Shares of Digital Island (Nasdaq: ISLD), which offers network and hosting services for e-commerce businesses, had a stunning performance 
on Wednesday, gaining 45 5/16 to 114-15/16. The climb of more than 65 percent came after the company announced investments by Sun Microsystems and Inktomi. The three companies had been previously working together, and on Wednesday, Digital Island also announced that it will strengthen its Internet infrastructure offerings by deploying up to 5,000 Sun servers equipped with Inktomi's Traffic Server and Content Delivery Suite.
Digital Island stock has been hot ever since the company announced in October that it would buy content delivery company Sandpiper Networks. Digital Island is clearly setting itself up as a competitor to Akamai Technologies (Nasdaq: AKAM), which has made a lot of noise on Wall Street recently.
Of course, Akamai remains much larger than Digital Island in terms of market value. Digital Island, which went public at $10 a share in June, is worth a little more than $4 billion. Akamai, which went public in October at $26 a share, closed up 15-1/2 to 241-1/2 on Wednesday, giving the company a worth of more than $22 billion.
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