In a bid to differentiate itself in the cloud market, Akamai unveiled its latest cloud offerings, designed to be platform-agnostic, cost-efficient, low-latency, and user-friendly. Akamai launched Generalized Edge Compute (Gecko) for companies looking to run workloads closer to users, devices, and data sources. Companies often do this to improve their user experience. With Gecko, Akamai plans to target industries such as media, gaming, and retail. Akamai’s focus is on customers requiring high and variable compute, storage, and backup solutions, and it is especially targeting companies that prefer to manage their own cloud infrastructure.
But to truly meet these demands, Akamai needs to build partnerships with firms that complement its tech. For example, it should forge partnerships with SUSE and Cloudera, leveraging their collective capabilities to deliver a unified solution to clients. SUSE is known for its strong presence in Europe (especially in the DACH region). Its robust security features such as SELinux and AppArmor, expertise in container management, and container-as-a-service solutions make it an ideal partner for Akamai.
Similarly, an Akamai-Cloudera alliance would bring a comprehensive data management platform to the table, offering solutions for data engineering, warehousing, machine learning, and analytics across hybrid and multicloud environments. Cloudera would significantly enhance Akamai’s capabilities in large-scale data analytics and storage, aligning with its vision for reliable and scalable content delivery. Cloudera’s wide adoption across industries such as finance, healthcare, telecommunications, and retail will be a big plus, too.
A strategic tripartite partnership not only elevates Akamai’s cloud offerings but also underscores its commitment to open-source technologies. It will also serve its ambition to attract clients previously hesitant to embrace the cloud. Akamai desires to establish itself as a compelling alternative in the competitive cloud market landscape. Through the right partnerships, it can tap into new verticals and cater to developers in the edge computing space, especially in existing communities within SUSE and Cloudera, whose members share similar philosophies. The reality is that, without these partnerships, it will take Akamai years to add similar capabilities to their offers organically, and time may not be on its side: Other hyperscalers are already chipping away at even the most ardent technologists yet to embrace the reality of cloud.
Even without a strategic alliance, existing customers of SUSE and Cloudera can consider Akamai’s offering, especially those seeking to avoid the hyperscalers but looking for wider geographical reach, low data egress costs, and an effective price for performance computing.
