Akamai is to launch seven new cloud locations globally over the next two months.
The CDN company this week announced new core compute regions in the Netherlands, Indonesia, US, Italy, Japan, and Brazil that will open over the next two months.
The company said the locations – Amsterdam; Jakarta; Los Angeles, California; Miami, Florida; Milan; Osaka; and São Paulo – are the third installment of Akamai’s rollout of new core compute regions since its acquisition of Linode last year.
The regions will come online and be made available to customers throughout September and October.
Akamai generally uses colocation providers for its cloud regions but hasn't disclosed which facilities its regions will reside in.
“The need for companies to provide a better user experience increasingly exposes the limits of the legacy centralized cloud model,” said Adam Karon, chief operating officer and general manager, cloud technology group, Akamai.
“We’re solving this challenge for customers by flipping the script. 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. 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.
Launched in February 2023, Akamai’s Connected Cloud is intended to be a more distributed alternative to the likes of AWS and Azure. It offers dedicated and shared CPU, GPU, container, storage, database, and serverless services.
The services are delivered from an expanded set of locations beyond the initial 11 sites Akamai took over when it bought cloud hosting company Linode for $900 million in February 2022. Akamai promises to drive down the cost of cloud computing with cheaper egress charges based on "bringing CDN-like economics to cloud data transfer."
Founded in 2003, at the time of the acquisition Linode operated in colocation space in 11 data centers across America, Canada, Germany, the UK, India, Japan, Singapore, and Australia.
In July 2023, the company announced the launch of sites in Washington DC and Chicago in the US as well as Paris, France, with plans to open locations in Seattle and Chennai, India later that quarter.
Over the past 90 days, Akamai has opened 13 new core compute regions. The company now has operational regions in Atlanta, Dallas, Fremont, Newark, Toronto, Frankfurt, London, Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo, and recently announced regions in Chicago, Washington, DC, Paris, Stockholm, Seattle, and Chennai.
Akamai said it plans to roll out more global core compute regions later this year; its website lists future plans for regions in Seoul, South Korea; Madrid, Spain; and Auckland, New Zealand.
The company also lists plans for dozens of ‘distributed regions’ alongside its existing Edge footprint. The company lists these as “designed to deliver basic compute capabilities in difficult-to-reach locations that are underserved by traditional cloud providers.”
