Akamai CEO Weighs In On 2 Major Concerns Company Faces

Akamai Technologies, Inc. AKAM reported worse-than-expected second-quarter numbers on Tuesday. Profit for the quarter fell 7.8 percent to $67.2 million from $72.9 million an year earlier. However, revenue for the quarter rose 14 percent year-over-year to $540 million.

Tom Leighton, Akamai Technologies CEO, was on CNBC to discuss how the company is dealing with the threat of big companies building their own content delivery networks and the challenges it faces as OTT services grow.

Proprietary CDN Threat

Leighton was asked the long-term bull case for Akamai when several big companies are building their own delivery networks. He replied, "Well at Akamai we're doing it in a way that has higher quality and lower costs and better performance and that's why our business is so strong and why it has such great prospects for the future."

He continued, "And of course, as more content comes online and there's a lot of potential content to come online with broadcast, OTT video Over-the-Top, that benefits everyone in the ecosystem that's delivering content."

Biggest Challenges As OTT Grows

On what are the biggest challenges for Akamai as more and more OTT services get launched and more video content is brought online, Leighton said, "It's scale, it's cost and it's quality. When people think about broadcast quality...your TV never rebuffers, maybe if there is a big thunderstorm outside and you've got satellite and it gets interrupted, but otherwise it just always works."

"And the Internet historically has not been that way and that's why we've put so much effort into delivering a broadcast quality experience that looks even better than TV," Leighton said.