Cloud Computing | Reducing Cloud Costs | Akamai Connected Cloud

Akamai accelerates innovation through scalable, simple, affordable, and accessible Linux cloud solutions and services. Our products, services, and personnel provide developers and businesses with the flexibility, support, and trust they need to easily and cost effectively build, deploy, protect, and scale applications from the cloud to the edge on the world's most widely distributed network.

Why do developers trust Linode

Developers respect our commitment to the developer community. We will not develop products that compete with the ones they develop.

Developers appreciate our long-standing commitment to transparency. We will not hide our products or pricing in complex ways.
The developer agrees that we focus on infrastructure. We have repeatedly proven that a successful company can be built based on customer needs.

Developers trust cloud providers because we provide them with alternative solutions to the expensive, complex, and highly competitive choices currently available in the market.

Cloud computing market

Cloud infrastructure services are the fastest-growing part of the vast cloud computing industry. The public cloud (IaaS) segment has grown by 25% year-on-year and is expected to reach $309 billion by 2026.

The cloud has fundamentally changed the way we work, live, and entertain ourselves. Its remote server network stores, manages, and processes data, helping individuals, companies, governments, and other organizations reduce the cost and complexity of owning and operating capital intensive and resource intensive computers. With the help of the cloud, more people can access data and applications more easily as long as they are connected to the Internet, no matter where they are.

Cloud Review

In 1999, Salesforce.com launched the Software as a Service (SaaS) revolution, which fundamentally transformed the way business and society interact with computers. By transferring computing power to the cloud, significant capital expenditures, scalability limitations, and data unavailability have become part of the computing history. The newly discovered ability of virtualized hardware enables people to pay as you go, scale up and down at will, and manage their infrastructure without the need for deep networking and IT expertise.

Salesforce has leveraged the power of the cloud to disrupt the $3.3 billion CRM software market, becoming one of the world's most powerful software companies. Amazon and other companies have used the cloud to disrupt the retail industry and fundamentally change the global economic landscape. Nowadays, we take the cloud for granted.

But at that time, building one's own cloud service was expensive. It requires a large amount of investment. Salesforce raised $64.4 million at the beginning. Amazon and other early adopters of cloud services are no exception. In order to gain the cost and scale advantages provided by cloud services, companies need strong funding and deeper technical knowledge.

Linux and Linode

What the industry lacks is a way for others to use this new computing power. While Salesforce, Amazon, and other companies are building their own cloud environments, the ubiquitous Linux open-source operating system is claiming to be the dominant server software in the market.

Jeff Dike is an active Linux contributor who developed a technology called "User Mode Linux". UML allows developers to create virtual Linux machines on Linux computers. This is a groundbreaking technology that has opened the door to the virtualization cloud as we know it today.

One of the developers is young technology expert Christopher Aker. He saw an opportunity to leverage Dike's virtual machine management program technology, not to build the next Salesforce or Amazon, but to make cloud computing simpler and cheaper, making it easier for every developer to use, no matter where they are, what resources they have, or who they work for. The company Linode he founded is a pioneer in cloud computing, deeply influenced by the open-source movement that gave birth to it. Its driving force is not profit, but a greater mission, which is to democratize cloud computing by empowering developers and helping the world innovate.

This mission and belief system - to make products more affordable and accessible to everyone - has become Linode's corporate DNA. Aker knows that to uphold this mission, certain guiding principles are needed. Firstly, developer control is crucial, which means that the company must be built on open standards and ensure that it is' not locked in by suppliers'. Secondly, the company must be customer-centric and free to make decisions that are in the best interests of the customers, rather than the interests of external investors or shareholders.

Linode and Akamai's Current Situation

Just as we pioneered cloud computing in 2003, we continue to play an important role in the advancement of cloud computing technology.

In March 2022, Akamai acquired Linode. Akamai's DNA is rooted in solving challenging infrastructure issues worldwide. Akamai invented CDN (Content Delivery Network). It will build itself into a world-class security company. With Linode, Akamai will once again make history in the field of cloud computing, combining Linode's experience in infrastructure as a service with Akamai's leadership in scale and security to create the world's most widely distributed computing platform.

Linode was originally a company created by developers to serve developers. Nowadays, it continues to serve these new innovators as well as the growth teams, startups, and large enterprises it helps create.