Over The Edge Follow the Data with Dr. Robert Blumofe is Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Akamai
This episode of Over the Edge features an interview between Matt Trifiro and Dr. Robert Blumofe is Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Akamai. As CTO, he guides Akamai’s technology strategy to assess new market opportunities and new platforms for innovation, explore adjacent segments for the business, influence the development of standards, work with Akamai’s largest customers, and convene technology leaders within the company to catalyze innovation and represent Akamai’s technology vision in the marketplace.
In this episode, Dr. Blumofe explains how Akamai revolutionized content delivery networks and continues to evolve and expand its services. He discusses internet growth, adapting to a more robust virtual world, and important considerations for security. Dr. Blumoff also talks about how AI and ML will help shape the future of our cities.
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Key Quotes:
“More and more traffic to and from devices, that does create some interesting problems. You know, one is just the basic problem of scale. You now have more and more traffic from more and more locations. And, so we continue to see a world in which the internet, the volume of traffic continues to grow leaps and bounds, and the importance of the edge continues to grow.”
“Security and reliability get built by layering on top of the internet protocol, not by modifying the internet protocol itself. You layer on top and the power of layering can’t be overstated.”
“While edge computing is great, when you look at all of the microservices that make up an application, I don't think there's many cases where you could say that they all belong at the edge, or that they all belong at the core.
“For a modern application, multiple microservices, you really want to be thinking about for each microservice, where does it belong? Does it belong at the edge? Does it belong at the core? Does it belong somewhere in between?”
“At this point, the cost of connectivity is so low that anything that gets any benefit from being connected well, you might as well connect it.”
“It's a whole spectrum. It's not a one size fits all. But I think increasingly applications need to have at least some component running at, or very near the edge. The core alone really just doesn't solve it.”
"The dramatic change from IoT really is as much on the security side as it is from the scale and the importance of the edge.”
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Show Timestamps:
(02:45) Being Jack Benny’s Grandson and Getting into Technology
(05:20) First Memory of the Internet and Career Path
(10:45) Relationship Between Mathematics and Distributed Computing
(12:30) Akamai Journey
(14:45) What Akamai Does and the Start of CDNs
(21:30) How CDNs and Work
(27:30) Akamai Server and CDN Structure
(31:00) Akamai’s Expanding Services and Evolution
(35:30) Akamai’s Acquisition of Linode
(37:00) Edge vs. Core
(42:30) Akamai’s Interconnection Fabric
(44:30) Changes to Internet Traffic, Adaptation, and Security
(47:00) Concept of a Bidirectional CDN
(49:15) Network Security
(53:00) Akamai Network Capacity
(53:15) Most Exciting Innovations (remaking cities with AI and ML)
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Sponsor:
Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we’re here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting DellTechnologies.com/SimplifyYourEdge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.
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