About Akamai Technologies

Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Akamai) provides solutions to power and protect life online. The company’s massively distributed edge and cloud platform comprises more than 4,100 locations across more than 130 countries. Akamai develops and provides solutions to power and protect life online through the company’s massively distributed worldwide network of servers. This platform, which the company recently began referring to as the Akamai Connected Cloud is consisted of an edge and cloud architecture for cloud computing, security and content delivery. The Akamai Connected Cloud provides the company with visibility and insight into traffic volumes, congestion, attack patterns, vulnerabilities and other activities across the internet's complex intersections of networks and systems. Leveraging these insights, the Akamai Connected Cloud offers solutions designed to protect the company’s customers from threats and attacks, while empowering them to securely deliver their business as they engage, entertain and interact with their customers; and extend their internal systems beyond their corporate perimeters to control access and better leverage the cloud by efficiently building, deploying and securing performant workloads that require single-digit millisecond latency and global reach. The company’s strategy is to help continue to drive transforming the way the company exchange ideas and information and conduct business by offering compute, security and content delivery services on Akamai Connected Cloud that empower the company’s customers to compete and operate with the scale, resilience and efficiency that their businesses demand. The company’s platform spans more than 350,000 servers in over 4,100 locations, with roughly 1,300 network partners. The company is planning to significantly increase the number of core and distributed cloud computing sites on its platform in order to continue the expansion of the company’s cloud computing services. Solutions The company provides solutions in three core categories: security, content delivery and compute. The company also provides solutions for carriers and certain services and support for the company’s customers as they utilize its core solutions. Security The company’s cloud security solutions are designed to keep infrastructure, websites, applications, application programming interfaces (‘APIs’), and users safe from a multitude of cyberattacks and online threats while improving performance. The company’s solutions blend robust automation with customizable protections and managed security services to enable businesses to effectively manage risk and maximize the protections of their infrastructure, networks, applications and APIs. Akamai’s cloud security solutions include web application and API protection, bot management and mitigation to protect against credential abuse and account takeover, customer identity and access management, distributed denial of service (‘DDoS’) mitigation, protection from in-browser threats to protect against supply chain compromise and audience hijacking. The company also offers a growing set of solutions designed to help businesses implement a ‘zero trust’ approach to security. Based on the concept of least privilege, which dictates that users, applications and services utilize the bare minimum amount of access needed to perform their function, these tools are intended to shift protections from a legacy approach based on establishing a corporate perimeter, to a more modern, risk-based approach. Solutions in this category include Zero Trust Network Access (‘ZTNA’), and multi-factor authentication (‘MFA’), which replace legacy virtual private networks (‘VPNs’), micro-segmentation, which replaces legacy network firewalls and helps protect businesses from the threat of ransomware and Secure Web Gateway (‘SWG’), that helps protect against the threat of malware and phishing attacks. The company’s acquisition of Guardicore Ltd. (‘Guardicore’) in late 2021 was a significant milestone in positioning Akamai as a leader in technology that powers and protects life online. Guardicore’s microsegmentation solution helps the company’s customers prevent malicious lateral movement in their network through precise segmentation policies, visuals of activity within their IT environment and network security alerts. Content Delivery The company’s web and mobile performance solutions are architected to enable dynamic websites and applications to have rapid response times, no matter where the user is, what device or browser they are using or how they are connected to the internet. These services leverage intelligent performance optimization and real-time monitoring, origin offload and network reliability, and insights that enable enterprises to identify and address performance issues. Akamai web and mobile performance capabilities also include global traffic management, site acceleration, application load balancing, large-scale load testing and real-user monitoring. The company’s media delivery solutions are designed to enable enterprises to execute their digital media distribution strategies by addressing volume and global reach requirements, improving the end-user experience, boosting reliability and reducing the cost of internet-related infrastructure. Underlying these solutions is technology to address variable connection speeds and device types, facilitate access to disparate locations around the world, accelerate large file downloads, reliably deliver high-quality live content across various devices and platforms, and enable comprehensive insights and real-time online video monitoring. Akamai media delivery solutions include video streaming and video player services, game and software delivery, broadcast operations, authoritative domain name system (‘DNS’), resolution and data and analytics. Compute Akamai cloud computing services (which the company sometimes refers to as ‘Compute’) include compute, storage, networking, database and container management services that are required to build, deploy and secure applications and workloads. The cloud computing services running on the Akamai Connected Cloud enable companies to distribute workloads and applications across the company’s core to edge infrastructure to help solve the cost, performance and scale that centralized cloud computing platforms. In early 2022, Akamai acquired Linode Limited Liability Company (‘Linode’), an established cloud computing platform. This acquisition was a significant milestone in the company’s expansion into cloud computing services. While Linode was traditionally focused on individual developers, the company is looking to leverage the Linode cloud computing services for enterprise customers by building new enterprise-grade core and distributed sites and connecting them to the Akamai backbone, which give Akamai an advantage over its bigger cloud rivals. While many other cloud providers are building their cloud platforms based on a regional, data center-centric model, Akamai is designing its cloud based on the fundamental belief that modern applications will be consisted of workloads that will be distributed across a continuum of computing sites that meet the specific needs of that workload. Carrier The company’s carrier offerings are designed to help customers operate a cost-efficient network that capitalizes on traffic growth and new subscriber services for security, traffic management and content delivery. The company’s solutions help carriers sell easy-to-deploy cybersecurity protection offerings to their subscriber base; offerings include protection from phishing, viruses, malware and ransomware. Additionally, the company’s carrier security solutions include parental controls to tailor internet access. The company also offers DNS infrastructure and content delivery solutions for carriers through its intelligent recursive DNS offering and managed content delivery network, which has dedicated servers for the carriers’ own services with Akamai providing content provisioning, delivery and reporting. Services and Support The company provides an array of service and support offerings designed to assist customers with integrating, configuring, optimizing and managing the company’s core offerings. Once customers are deployed on the Akamai Connected Cloud, they can rely on the company’s professional services and security experts for customized solutions, problem resolution and 24/7 customer support. Additional features are available to enterprises that purchase the company’s premium and managed security solutions, including a dedicated technical account team, proactive service monitoring, custom technical support handling, security traffic monitoring, technical security reviews, threat advisories and emergency support for security events. Customers The company’s customers include many of the world's leading corporations, such as Adobe, Airbnb, Alibaba, Autodesk, Capital Group, Carnival Corporation, The Coca-Cola Company, Comcast, Crate & Barrel, eBay, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, FedEx, Fidelity Investments, Honda, IKEA, Japan Airlines, Lufthansa, Maersk Transportation & Logistics, Marriott, NBCUniversal, Panasonic, Panera Bread, PayPal, Philips, Rabobank, Riot Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Spotify, Telefonica, Toshiba, Ubisoft, Viacom, WarnerMedia, and The Washington Post. The company also actively sells to government agencies. As of December 31, 2022, the company’s public-sector customers included the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Sales, Services and Marketing The company markets and sells its solutions globally through its direct sales and services organization and through many channel partners, including AT&T, Deutsche Telecom, Kyndryl, IBM, Microsoft, Orange Business Services and Telefonica Group. In addition to entering into agreements with resellers, the company has several other types of sales and marketing focused alliances with entities, such as system integrators, application service providers, referral partners, and sales agents. By aligning with these partners, the company is better able to market its solutions and encourage increased adoption of the company’s technology throughout the industry. The company’s sales, services and marketing professionals are based in locations across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific; and focus on direct and channel sales, sales operations, professional services, account management, and technical consulting. To support the company’s sales efforts and promote the Akamai brand, the company conducts comprehensive marketing programs. Government Regulation Privacy laws, such as the European Union General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, impact how the company uses data generated from its network, as well as the company’s ability to reach current and prospective customers, understand how the company’s solutions are being used, transfer data about the company’s employees and respond to customer requests allowed under the laws. The company is subject to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and similar anti-bribery laws, which generally prohibit companies and their intermediaries from making improper payments to foreign government officials for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business. To the extent the company exports technical services, data, products or other technology outside of the U.S., the company is subject to the U.S. and international laws and regulations governing international trade and exports, including, but not limited to, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, the Export Administration Regulations and sanctions against embargoed countries. Intellectual Property As of December 31, 2022, the company owned, or had exclusive rights to, over 520 U.S. patents covering its technology, as well as patents issued by other countries. The company’s U.S.-issued patents have terms extendable to various dates between 2023 and 2041. History Akamai Technologies, Inc. was founded in 1998. The company was incorporated in Delaware in 1998.