Akamai has announced Akamai Connected Cloud, designed to enable cloud computing, content delivery, and security that brings applications and experiences closer to end users while providing better protection against security threats. It’s based on the acquisition of Linode. The company is massively expanding its cloud capabilities by adding core and distributed sites to the underlying infrastructure backbone that powers its existing edge network. It’s designed to provide developers with a distributed platform for building, running, and securing next-generation applications. The goal? Akamai hopes to build on the Linode customer base, mostly made up of small and medium-sized enterprise clients, by attracting some of its global-scale enterprise clients into the cloud platform through its pricing model.
Veeam has rebranded its products as the Veeam Data Portfolio, which comes in three versions, all of which cover the entire gamut of Cloud, Virtual, Physical SaaS, and Kubernetes applications. These range from Foundation Edition at the low end, Advanced Edition in the Middle, and Premium Edition at the top. Premier Edition customers are exclusively eligible for a new Veeam Ransomware Warranty service which covers the cost of data recovery from ransomware up to $5 million.
Akami is building a competitor to AWS and Azure, and there aren’t a lot of organizations I could think of that have the infrastructure reach. There’s room for multiple players, particularly if you consider the value of niches. Big players serve broad strokes, and niche players can carve out lucrative offerings. I’m certainly not calling Akami niche – they’re dominant in CDN. I’m just observing that you can own a subsection of a market without owning the whole thing.
On Veeam, what I found notable was the software plus Warranty protection. It’s that trend of insurance adding to software to be a larger whole and done by the vendor rather than the IT services company. I believe this will quickly become table stakes.