Dr. Tom Leighton, Co-Founder and CEO Akamai’s beginnings lie in a challenge posed by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in early 1995. The father of the web foresaw the congestion which would soon become familiar to Internet users. As a result, Berners-Lee challenged his colleagues at MIT to invent a fundamentally new and better way to deliver Internet content.
MIT Professor of Applied Mathematics Tom Leighton, whose office was down the hall from Dr. Berners-Lee, was intrigued by the challenge. Dr. Leighton, a renowned expert on parallel algorithms and architecture, was the head of the Algorithms Group at MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science. Dr. Leighton recognized that a solution to web congestion could be found in applied mathematics and algorithms and he assembled a team of researchers to tackle the problem.
After obtaining his undergraduate degrees in computer science and mathematics from the Technion, Danny Lewin came to MIT in the Fall of 1996 to work with Dr. Leighton. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Lewin began making rapid and important progress on a variety of techniques for improving Internet performance. Working with the team, Dr. Leighton and Mr. Lewin developed the mathematical algorithms necessary to intelligently route and replicate content over a large network of distributed servers, technology that would ultimately solve the potentially frustrating problem for Internet users.
The Pioneering Leader of the Intelligent Edge
In time, the act of Berners-Lee posing the problem in an academic setting resulted in the creation of a commercial service that would revolutionize the Internet. Founded in 1998, Akamai is currently the pioneering leader of the intelligent edge—the next frontier of digital business. It’s where users connect, where digital life is experienced, where clouds, devices, and vast streams of data come together. Akamai keeps decisions, apps, and experiences closer to users than anyone, while keeping attacks and threats at bay. The company’s portfolio of edge security, web and mobile performance, and OTT solutions are supported by unmatched customer service and 24/7/365 monitoring.
Our inclusive culture fosters diversity of thought which translates into an innovative and collaborative environment
The Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform
“At Akamai, we see a world of unimagined potential, all enabled through the unique power of the Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform,” says Dr. Tom Leighton, Co-Founder and CEO of Akamai. It’s this power that creates the agility the customers need to accelerate and secure their multi-cloud world, and own their digital future.
The firm’s cloud delivery platform locates edge servers in more than 1,600 networks around the world. In fact, 85 percent of the world’s Internet users are within a single network hop of an Akamai edge server. This global network brings the digital content as close as possible to customers, reduces latency, and increases availability, helping maximize customer engagement and revenue. And when the clients offload their content to the Akamai platform, they not only improve reliability but also drastically reduce infrastructure and bandwidth costs. The platform also improves the automatic performance via integrated machine learning engines.
Akamai’s cloud delivery platform not only delivers 95 exabytes of data and ingests 2.5 exabytes of data every year, but also interacts with more than 1.3 billion client devices every day. This big data powers the platform’s integrated machine learning engines, automatically sending content via optimized Internet routes, and avoiding congestion points and outages. Advanced HTTP2 capabilities let the platform intelligently determine the digital content that customers are most likely to request. It can then automatically push that content to customers, even before they request it, resulting in a fast, consistent, and exceptional digital experience.
Consequently, the platform helps in capitalizing new markets by expanding the business globally without compromising on availability, reliability, or performance and ensures uptime even during peak traffic conditions. It also provides high visibility through detailed application delivery logs from thousands of worldwide edge servers. Real-time visibility into platform behavior data supports the client’s DevOps processes and they can easily leverage this data to optimize their applications to increase revenue and brand value.
The Next Phase in the authoritative DNS Evolution
Edge DNS is an authoritative DNS service that moves the client’s DNS resolution from their premises or data centers to the Akamai Intelligent Edge.
It is an integral part of Akamai’s Intelligent Edge Platform. Edge DNS is architected for nonstop DNS availability and high performance, even through the largest DDoS attacks. Edge DNS can be deployed as a primary or secondary solution with optional DNSSEC support to protect against DNS forgery and manipulation. Through Akamai’s Edge DNS service clients can achieve domain stability, resilience, and can load balance the data centers, cloud deployments, and CDNs with Akamai’s Cloud Based Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) solution: Global Traffic Management.
Working from Home – The New Threat Frontier
With COVID-19, a lot has changed in global work environment over the past few months and remote work has become the new normal. Akamai’s technology is helping organizations grant remote workers secure access to applications for business productivity. Companies are facing security issues due to a sudden rise in remote user volume, as it is difficult to provide VPN access to everyone. Akamai’s edge platform is built for a world where businesses depend on the internet for everything. Enabling secure remote access for employees has been a reactive measure and most organizations only plan for this when a disruption or situation occurs.
"At Akamai, we see a world of unimagined potential, all enabled through the unique power of the Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform"
Akamai is helping remote workers gain secure access to apps for business productivity with its Business Continuity Assistance Program and other enterprise security solutions. These can be globally deployed in less than 15 minutes to secure and manage remote access.
Building the Future: Big Teaming for Revolutionary Innovation
Having 20 years of experience and a team of more than 1,900 experts, including thought leaders and performance architects, supporting with expertise, outsourcing, proactive monitoring, and responsive troubleshooting, Akamai is defining the future of the company and the industry. “Our inclusive culture fosters diversity of thought which translates into an innovative and collaborative environment,” says Leighton.
Top global brands rely on Akamai to help them realize competitive advantage through agile solutions that extend the power of their multi-cloud world. The firm’s globally distributed intelligent edge platform surrounds everything, from the enterprise to the cloud, so customers and their businesses can be fast, smart, and secure.
