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. {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> (CDN), cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, and cloud services.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

On July 1, 2001, Akamai was added to the Russell 3000 Index and Russell 2000 Index.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> which the network's English-language managing editor claimed was due to "political pressure".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In July 2007, Akamai was added to the S&P 500 index.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 2013, co-founder Tom Leighton was elected chief executive officer, replacing Sagan.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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

File:Akamaiprocess.png

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">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In a content delivery network (CDN) structure, the domain name of the URL is translated by the mapping system<ref name="mapping">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="netsession">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Acquisitions

Date	Acquisition	Paid
February 10, 2000	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	citation	CitationClass=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.	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
December 13, 2006	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
March 13, 2007	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	aggregate purchase price of $154.4 million
April 12, 2007	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
November 3, 2008	aCerno Inc.<ref name="annualreport2009" />	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
June 10, 2010	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
February 7, 2012	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
March 6, 2012	Cotendo, Inc.<ref name="annualreport2012" />	citation	CitationClass=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" />	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
November 8, 2013	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
February 2014	cyber security provider Prolexic Technologies<ref name="annualreport2013" />	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
February 2015	Xerocole Inc., a domain name system technology company<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
April 6, 2015	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
November 2, 2015	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
September 28, 2016	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
October 4, 2016	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
December 19, 2016	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	citation	CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
October 2019	security software provider ChameleonX	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
October 27, 2020	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
February 1, 2021	Inverse Inc. a Montreal Canadian based security company making an open source network access controller (NAC) called PacketFence<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
September 29, 2021	Guardicore	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
February 15, 2022	Linode	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
June 25, 2024	API Security vendor Noname Security	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Key scientific publications

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

• Karger, D., Lehman, E., Leighton, T., Panigrahy, R., Levine, M., Lewin, D. "Consistent Hashing and Random Trees: Distributed Caching Protocols for Relieving Hot Spots on the World Wide Web". ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 1997, pp. 654–663.
• J. Dilley, B. Maggs, J. Parikh, H. Prokop, R. Sitaraman, and B. Weihl. "Globally Distributed Content Delivery", IEEE Internet Computing, September/October 2002, pp. 50–58.
• Bruce Maggs and Ramesh Sitaraman. "Algorithmic nuggets in content delivery". ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, Volume=45, Issue=3, 2015. Template:Webarchive
• F. Chen, R. Sitaraman, and M. Torres. "End-User Mapping: Next Generation Request Routing for Content Delivery". ACM SIGCOMM conference, Aug 2015.
• Kyle Schomp, Onkar Bhardwaj, Eymen Kurdoglu, Mashooq Muhaimen, and Ramesh K. Sitaraman. "Akamai DNS: Providing Authoritative Answers to the World's Queries", ACM SIGCOMM conference, Aug 2020.
• D. Gillman, Y. Lin, B. Maggs and R. K. Sitaraman. "Protecting Websites from Attack with Secure Delivery Networks", IEEE Computer, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 26–34, Apr. 2015.

See also

• Akamai Techs., Inc. v. Limelight Networks, Inc.

External links

• Template:Official website