Akamai today announced a major expansion of its cloud computing presence around the world.
While you might still think of Akamai as a content delivery service, the acquisition of Linode a year ago clearly signaled its ambition to become a major cloud computing player (on top of its ambitions around cybersecurity). While it may not be able to challenge the likes of AWS, Azure and Google Cloud anytime soon, it does have a strong foothold in a number of industries, including entertainment, and the ability to offer many of the core infrastructure services that its customers need.
Given that it already had a global presence, it’s no surprise that the company is now also rolling out its cloud computing services to more locations around the globe. After announcing its plans to launch regions in Paris, France; Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle and Chennai earlier this year, Akamai is now announcing new regions in Amsterdam, Jakarta, Los Angeles, Miami, Milan, Osaka and São Paulo, too.
One of Akamai’s major advantages is that it already operates more than 4,100 edge points of presence across 131 countries, which allows it to offer users low-latency access to its compute service. It’s no surprise then that the company calls out how its Amsterdam region is connected to AMS-IX, the second-largest internet exchange in the world, while its regions in Miami and São Paulo will allow it to offer connectivity to service users in Latin America. Given its strength in the entertainment business (thanks, in large parts, to its CDN business), it’s also no surprise that Akamai would open a region in Los Angeles.
“Akamai’s cloud computing services are ideal for higher-performance workloads that need to run closer to end users, like those often found in streaming media, gaming, and e-commerce applications. The services are part of Akamai Connected Cloud, a massively distributed edge and cloud platform for cloud computing, security, and content delivery that keeps applications and experiences closer, and threats farther away,” the company explains in its announcement today.
The company currently operates locations in Atlanta, Dallas, Fremont, Newark, Toronto, Frankfurt, London, Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo. With the 13 regions it announced this year, it’ll bring its global presence to 24 once these go online. Chances are that it’ll announce more regions before all of these go online, though.
“With Akamai Connected Cloud, we’re taking an outside-in, distributed-first approach built on a commitment to cloud-native technologies and the same network many of the world’s largest companies have relied on for more than two decades,” said Adam Karon, the chief operating officer and general manager of Akamai’s Cloud Technology Group. “It’s an approach focused on a future where scale becomes as much about the size of the network as it does the size of the data center.”