Akamai Receives a Highly Commended Experience Award from Sainsbury’s

Akamai has received an award for delivering a Highly Commended Experience at the annual supplier recognition programme organized by Sainsbury’s. This accolade is testament to our 14-year relationship with the customer and the efficiency of the content delivery and security solutions we provide to the British retailer. We are delighted to be working with the second largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom as we continue to join forces with them on their quest to help everyone eat better.

Supplier programme performance

Sainsbury’s and its brands are engaged in continuous assessments of their suppliers via an ongoing supplier relationship programme. This is essential for them to be able to deliver a great experience to the customers shopping in their 600+ supermarkets. The programme evaluates each supplier’s performance, commercial contribution, relationship management, and innovation. Akamai has consistently topped the scoring charts of this programme and is one of the highest scored technology suppliers in the scheme. This stellar performance is also behind Akamai’s win and recognition at the first annual awards ceremony organized by Sainsbury’s. 

Award-winning security and delivery solutions

As one of the key Sainsbury’s brands, Argos is the third-most-visited website in the U.K. It was also among the top most-visited websites during last year’s Black Friday event. For this beloved site to run fast and efficiently for its customers, it needs top-level delivery and security infrastructure. And that is exactly what Akamai helps to provide.

Akamai’s bot management solutions help to detect unknown bots by using artificial intelligence models for user behavior analysis, browser fingerprinting, and more. Sainsbury’s receives comprehensive real-time reports on bot traffic and continuous updates to our directory of 1,500+ bots. This helps them to outmaneuver bots before they can cause harm. And through our web application firewall solution, Sainsbury’s can quickly identify vulnerabilities and mitigate threats across their entire web and API estates. In addition to this, Sainsbury’s uses Akamai Guardicore Segmentation as it’s the simplest, fastest, and most intuitive way to enforce Zero Trust principles. On the delivery side of things, Akamai consistently enables Sainsbury’s and its brands to deliver fast, engaging, and reliable user experiences on their sites and apps. 

Speaking about the collaboration with Akamai, Sarah Hirtenjohann, Sainsbury's Head of Supplier Relationship Management, Technology said, ‘We are delighted to be working with Akamai and to recognise the incredible contribution they are making to our technology infrastructure. The Akamai team is closely integrated with our own and their performance score is exceptional because of their collaboration, innovation, and incredible technical know-how. It was great to see Akamai receive its due accolade at our annual awards and we really look forward to continuing our award-winning partnership.’

Commenting on the evolution of the work with Akamai, Bleddyn Williams, Sainsbury's Head of Engineering, said, ‘I am absolutely thrilled with our strategic relationship, which has enabled us to deliver and protect one of our key brands, Argos, for 14 years. And it is now wonderful to see this expand to protect all of our brands. This is a true testament to the great work delivered by the Akamai team and we cannot wait to see what the future holds for our partnership.’