe NBA’s partners?How does the concept of a strategic ecosystem apply to the NBA’spartnershipstrategies?