Akamai CTO: All access is remote access

Apr 6, 2022

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Robert Blumofe, EVP and CTO at Akamai, said his company's recent acquisition of Linode, combined with Akamai's content delivery and security capabilities, "creates a full spectrum of compute capabilities that modern applications really depend on." That full spectrum includes an array of services "from edge computing, to core cloud computing and everything in between, because it's not a one size fits all," he said.

Akamai's mission is to move computing to where the data is, not the other way around, said Blumofe. "Data sometimes lives at the edge, and sometimes it lives in the core. Depends on what you're doing and whether it's really stored data that is data at rest or whether it's data in motion," he explained. "Data in motion? Go to the edge. Data at rest? That's great in the core, you know, in the cloud."

That computing flexibility lines up with the needs of enterprises these days, Blumofe said. The pandemic changed the enterprise computing architecture and how enterprises can both distribute and protect data. Years ago, he said, the enterprise computing model was akin to a castle with moats and walls. You were either inside the castle, protected, or you were outside.

Now, there are no castles and "all access is remote access," Blumofe explained. "So the way I access an application from home, versus the way I access an application from the office building is exactly the same."

In February, Akamai agreed to buy Linode for about $900 million, adding about 250 employees to its 9,000-strong workforce. In September 2021, Akamai spent $600 million on Tel Aviv, Israel-based Guardicore, a cybersecurity company that specializes in zero-trust, distributed security products for the enterprise.