​Rackspace offers Akamai content delivery network service

If you really want your web pages to impress, you need to get them in front of your viewers' eyes as fast as possible. So it is that Rackspace, the managed cloud company and one of the OpenStack cloud parents, has announced the availability of Rackspace Content Delivery Network (CDN).

Of course, while you can just roll out a cloud with enough servers, rolling out a CDN isn't that easy. You need low-latency storage, such as that provided by SanDisk's new Fusion ioMemory PCIe flash storage cards, data-centers across the country, and multiple tier-one network connections. Rackspace has the data centers, six throughout the world, but it didn't have the connections.

That's where Rackspace's partnership with global CDN services leader Akamai comes in. With its new CDN offering, Rackspace is offering customers integrated, "one-click" access to Akamai's industry-leading CDN services via the Rackspace portal.

This service, which begins at 10 cents per gigabyte, will enable Rackspace customers to quickly and efficiently deliver web sites or applications.

Is it worth the money? Well, KISSmetrics has found that "nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and they tend to abandon a site that isn't loaded within 3 seconds. 79 percent of web shoppers who have trouble with web site performance say they won't return to the site to buy again and around 44 percent of them would tell a friend if they had a poor experience shopping online." So, I'd say yes, it is worth the money.

"Through this strategic relationship, Rackspace customers can benefit from even easier, faster access to the global scale, reach and performance of the Akamai CDN," said John Sconyers, senior director of Akamai's Cloud Services Partners, in a statement. "This integration can help users quickly turn on CDN capabilities, using APIs, through Rackspace and immediately take advantage of the ability to offload full web sites and web applications."

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