Akamai Technologies this week will roll out a new managed service designed to bump up the performance and scalability of Web applications.

The Web Application Accelerator service allows enterprises to extend Web applications such as collaboration, portals, and SCM to the Akamai platform. The service taps Akamai?s network of servers in combination with several technologies including dynamic mapping of requests to the most optimal servers, end-to-end route optimization, and flexible caching, which enables caching of dynamic content. The platform also includes SSL support, access-control integration, and connection-optimization via compression, content pre-fetching, as well as transport-protocol optimization.

Many enterprises are moving processes and applications online, and are facing slow response times for distributed workers, according to David Belson, lead product manager for Akamai?s application-performance services.

?Typically the managed-services approach wins over internal IT deployment when the end-users are geographically dispersed and include business partners, suppliers, and customers. Many companies buy both solutions, depending on their application and end-user requirements,? said Cindy Borovick, director of datacenter networks at IDC.