Akamai has been an exciting force within the data center world for a good year now. At NetEvents 2009, they were awarded Most Innovative Company. Before that, they were steadily building a reputation.

This also shows in their results. As Data Center Knowledge points out, the application delivery company has shot up another 60 percent for the last uarter. That while the Dow Jones went down for an average of 10 percent.

How do they do that? Akamai is elegant in its simplicity. Basically, all they do is mirroring content from their clients and send it to end users. The thing is that they got very good at it, so speeds are well up to par. By the way: Akamai's users tend to be quite big. Think Adobe, BBC, Amazon, Yahoo!, that kind of thing. Streaming media is still a growth market, and Akamai is in the thick of it.

For every winner, there is a loser. In Data Center Knowledge's list, it is Internap. They went down 25 percent. The reason? Well, this, mainly. Saying they had some issues integrating VitalStream is a bit of an understatement. Even worse, they did not notice until their customers refused to pay their bills anymore. This is extremely sloppy of them.

It shows how important it is not to treat your customers as money cows. Especially if your customers are very business savvy.