Recently in Cloud Category

For years at Akamai, I have spoken at conferences and with customers about the future of the WAN.  While the title of my presentations may have varied - "Next-Generation WAN Services", "How to Redesign your WAN", "Preparing for the Convergence of Private WAN and Internet" - my view has not.  Network architectures need to undergo a huge transformation.  Why?  The increased amount of web traffic finding its way within enterprise private networks.  It's inevitable due to increased adoption of public cloud services, video and other business or recreational traffic.

Mixing web traffic with other business traffic inside the corporate network creates a lot of strain.  The majority of enterprises today still backhaul traffic from the branch office to the data-center to access the Internet.  The primary reason is for security as it is easier to lock-down a small Internet access points as opposed to going "direct-to-net" at every branch and having to protect all of these locations.  The downside to this approach is the performance impact it has for users in the branch office as their traffic is unnecessarily being routed around large distances, along with scalability challenges as bandwidth available at the branch is limited.  Even for those branches that do connect entirely direct to net, you'll still have to bring the optimizations into the last mile, to solve for scalability and performance.  Ultimately, I believe enterprises will increasingly mix and match their Internet strategies for the branch using techniques like direct to net, split tunnel and path selection depending on factors such as security, quality of service, application type and cost.

Today, we announced that Akamai has been developing new technology which we call Akamai Unified Performance that brings application performance "behind the firewall" and into the branch office.  With more than 1,000 Commerce, Retail, Hotel and Travel customers, many of these customers have asked us to help them move their Omnichannel initiatives forward as the digital experience increasingly extends beyond home and mobile into their brick and mortar stores.  One of our customers, Marks & Spencer, recently shared that their shoppers spend 8x as much if they can engage them in all three channels.  But enabling the in store Omnichannel experience requires a new approach to the retail store network, as highlighted in this white paper. It involves a whole bunch of new optimizations that allow retailers to extend their investment and experience with Akamai on the web and get those same optimizations into the store - while also accelerating lots of other 3^rd party content delivered by Akamai given the Intelligent Platform already delvers 15-30% of all web traffic.

We also announced today that Akamai and Cisco are working together for future integration of Akamai Unified Performance into the Cisco ISR AX series of routers and we showed a working prototype on the main stage at Edge 13.  The intent is to co-develop enterprise network offerings with Cisco aimed at delivering the world's first combined Intelligent Wide Area Network (IWAN) Optimization solution that provides a high quality end user experience for both public and private cloud applications to all remote offices.  You'll be hearing more from us when products are brought to market, but there are so many possibilities when you think about the routing, performance optimization and security capabilities both companies bring to the table which can overcome existing challenges associated with branch office network architectures and the user experience.

It's an exciting day for the enterprise WAN (and me).   Read more at www.akamai.com/cisco

Neil Cohen - VP Global Product Marketing, Akamai

This October at the Edge Global Conference I'll be joined by technology visionaries from a wide range of industries and organizations discussing topics related to creating cutting edge experiences ... faster. 

I'm specifically excited to share details about the new Developers' Track we'll be introducing. We have some fantastic presenters lined up, including Geoffrey Moore - Author and Business Strategies; Gene Kim - VisOps Author and Entrepreneur; Jason Grigsby - Mobile Web Evangelist; and Josh Clark - Mobile Design Strategist, talking about stimulating topics ranging from DevOps to responsive design, and discussing steps toward adopting these cutting-edge development methodologies.

 

And, of course, beyond that we will share new information about Akamai product roadmaps, discuss best practices, and network with an incredible group of peers whilesharing a beer together after the sessions.

 

Stay tuned and I look forward to seeing you at Edge 2013.

 

Guy Podjarni

Vice President, Chief Technology Officer, Web Experience , Akamai

Since our founding, Akamai has been at the vanguard of the Internet revolution.  And as we prepare to celebrate our 15th anniversary this month, our spirit of innovation and our desire to solve the most difficult Internet challenges are just as strong today as they were 15 years ago.

From day one, we have worked hard to gain an understanding of how our customers want to use the Internet to make their businesses be more agile, more customer-centric, and more profitable.  And we use that understanding to guide our innovation and to invent new solutions to help make our customers' visions become a reality.

This October, we'll be gathering in Washington, DC for our 6^th annual customer conference--Akamai Edge.  Edge is one of my favorite events because I get to hear from our customers about how they're using Akamai solutions to help deliver on the promise of the Cloud.  Edge is more than a conference; it's become a forum for Internet visionaries from a range of industries and regions to gather and share their secrets to online success.

Our customer base now includes 96 of the Internet Retailer 100 companies, 7 of the top 10 global banks, 19 of the top 20 hotel brands, and more than one-third of the Global 500 companies.  And many of the leaders from those organizations will be on-hand at Edge to share their ideas for pushing the pace of innovation in a hyperconnected world.

This year, we will hear from industry thought leaders such as Fedex CIO Rob Carter, Security Expert Bruce Schneier, IT visionary and author Gene Kim, and many others from organizations like eBay, Visa, CBS Interactive, and IBM.

I look forward to seeing you in DC and to understanding how we can help improve your business in the rapidly-changing and increasingly-complex online world.

Tom Leighton

Chief Executive Officer, Akamai

I'm pleased to invite you to our 6th Akamai Edge 2013 this October 7 - 11 in Washington, D.C. at the Gaylord National Harbor Resort and Conference Center. Join us and meet up with more than 1,000 of your industry peers and our best line-up yet of industry innovators, as we create the experiences that to drive a Faster Forward World. 

The largest annual gathering of Akamai customers and partners, the Akamai Edge Conference, is taking place next week at the Aria Resort & Casino in Las Vegas and will feature speakers from more than 40 companies. Registration information and the complete agenda can be found at: www.akamai.com/edge

Business and technology leaders from Amadeus, Build.com, Cisco, CTV, Grainger, GREE, Guitar Center, Symantec, USAA, Visa, and many others, are scheduled to present during the three-day conference. Participating sponsors include HP, Terremark, Brightcove, Exceda, IBM, Dell, Adobe, Apica, BMC, Dolby, Envivio, Hybris, Kit Digital, Microsoft, Micros-Retail and Riverbed, among others.

Business innovators including Airbnb, Fox News Channel, The Hartford, Macy's, News International, Red Hat and Salesforce will offer keynote presentations.

Other exciting highlights include insights from industry luminaries Tiffany Shlain, filmmaker, founder of the Webby Awards, and co-founder of The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences; Rick Smolan, former Time, Life, and National Geographic photographer and best-selling author of the "Day in the Life" book series and creator of The Human Face of Big Data project; and Charles Golvin, principal analyst at Forrester Research covering consumer and enterprise mobility

"Akamai Edge is taking place against the backdrop of a world that's connected like never before," said Brad Rinklin, chief marketing officer, Akamai. "This year's conference will focus on the extraordinary innovation taking place as businesses leverage cloud, mobile, media and big data strategies, all while addressing the security challenges inherent in today's hyperconnected world. We've created a dynamic program that will foster the exchange of ideas among peers from around the globe, representing industries such as media and entertainment, commerce, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, financial services, and software and technology."

Hope you can join us!

Jennifer Donovan is senior manager of social communications at Akamai

Online video was clearly "top of mind" at this year's IBC, and it was fascinating to hear from a variety of companies across the broadcast spectrum and learn more about their video delivery, monitoring, and monetization needs.

If I could put my finger on one major topic I heard over and over again at this year's IBC Conference, it's simplicity. Companies want simplicity across the board ­- whatever it takes to quickly get new video content out to viewers. That's what they wanted to talk about. From companies with large content libraries, to service providers who need to deliver it, the thought of serving all of the different devices viewers are using can seem overwhelming! They wanted to know how to prepare and secure the content for delivery to all of those devices, and they also wanted to understand how to access the end-device player technologies that bring it all together for viewers. On top of that, they want to simplify the authentication experience for viewers, while also removing the complexities of allowing content owner and service provider systems talk together in support of that simplification.

As I showed the demos of our new cloud-based Sola Vision transcoding, stream packaging, and identity services offerings, Akamai's own simplicity message resonated with visitors. They could see how simple preparing and delivering high quality online video can be with a simple, unified workflow that just happens to be built on top of the world's largest CDN.

Visitors to our exhibit at IBC could clearly see the difference between the CDN capabilities we offer, and the value-added video simplification tools we now provide. And they showed real enthusiasm for the simplicity and performance that Sola Media Solutions offers them.

I'm looking forward to continuing the many conversations that we started at IBC in the months to come.

Kurt Michel is a director of product marketing at Akamai

Just in time for the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC), Akamai earlier today introduced Sola Media Solutions. A comprehensive set of cloud based, integrated services, Sola Media is designed to meet the increasing audience demand for content that is available when and where viewers want it, on a wide variety of devices, and with the highest quality possible.

Put simply, Sola Media is all about giving our customers an easy and effective way to address the core challenges of providing an engaging audience experience. We can help them adapt and protect content and ensure that content is connected in the larger video ecosystem with Sola Vision. We allow our customers to store and deliver content with Sola Sphere. And we give them the tools to better understand the user experience with Sola Media Analytics.

If you're going to be at IBC in Amsterdam, stop in at Stand 7.K36 and ask to see Sola Media Solutions in action - especially the brand new cloud-based transcoding and stream packaging capabilities. Or, watch the below video. Our director of product marketing for Sola Media Solutions discusses why we believe Sola Media is a great way for content providers to engage audiences with superior quality video, solve the challenges of multi-device consumption, and increase video monetization. At the end, there is an opportunity to schedule a meeting or demo if you'd like more information.




Rob Morton is a senior manager for public relations at Akamai

Last week, I touched on Cloud Gaming and one approach, Thin Client Game Streaming. Today, I'd like to delve into Fat Client Game Streaming.

Fat Client Game Streaming is another popular method of game streaming that overcomes the challenges of reducing the time to play. Businesses like The Happy Cloud, Spoon, and BitRaider have been early implementers of this approach. This method takes an existing game and essentially creates a new version of the client that can be progressively delivered and installed. When you start to play a game, you don't need every library and component, only a small subset. Much of the software is typically not needed until you make decisions in the game that require additional libraries and components. This approach essentially creates a probability table of what component and libraries you need to start, and a tree of next likely resources. A new shell is created for the software to enable the game to start running with a subset of resources which are loaded based on the probability table.
This allows the gamer to start playing in just a few minutes.The probability table determines the typical starting point in the game for players, and downloads the rest of the library components in the background while the player begins play.

The advantage to this model is that start up times are typically just a few minutes to begin play. After a player authenticates and selects a game, they do not need to wait to download and install the entire game.

Another advantage to this model is that it still allows for offline game play after the initial install is complete while playing. The thin client model does not allow offline gameplay, since a server in the cloud is doing the computations and rendering.

The other major advantage to this model is it does not require the developer to create a separate version of the game. This method involves taking existing gaming code and running it through a set of tools to create the new package that can be streamed. This process can take the course of a few hours to a hundred hours per game.  

Online gains increase pressure on Store Reinvention
Returning from the MICROS User Conference, after speaking on the imperative of the Cloud in Retail, I find myself hopeful - even enthusiastic - for the future of stores.

After the release of ComScore's ecommerce growth metrics last week, this may be a surprise. 17% growth in Q1 in the ecommerce channel is clear evidence that online channel growth is accelerating at the expense of bricks and mortar sales. Given retailers' hesitance to dramatically rethink their store systems architecture en masse, the bad news may come with the silver lining - dramatic change has to happen to survive.

YouCommerce versus Multi-Channel
We are no longer talking about multi-channel. In the era of YouCommerce shoppers are hyperconnected, moving fluidly across digital touchpoints, social networks, ecommerce storefronts, devices, and store locations, with many of these touchpoints overlapping.

Should it matter where a customer purchases as long as the touchpoints are integrated and consistent, and the collective cost of engagement through those touchpoints justifies the investment?

Once again, Akamai is proud to be collaborating on the North Bridge Future of Cloud Computing Survey. Now in its second year, the survey is designed to help identify current attitudes related to cloud computing and begin to identify trends that may help us understand how the cloud landscape is evolving.
 
How are companies embracing the public cloud?  Are they keeping things close to home with private cloud implementations? What about hybrid cloud?
What are the drivers for moving to the cloud?  Cost?  Scalability?  Agility? Is security in the cloud keeping CIOs awake at night? Or, are they more worried about complexity and manageability?
 
Take a look at the results from last year's survey and add your voice to the 2012 version.  It'll be interesting to see what's changed - and what's stayed the same - in the past year.  We'd love to get Akamai's blog readers into the mix, so please take a few minutes to provide your perspective.

Thanks in advance!
 
Andy Rubinson is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Akamai