Akamai Technologies Profile
Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Akamai) provides solutions to power and protect life online.
The company’s massively distributed edge and cloud platform, or Akamai Connected Cloud, comprises more than 4,100 edge points-of-presence in approximately 130 countries and nearly 750 cities.
Akamai develops and provides solutions for global enterprises to build, deliver and secure their digital experiences on the company’s massively distributed worldwide network. This platform, which the company refers to as Akamai Connected Cloud, is consisted of an edge and cloud architecture and underlying network for cloud computing, security and content delivery services. Akamai Connected Cloud spans more than 4,100 edge points-of-presence in approximately 130 countries and nearly 750 cities, with roughly 1,200 network partners. With this scale and distribution, Akamai Connected Cloud provides the company with visibility and insight into traffic volumes, congestion, attack patterns, vulnerabilities and other activities across the internet's complex intersections of networks and systems. Leveraging these insights, Akamai Connected Cloud offers solutions designed to protect the company’s customers from threats and attacks, while empowering them to securely deliver digital experiences to engage, entertain and interact with their customers. Akamai Connected Cloud also offers a continuum of computing designed to efficiently build, deploy and secure performant applications and workloads that require single-digit millisecond latency and global reach.
The internet’s role in transforming the way the company exchanges ideas and information and conducts business is more vital than ever. The company’s strategy is to help continue to drive this transformation by offering compute, security and content delivery services on Akamai Connected Cloud that empower the company’s customers to compete and operate with the scale, resilience and efficiency that their businesses demand.
The company has customer contracts with the U.S. government, as well as international, state and local governments and their respective agencies.
Solutions
The company provides solutions in three core offerings: security, content delivery and compute. The company also provides services and support for its customers as they utilize the company’s solutions.
Security
The company’s security solutions are designed to keep infrastructure, websites, applications, application programming interfaces (‘APIs’) and users safe from a multitude of cyberattacks and online threats while improving performance. The company’s solutions blend robust automation with customizable protections and managed security services to enable businesses to effectively manage risk and maximize the protections of their infrastructure, networks, applications and APIs. Akamai’s security solutions include web application and API protection, bot management and mitigation to protect against credential abuse and account takeover, distributed denial of service (‘DDoS’) mitigation, protection from in-browser threats to protect against supply chain compromise and audience hijacking. The company also offers a growing set of solutions designed to help businesses implement a ‘zero trust’ approach to security. Based on the concept of least privilege, which dictates that users, applications and services utilize the bare minimum amount of access needed to perform their function, these tools are intended to shift protections from a legacy approach based on establishing a corporate perimeter, to a more modern, risk-based approach.
The company’s acquisition of Guardicore Ltd. (‘Guardicore’) in October 2021 was a significant milestone in positioning Akamai as a leader in implementing ‘zero trust’ methodology. Guardicore’s microsegmentation solution helps the company’s customers prevent malicious lateral movement in their network through precise segmentation policies, visuals of activity within their IT environment and network security alerts. Other solutions in this category include zero trust network access, which replaces legacy virtual private networks, multi-factor authentication, micro-segmentation, which replaces legacy network firewalls and helps protect businesses from the threat of ransomware, and secure internet access, which helps protect against the threat of malware and phishing attacks.
In May 2023, Akamai acquired Neosec, Inc. (‘Neosec’), which enabled the company to offer a solution the company refers to as API Security that works to discover and audit APIs and monitor API activity. API Security uses behavioral analytics to detect and respond to threats and abuse detection and operates using a response platform based on data and behavioral analytics. API Security will complement the company’s application and API security portfolio by extending the company’s visibility into the growing API threat landscape.
Content Delivery
The company’s content delivery solutions consist primarily of web and mobile performance focused solutions and media delivery solutions. The company’s web and mobile performance solutions are architected to enable dynamic websites and applications to have rapid response times, no matter where the user is, what device or browser they are using or how they are connected to the internet. These services leverage intelligent performance optimization and real-time monitoring, origin offload and network reliability, and insights that enable enterprises to identify and address performance issues. Akamai web and mobile performance capabilities also include global traffic management, site acceleration, application load balancing, large-scale load testing and real-user monitoring.
The company’s media delivery solutions are designed to enable enterprises to execute their digital media distribution strategies by addressing volume and global reach requirements, improving the end-user experience, boosting reliability and reducing the cost of internet-related infrastructure. Underlying these solutions is technology to address variable connection speeds and device types, facilitate access to disparate locations around the world, accelerate large file downloads, reliably deliver high-quality live content across various devices and platforms, and enable comprehensive insights and real-time online video monitoring. Akamai media delivery solutions include video streaming and video player services, game and software delivery, broadcast operations, authoritative domain name system (‘DNS’), resolution and data and analytics.
Compute
Akamai's cloud computing services, which the company sometimes refers to as compute, include compute, storage, networking, database and container management services that are required to build, deploy and secure applications and workloads. The cloud computing services running on Akamai Connected Cloud enable companies to distribute workloads and applications across the company’s core to edge infrastructure to help solve the cost, performance and scale challenges that centralized cloud computing platforms.
In March 2022, Akamai acquired Linode Limited Liability Company (‘Linode’), an established cloud computing platform. This acquisition was a significant milestone in the company’s expansion into cloud computing services. While Linode was traditionally focused on individual developers, the company is leveraging the Linode cloud computing services for enterprise customers by building new enterprise-grade core computing regions and connecting them to the Akamai network, which will give Akamai an advantage over its bigger cloud rivals. While many other cloud providers are building their cloud platforms based on a centralized, data center-centric model, Akamai designed its cloud to be massively distributed based on the fundamental belief that modern applications will be consisted of workloads that will need to be automatically and efficiently distributed across a continuum of computing from cloud to edge in order to meet the specific performance and latency needs of that workload.
In 2023, the company launched 13 new core computing regions, bringing the company’s total footprint to 24 regions around the world. In order to continue the expansion of the company’s cloud computing services, the company plans to continue increasing the number of computing regions on its platform.
Services and Support
The company provides an array of service and support offerings across its core offerings. Through the company’s service and support offerings the company works with its customers to develop creative and tailored solutions to assist them with integrating, configuring, optimizing and managing the company’s core offerings. Once customers are deployed on Akamai Connected Cloud, they can rely on the company’s professional services and security experts for customized solutions, problem resolution and 24/7 customer support. Additional features are available to enterprises that purchase the company’s premium and managed security solutions, including a dedicated technical account team, proactive service monitoring, custom technical support handling, security traffic monitoring, technical security reviews, threat advisories and emergency support for security events.
Customers
The company’s customers include many of the world's leading corporations, such as Adobe, Airbnb, Alibaba, Autodesk, Capital Group, Carnival Corporation, The Coca-Cola Company, Comcast, Crate & Barrel, eBay, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, FedEx, Fidelity Investments, Honda, IKEA, Japan Airlines, Liberty Mutual, Lufthansa, Maersk Transportation & Logistics, Marriott, NBCUniversal, Panasonic, Panera Bread, Paramount Global, Philips, Rabobank, Riot Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Spotify, Telefonica, Toshiba, Ubisoft, WarnerMedia, and The Washington Post. The company also actively sells to government agencies. As of December 31, 2023, the company’s public-sector customers included the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Sales, Services and Marketing
The company markets and sells its solutions globally through the company’s field sales and services organization and through many channel partners, including AT&T, Avant, BV Tech, Carahsoft, Deutsche Telecom, Kyndryl, Microsoft Azure and Telefonica Group. In addition to entering into agreements with resellers, the company has several other types of sales and marketing focused alliances with entities, such as system integrators, application service providers, technology solution distributors, referral partners and marketplaces. By aligning with these partners, the company is better able to market its solutions and leverage partners to add valuable services to complement the company’s offerings and improve the customer experience. The company’s sales, services and marketing professionals are based in locations across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific; and focus on direct and channel sales, sales operations, professional services, account management and technical consulting.
To support the company’s sales efforts and promote the Akamai brand, the company conducts comprehensive marketing programs to shape perception and drive awareness and consideration of the company’s solutions.
Government Regulation
Privacy laws, such as the European Union General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, impact how the company uses data generated from the company’s network as well as the company’s ability to reach customers, understand how the company’s solutions are being used, transfer data about the company’s employees and respond to customer requests allowed under the applicable laws.
The company is subject to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and similar anti-bribery laws, which generally prohibit companies and their intermediaries from offering payments or inducements to foreign government officials for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business. To the extent the company exports technical services, data, products or other technology outside of the U.S., the company is subject to the U.S. and international laws and regulations governing international trade and exports, including but not limited to, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, the Export Administration Regulations, and sanctions against embargoed countries and other designated entities and individuals.
Intellectual Property
As of December 31, 2023, the company owned, or had exclusive rights to, over 550 U.S. patents covering the company’s technology, as well as patents issued by other countries. The company’s U.S.-issued patents have terms extendable to various dates between 2024 and 2042.
History
Akamai Technologies, Inc. was founded in 1998. The company was incorporated in Delaware in 1998.
