Too Good To Be True? For True Value, Look Beyond Vendors’ Sales Claims

One such example involved the large European IT division of a diversified, global electronics enterprise. Akamai responded to a request for proposal and seemed to be the winner. However, a subsidiary of the company added further requirements that led to its management team’s selection of the subsidiary’s existing security vendor instead.

Things soured quickly. The vendor announced that the pricing they had presented was no longer valid and introduced a substantial price increase for the same scope and service. The customer was understandably unhappy about this unexpected change.

In response, Akamai returned to support the business with an economically attractive solution that met the division’s requirements, with more flexibility to address concerns about having two parallel contracts. The customer approved the Akamai solution, which provided an effective alternative to the other vendor’s web application firewall and bot mitigation solutions.

Another example involved a large, multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Asia. The company, a longtime Akamai customer, underwent aggressive cost-cutting measures and was lured away by a vendor with a lower price.

Unfortunately, the company experienced several cloud outages. To make matters worse, the hardcoded configuration that the vendor implemented meant that the customer was unable to reroute traffic from the vendor’s platform, which extended the outages. This was particularly concerning as banks in the region can be penalized by regulators if customer service channels experience a prolonged outage.

Since outages occurred on a regular basis, the company came back to Akamai. It recognized that stability and reliability come with a cost — one that is far less expensive to the company’s revenue and reputation in the long run than the cost of a poor customer experience.

We commonly hear about customers’ challenges to get responsive, worldwide, in-region support — a service that Akamai provides as a globally dispersed technology vendor. For example, a large fintech company in South Korea selected a vendor to support its ecommerce service. Before long, the company found its chosen vendor’s support level fell far short of its promises. With no presence in South Korea, the vendor was not meeting customer expectations for responsiveness.

The South Korean company turned to Akamai, and after two successful proof-of-concept pilots, the customer gave the go-ahead for migration to the Akamai platform. The Akamai team worked diligently to ensure that the migration was achieved quickly, and that the Cloud Service Provider Security and Safety Assessment required by Korean regulators was completed.

The customer is currently looking forward to completing the migration of its remaining CDN traffic from its former vendor and adopting Akamai Image & Video Manager.

Another cautionary tale involved a large food delivery service based in a highly competitive market in Asia. The customer’s procurement team selected a vendor with an attractive price, as this aligned with their own cost-cutting initiatives.

It wasn’t long, however, before complaints started coming in from the company’s IT teams. Their infrastructure and security teams were seeing many false positives for security threats, creating additional work (and stress) for the internal teams.

When the teams called for support, they were directed to a third party with inexperienced support and operations personnel. In addition, a number of hidden costs emerged, erasing much of the cost advantage the company thought they’d be getting.

The company switched to Akamai and achieved high-quality service and performance at a cost that worked for their budget.

While the details vary, these stories all share a common thread: Promises of savings are not always realized. That’s when companies realize the value of an enterprise-grade solution. A low-cost solution may seem good enough … until it isn’t. That’s when the true cost of compromising on the quality can become painfully clear.

At Akamai, we meet customers’ needs by providing a total solution that covers all the bases.

• Best-in-class security, including defense against novel attacks

• Superior 24/7 support worldwide from our localized, expert professional services team

• Better value, with transparent pricing and no surprise bills