FFIV and AKAM do different things. Thus, they don't compete.

Apples and oranges....

AKAM uses caches to speed up the Internet.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/4...

FFIV uses lower level IP stuff to speed up networking.

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news...

I once wrote documentation about the 7 layer OSI protocol model thingie ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model

AKAM does its magic near the top of the 7 layers; while FFIV does its magic at the bottom, near the physical layer.

Hint: I don't recommend selling AKAM or FFIV Short.

If you have to sell something short ... sell JAVA short.

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=JAVA#...