Akamai unveils new app platform to ease Kubernetes use

Akamai Technologies has announced the launch of the Akamai App Platform to simplify Kubernetes deployment and enhance scalability.

The Akamai App Platform is designed for deploying, managing, and scaling applications using Kubernetes technology called Otomi, which Akamai acquired from Red Kubes earlier this year.

By offering ready-to-run templates, the platform addresses common challenges in deploying, managing, and scaling Kubernetes clusters. The primary goal is to reduce provisioning time from months to less than an hour, providing near-instant scaling when production workloads increase.

Ari Weil, Vice President of Product Marketing at Akamai, commented on the hurdles developers face: "Over the past decade, developers have been forced to choose between two evils: Either accept complexity, vendor lock-in, and spiraling cloud costs if they build with hyperscaler solutions, or grapple with skills gaps, longer time to value, and perceived increased risk if they build on open source solutions. We're giving them a better way by harnessing the power and potential of the open source ecosystem to strike a balance between the ease of use of the one-size-fits-all hyperscale world and the flexibility and control afforded by open source."

The platform offers several features tailored for developers, including customizable templates for cloud-native applications, integration of preconfigured open source projects, and a self-service environment for app development and maintenance.

A dedicated catalog of Golden Path templates is also available based on industry best practices and open source tools.

Akamai aims to support teams at varying stages of scaling their deployments, whether they are planning for growth, beginning to scale, or expanding existing services. The platform is also beneficial for solution integrators, value-added resellers, and independent software vendors by simplifying multi-cloud solutions and reducing the overhead associated with Kubernetes configuration and deployment.

Kubernetes remains a crucial technology for organisations to build, deploy, and manage containerised applications due to its portability and scalability. Despite its adoption by over 60% of enterprises as noted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), Kubernetes brings challenges that the Akamai App Platform aims to address by simplifying operational complexities and standardising deployment tools.

The platform also emphasises portability, enabling applications to move across cloud environments without vendor lock-ins.

This flexibility offers cost efficiency whilst integrating advanced security and observability features, such as real-time threat detection and comprehensive monitoring tools, to maintain secure and reliable environments.

Companies using the Akamai App Platform in conjunction with Akamai Connected Cloud services are expected to benefit in building scalable, distributed, low-latency applications. Dave McCarthy, Research Vice President at IDC, highlighted the significance of the platform's open-source support: "As cloud native principles increasingly power the edge native apps of tomorrow, the ability for developers to easily build and deploy on an open app platform that supports container orchestration has the potential to be yet another disruption to the cloud status quo."

"This will become increasingly important as edge native apps become the front line of AI inference."