CDNetworks adds U.S. clients Shaklee, QuarterLife

By Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 26 (Reuters) - South Korea's CDNetworks Co Ltd (073710.KQ: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Asia's top provider of Web acceleration services, is making progress winning U.S.-based business with several major client wins, a company executive said on Monday.

CDNetworks signed up Shaklee Corp this month, as the maker of natural foods and cleaning products braced for a surge in traffic to its Web site when influential TV host Oprah Winfrey endorsed its "Get Green Starter Kit" on her show.

The company will provide image acceleration for the Web site of Shaklee under a 12-month contract, said Robert Gribnau, CDNetworks' vice president of sales for North America and Europe. Traffic to Shaklee's Web site surged from 2 megabytes per second to more than 200 megabytes a second after Oprah endorsed Shaklee in episodes that aired Nov. 5 and Nov. 19.

He said CDNetworks has also signed on to provide Web acceleration services for QuarterLife, the Web-based TV show from the creators of "My So Called Life." It recently began running on News Corp's (NWSa.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) MySpaceTV, and will be the first Web-based show to air on broadcast TV early next year.

TV network 4Kids Entertainment (KDE.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) has also signed on with CDNetworks for hosting and Web acceleration, he said. 4Kids is the U.S. licensee of the multibillion-dollar Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! video game and animated cartoon franchises.

CDNetworks is also in talks to supply global content delivery network services to social network sites MySpace and Facebook, and security software companies, Gribnau said.

The sales executive previously worked for U.S.-based rivals Internap, VitalStream, Akamai Technologies Inc (AKAM.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Speedera.

Akamai and Limelight Networks Inc (LLNW.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) are the two biggest players in the market for Web content delivery networks, while CDNetworks is the biggest such operator in Asia and ranks number-three worldwide, according to industry data.