Akamai Continues to Expand US and Global Cloud Footprint

Akamai announced its plans today to bring additional core compute regions to its cloud with new deployments in North America and Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

These strategic locations in Miami, Florida; Los Angeles, California; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Jakarta, Indonesia; Milan, Italy; Osaka, Japan; and São Paulo, Brazil are a significant milestone in Akamai's plans to redefine cloud infrastructure.

Already known for its globally distributed network with over 4,100 edge Points of Presence (PoPs) across 131 countries, these new regions align with the company's commitment to a more decentralized and low-latency cloud architecture, and follows the company’s acquisition of Linode in 2022.

Adam Karon, Chief Operating Officer and General Manager of Cloud Technology Group at Akamai, emphasized the need for a more user-centric approach, saying, "The need for companies to provide a better user experience increasingly exposes the limits of the legacy centralized cloud model. We’re solving this challenge for customers by flipping the script."

Akamai is doing this, he continued, by “taking an outside-in, distributed-first approach built on a commitment to cloud-native technologies and the same network many of the world’s largest companies have relied on for more than two decades. It’s an approach focused on a future where scale becomes as much about the size of the network as it does the size of the data center."

So Why These Locations?

Akamai shared their reasoning for each of the new compute regions:

• Los Angeles, California:  Already a leader in the global media and entertainment industry, this region will expand Akamai's services in a sector where it has considerable expertise.
• Miami, Florida:  This core compute region will facilitate business operations in Latin America, offering connectivity to a rapidly growing business hub.
• Amsterdam, Netherlands:  Home to the second-largest internet exchange globally, this region will bolster cloud connectivity in northwest Europe.
• Jakarta, Indonesia:  A nation with a rapidly growing digital economy, this region will cater to the increasing number of internet users in Indonesia, anticipated to grow by 36 million by 2028.
• Milan, Italy:  Italy's second-largest city, and a cloud services market has experienced remarkable growth, serving customers in Europe and the Middle East.
• Osaka, Japan:  This region will connect Japan's population of 125 million to Akamai's scalable backbone and is an entry point for a country that ranks eighth globally in terms of digital population.
• São Paulo, Brazil:  Akamai's first core compute region in Latin America, São Paulo will address one of the largest and hardest-to-reach digital populations in the region. Akamai plans to add additional connectivity in the near future.

Akamai is certainly on a tear. The company has announced 13 new core compute regions in the last three months, in addition to the seven being announced today.

They have also announced plans to continue this expansion in the last quarter of 2023.