Hosted application providers know all about the advantages of on-demand delivery - and they make a living extolling those virtues. But when it comes to accelerating the delivery of hosted Web applications, not all vendors are ready to hand over the reins to a managed services provider. 

Companies in the content delivery market (such as Akamai Technologies and Limelight Networks) as well as telco providers with managed application-acceleration services (such as Verizon, Orange Business Services and BT) have had a lot of success working with software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors to speed the delivery of content and applications online. Akamai-accelerated SaaS transactions have grown ten-fold over the past two years alone, the company says

A key driver of that growth is the fact that more transactions are occurring outside of the U.S. Today, one out of every four SaaS transactions delivered over Akamai’s platform is executed outside of the U.S., for example. Using a managed service for application acceleration can help SaaS providers extend the geographies they serve without making huge infrastructure investments (such as building new data centers around the world).

“As we began to scale our business internationally, Internet-related performance issues beyond our control became apparent. After considering various options, we chose Akamai's Web Application Accelerator service,” said Art Papas, CEO of Bullhorn, in a statement. Bullhorn offers front-office staffing and recruiting software delivered over the Web, and the Akamai platform lets its customers “quickly and reliably access our application and transact business from anywhere in the world,” Papas said.

But other SaaS providers are opting to procure and deploy appliances in their data centers to speed delivery of Web applications. One is Marqui, which offers on-demand marketing automation and Web content management software, as well as Web site hosting services. Marqui -- which says its customers number more than 300 companies in North America -- deployed Strangeloop Networks’ AS1000 Application Scaling Appliance and has doubled Web site performance on its Microsoft ASP.NET applications.

“Our challenge is to continually add new features that make it faster and easier for our clients to design and execute online marketing programs, all the while ensuring exceptional performance,” said Jackie Reid, Marqui’s vice president of client services. “With the Strangeloop AS1000 Application Scaling Appliance in place, our customers saw immediate performance improvements on their Web pages, and we doubled the number of hosted Website customers on our application server, all while freeing up our developers to concentrate on building additional feature sets rather than worrying about performance issues.”

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.