Akamai Technologies

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Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an American company specialized in content delivery network<ref name="contentdelivery">J. Dilley, B. Maggs, J. Parikh, H. Prokop, R. Sitaraman, and B. Weihl. Template:Cite web</ref> (CDN), cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, and cloud services.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

History

The company was named after akamai, which means 'clever', or more colloquially, 'cool' in Hawaiian. Co-founder Daniel M. Lewin found the term in a Hawaiian–English dictionary after a colleague's suggestion.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Akamai Technologies entered the 1998 MIT $50K competition with a business proposition based on their research on consistent hashing<ref name="nuggets">Template:Cite journal</ref> and was selected as one of the finalists.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> By August 1998, they had developed a working prototype, and with the help of Jonathan Seelig and Randall Kaplan, they took steps to incorporate the company.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Akamai Technologies was incorporated on August 20, 1998.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In late 1998 and early 1999, a group of business professionals and scientists joined the founding team—most notably, Paul Sagan, former president of New Media for Time Inc., and George Conrades, former chairman and chief executive officer of BBN Corp. and senior vice president of US operations for IBM. Conrades became chief executive officer of Akamai in April 1999.<ref name="Fundinguniverse Akamai Technologies, Inc. History">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Bloomberg Sagan 2012" /> The company launched its commercial service in April 1999 and was listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market from October 29, 1999.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

On July 1, 2001, Akamai was added to the Russell 3000 Index and Russell 2000 Index.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

On September 11, 2001, co-founder Daniel M. Lewin died in the September 11 attacks at the age of 31, when he was stabbed by one of the hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center. He was seated closest to the hijackers and may have tried to stop them.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Arabic news network Al Jazeera was an Akamai customer from March 28, 2003 to April 2, 2003, when Akamai decided to end the relationship,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> which the network's English-language managing editor claimed was due to "political pressure".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2005, Paul Sagan was named chief executive officer of Akamai, taking over from Conrades. Sagan worked to differentiate Akamai from its competitors by expanding its breadth of services.<ref name="Bloomberg Sagan 2012">Template:Cite news</ref> Under his leadership, it grew to $1.37 billion in revenue.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In July 2007, Akamai was added to the S&P 500 index.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2013, co-founder Tom Leighton was elected chief executive officer, replacing Sagan.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2013, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged a former executive at Akamai Technologies for illegally tipping non-public information about the company's financial predicament as part of the insider trading scheme operated by now-imprisoned Galleon Management hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2014 it was reported that the National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation used Facebook's Akamai CDN to collect information on Facebook users.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

On February 9, 2021, Akamai announced that it would reorganize into two internal groupsTemplate:Snd Security Technology and Edge Technology. It also re-established the role of chief technology officer and named Robert Blumofe to that role.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Long-time chief security officer (CSO) Andy Ellis announced he would leave in March 2021.<ref>Template:Cite tweet</ref>

Akamai's headquarters are in Kendall Square. It started in Technology Square and later expanded to multiple buildings in Cambridge Center. It consolidated its offices in a purpose-built building at 145 Broadway in December 2019.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In February 2025, Akamai was chosen as the strategic cloud computing provider by one of the world's largest technology companies, with a multi-year commitment to spend over $100 million on cloud infrastructure services.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The company's cloud infrastructure services primarily consist of compute and storage solutions developed based on Linode, a cloud hosting provider acquired by Akamai for $900 million in 2022.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform

The Akamai Intelligent Platform<ref name="Nygren">Template:Citation</ref> is a distributed cloud computing platform that operates worldwide, a network of over approximately 365,000 servers in more than 135 countries.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref> These servers reside on roughly 1,350 of the world's networks, gathering real-time information about traffic, congestion, and trouble spots.<ref name=":0" /> Each Akamai server is equipped with proprietary software that uses complex algorithms to process requests from nearby users.<ref name="Nygren" />

Content delivery process

Akamai content delivery to a user

The content delivery process begins with a user submitting a request to a browser. When a user enters a URL, a DNS request is triggered to Akamai's authoritative DNS,<ref name="akamaidns">Template:Cite web</ref> and an IP address is retrieved. With the IP address, the browser can then directly contact the Akamai edge server for subsequent requests.<ref name="Zakas">Template:Cite web</ref> In a content delivery network (CDN) structure, the domain name of the URL is translated by the mapping system<ref name="mapping">Template:Cite web</ref> into the IP address of an edge server to serve the content to the user.<ref name="Nygren" />

Akamai delivers web content over its Intelligent Platform by transparently mirroring elements such as HTML, CSS, software downloads, and media objects from customers' servers. The Akamai server is automatically chosen depending on the type of content and the user's network location. The servers are located in more than 200 countries and territories.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Receiving content from a server nearer to the user allows for faster downloads and less vulnerability to network congestion. Akamai claims to provide better scalability by delivering the content over the last mile from servers close to end-users, avoiding the middle-mile bottleneck of the Internet.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Download Delivery product line includes HTTP downloads for large downloadable objects, a customizable application for consumers, and analytics tools with metrics that monitor and report on the download process.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Peer-to-peer networking

In addition to using its own servers, Akamai delivers certain content from other end-users' computers, in the form of peer-to-peer networking.<ref name="watch">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="netsession">Template:Cite web</ref>

OPEN Initiative

On October 9, 2013, Akamai announced its Open Initiative at the 2013 Akamai Edge Conference. OPEN allows customers and partners to develop and customize how they interact with the Akamai Intelligent Platform. Its key components include system and development operations integration, real-time big data integration, and a single-point user interface.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Acquisitions

Date Acquisition Paid
February 10, 2000 Network24 Communications<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 621,000 shares of common stock and $12.5 million in cash<ref name="annualreport2000">Template:Cite web</ref>
April 20, 2000<ref name="annualreport2000" /> InterVU Inc<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 10.0 million shares of common stock
July 25, 2000 CallTheShots, Inc. aggregate purchase price of $3.7 million<ref name="annualreport2000" />
June 10, 2005 Speedera Networks, Inc. 10.6 million shares of Akamai common stock and options to purchase 1.7 million shares of Akamai common stock<ref name="annualreport2005">Template:Cite web</ref>
December 13, 2006 Nine Systems, Inc.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> aggregate purchase price of $157.5 million<ref name="annualreport2006">Template:Cite web</ref>
March 13, 2007 Netli Inc. (Netli)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> aggregate purchase price of $154.4 million
April 12, 2007 Red Swoosh Inc<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> aggregate purchase price of $18.7 million<ref name="annualreport2009">Template:Cite web</ref>
November 3, 2008 aCerno Inc.<ref name="annualreport2009" /> aggregate purchase price of $90.8 million<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
June 10, 2010 Velocitude LLC<ref name="annualreport2010">Template:Cite web</ref> aggregate purchase price of $12 million<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
February 7, 2012 Blaze Software, Inc.<ref name="annualreport2012">Template:Cite web</ref> aggregate purchase price of $19.3 million<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
March 6, 2012 Cotendo, Inc.<ref name="annualreport2012" /> aggregate purchase price of $278.9 million<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
September 13, 2012 FastSoft, Inc.<ref name="annualreport2012" /> aggregate purchase price of $14.4 million<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
December 4, 2012 Verivue, Inc.<ref name="annualreport2012" /> aggregate purchase price of $30.9 million<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
November 8, 2013 Velocius Networks<ref name="annualreport2013">Template:Cite web</ref> aggregate purchase price of $4.3 million<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
February 2014 cyber security provider Prolexic Technologies<ref name="annualreport2013" /> aggregate purchase price of $390 million<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
February 2015 Xerocole Inc., a domain name system technology company<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
April 6, 2015 Octoshape, a cloud OTT IPTV service provider<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> undisclosed amount<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
November 2, 2015 Bloxx, a provider of Secure Web Gateway (SWG) technology<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> undisclosed amount<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
September 28, 2016 Concord Systems, a provider of technology for the high performance processing of data at scale<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> undisclosed amount<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
October 4, 2016 Soha Systems, an enterprise secure access delivered as a service provider<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> undisclosed amount<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
December 19, 2016 Cyberfend, a bot and automation detection solutions provider<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> undisclosed amount<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
March 29, 2017 SOASTA, a digital performance management company based in Mountain View, CA undisclosed all-cash amount<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
October 11, 2017 Nominum, a carrier-grade DNS and DHCP provider and one of the major players in the creation of the modern DNS an undisclosed all-cash amount<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
January 24, 2019 CIAM provider Janrain<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
October 2019 security software provider ChameleonX $20 million<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
October 27, 2020 IoT and mobile security provider Asavie<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
February 1, 2021 Inverse Inc. a Montreal Canadian based security company making an open source network access controller (NAC) called PacketFence<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
September 29, 2021 Guardicore $600 million<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
February 15, 2022 Linode $900 million<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
June 25, 2024 API Security vendor Noname Security $450 million<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Key scientific publications

These papers in scientific conferences and journals describe Akamai's technology in greater detail:

See also

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References

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