Akamai App Platform Aims to Simplify Kubernetes Management

Akamai Technologies, Inc., 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.