Facing burgeoning demand for its software in China, India and Europe, Sun Microsystems turned to MCI Communications and Akamai Technologies to beef up its software download capabilities, the companies announced today.

The Sun Download Center (SDLC), a Web-based global software distribution service, will use MCI’s advanced Enterprise Hosting Services and Akamai’s Electronic Software Delivery solution to both improve performance and the end-user experience and to reduce Sun’s operational costs.

Sun initially built the SDLC on its own, but as demand grew globally, the company was hard-pressed to deliver fast downloads of its most popular software, including Java and Solaris, said Curtis Sasaki, vice president of Sun.com, the company’s Web properties. Where once the U.S. accounted for about 70% of Sun’s downloads, it now sees 50% of the download requests coming from other places.

“With the trend we are seeing--the number of people downloading Solaris, and the incredible numbers downloading Java--especially in China, India and Europe, we didn’t have the network capability to provide a satisfying experience to our users,” Sasaki said. “We looked at doing it ourselves, but we knew we had make sure the end-user experience was that, once you decided to download, it just worked. And we knew whatever we put out there had to be able to scale as we continue to offer more capability.”

The need for scalability in remote locations prompted Sun to look for an approach that distributed the software as close as possible to the end user, to reduce download times. Akamai is providing its globally distributed edge platform to enable the software download service while MCI provides Tier 1 support for the solution, through its Digex acquisition, which brought enterprise hosting services into the company’s repertoire.

“We have worked closely with Akamai for some time now,” said Debbie Shuey, manager of MCI Hosting services. “We have a very strong relationship with Akamai, we have dedicated resources, dedicated sales teams, and have had strong relationship through the Digex acquisition.”

The service went live in mid-June and is performing up to expectations, Sasaki said. “We can’t afford any hiccups,” he added.