Solves three of the biggest challenges for
greater Kubernetes adoption: skills, scale, and lock-in
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 12,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai Technologies,
Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the cybersecurity and cloud company that
powers and protects business online, today announced the Akamai App
Platform, a ready-to-run solution that makes it easy to deploy,
manage, and scale highly distributed applications.
The Akamai App Platform is built on top of the cloud native
Kubernetes technology Otomi, which Akamai acquired from
Red Kubes earlier this year. The
application platform provides ready-to-run templates that address
common challenges in deploying, managing, and scaling Kubernetes
clusters at scale. Instead of relying on multiple departments and
spending months sourcing, connecting, and configuring the software
needed to operate Kubernetes fleets, Akamai's solution automates
the provisioning process, allowing developers to build and deploy
highly distributed applications in a few clicks. This cuts
deployment time from months to less than an hour, and provides
near-instant scaling as production workloads grow.
"Over the past decade, developers have been forced to choose
between two evils: Either accept complexity, vendor lock-in, and
spiraling cloud costs if they build with hyperscaler solutions, or
grapple with skills gaps, longer time to value, and perceived
increased risk if they build on open source solutions," said
Ari Weil, Vice President of Product
Marketing, Akamai. "We're giving them a better way by harnessing
the power and potential of the open source ecosystem to strike a
balance between the ease of use of the one-size-fits-all hyperscale
world and the flexibility and control afforded by open source."
Built for business
The Akamai App Platform provides developers with:
- Ready-to-run, customizable templates that provide essential
capabilities for running cloud native applications on a Kubernetes
cluster
- A framework that seamlessly integrates preconfigured upstream
open source projects while simplifying their deployment,
management, and scaling for production workloads
- A self-service environment for engineering teams to build,
deploy, secure, and maintain their applications
- A catalog of Golden Path templates based on industry best
practices and open source tools across the cloud native
ecosystem
Akamai designed the platform for development and operations
teams at various stages of scaling their deployments. Whether they
are anticipating growth, just realizing the need to scale, or
actively working on scaling and expanding existing services, the
Akamai App Platform is purpose-built to accelerate time to value
for every business. The Akamai App Platform is also designed to
help solution integrators who want a fast and simple way to
architect multicloud solutions by managing a platform for their
applications instead of managing the infrastructure to build it;
value-added resellers looking to eliminate the overhead of
Kubernetes configuration and deployment; and independent software
vendors that want to make it easier for customers to adopt their
partner solutions through pre-built configurations and add partner
solutions to application architectures.
Straightening the Kubernetes learning curve
Kubernetes serves as a foundational technology in the open
source ecosystem, empowering organizations to build, deploy, and
manage containerized applications with ease, portability, and
scalability. According to the CNCF's latest annual survey, more
than 60% of enterprises have adopted Kubernetes.
Yet despite its widespread adoption, Kubernetes is often a
challenge for DevOps teams still getting up to speed on the
container orchestration technology. The Akamai App Platform helps
alleviate some of the sharpest pain points faced by development and
operations teams in today's complex containerized environments
by:
- Simplifying operational complexity. The Akamai App
Platform reduces the complexity associated with managing Kubernetes
clusters. By incorporating pre-configured solutions and open source
tools, Akamai provides teams with user-ready Kubernetes
environments that simplify the process of setting up and
maintaining clusters, allowing businesses to focus on their
applications rather than the underlying infrastructure.
- Standardizing and integrating deployments and tools. To
combat the common issues of sprawl and lack of standardization in
Kubernetes deployments, the Akamai App Platform offers an
integrated suite of tools for observability, security, workload
compliance, secrets management, CI/CD and service mesh, and cloud
native storage. This allows users to create a consistent
operational environment across teams, helping businesses establish
clear processes for managing containerized workloads while reducing
toil and time to market.
- Embracing true portability. Unlike many cloud providers
that tie Kubernetes to their proprietary services, Akamai stands
out by embracing open source solutions. This strategic choice
promotes portability for workloads, offering businesses the freedom
to move applications between cloud environments, protection against
vendor lock-in, and increased flexibility and cost efficiency.
- Integrating advanced security and observability
features. The Akamai App Platform goes beyond basic Kubernetes
management by integrating advanced security and observability
features that strengthen applications at scale. This includes
real-time threat detection for proactive security management and
robust monitoring tools for deep insights into application
performance. These features enable businesses to maintain secure,
reliable environments without incurring additional overhead or
complexity.
When combined with services from Akamai Connected Cloud, the
platform empowers companies to build scalable, distributed,
low-latency applications. It also offers unparalleled
price-performance for integrated development, delivery, and
security.
"As cloud native principles increasingly power the edge native
apps of tomorrow, the ability for developers to easily build and
deploy on an open app platform that supports container
orchestration has the potential to be yet another disruption to the
cloud status quo," said Dave
McCarthy, Research Vice President, IDC. "This will become
increasingly important as edge native apps become the front line of
AI inference."
Akamai is a Gold Sponsor of the CNCF, and earlier this year
pledged $1M to CNCF projects.
About Akamai
Akamai is the cybersecurity and cloud computing company that powers
and protects business online. Our market-leading security
solutions, superior threat intelligence, and global operations team
provide defense in depth to safeguard enterprise data and
applications everywhere. Akamai's full-stack cloud computing
solutions deliver performance and affordability on the world's most
distributed platform. Global enterprises trust Akamai to provide
the industry-leading reliability, scale, and expertise they need to
grow their business with confidence. Learn more at akamai.com and
akamai.com/blog, or follow Akamai Technologies on X and
LinkedIn.
Media Contact
Mike Maney
215-589-5443
mmaney@akamai.com
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SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.
