Akamai Terra Cloud Catalyst

Akamai Technologies, Inc. introduced Terra Cloud Catalyst.

Designed for public cloud providers, Terra Cloud Catalyst can help make it easier for hosted storage, IaaS and PaaS vendors of all sizes to offer Akamai’s content delivery network (CDN) services to their customers. Cloud providers further benefit from features such as incremental customer activation, pricing and billing models that align to the way they serve their users.

Even the biggest cloud service providers tend to operate from a limited number of large data centers. This scenario can lead to performance impacts for their customers’ most distant users. Issues such as latency and congestion only compound the problem especially for smaller providers or those operating regionally. For providers that are not in a position to expand their data centers’ capacity or establish a more global footprint, the ability to easily tap into a hyper-distributed CDN – one that can put their customers’ content a single network hop away from 90% of Internet users and mitigate other potential performance challenges – is a value proposition.

"One organization that is providing its customers with access to CDN features via Akamai is Rackspace, the service leader in cloud computing. Rackspace was one of the first Akamai partners to recognize the value of elastic CDN services delivered on demand, and Akamai worked very closely with us to make that possible. Helping our customers deliver a great experience using our services is part of Rackspace’s promise to deliver Fanatical Support," said Mark Interrante, VP of Product Development at Rackspace. "Working together with Akamai, we have been able to grow our Cloud Files service into one of the largest implementations of OpenStack that we know of, giving our customers not only great performance leveraging Akamai’s scalable platform, but also helping them avoid lock-in with a proprietary platform for their content."

Terra Cloud Catalyst is intended to meet the distinct needs of IaaS, PaaS and hosted storage vendors. The new service builds on the experience as the leader in CDN technology and brings to market a means for public cloud providers of all sizes to integrate Akamai technology into their platforms. Doing so allows them to offer customers affordable subscriptions to core CDN capabilities or differentiate their own services through improved performance and a global presence. Cloud providers’ customers can also benefit from advanced services such as failover, SSL delivery, streaming video, and support for custom URLs, among others. As public cloud adoption matures, the intent is that providers will be able to use Terra Cloud Catalyst to leverage a broader set of services that run on the Akamai Intelligent Platform to provide greater value to their customers and stand out from their competition.

Another organization that is already providing its customers with seamless access to best-in-class CDN features via Akamai is Australian cloud storage and infrastructure provider Haylix Pty Limited.

"Haylix provides cloud storage and server infrastructure for many of Australia’s most respected brands. They need to know that their customers, who may be located around the globe, are going to have a consistent, positive experience when interacting with hosted resources," explained Michael Richardson, MD, Haylix. "Working with Akamai we are able to take advantage of their globally distributed platform to expand the reach of our regional data centers, offer fantastic baseline performance and create premium services for all of our cloud storage customers."

Terra Cloud Catalyst is tailored to be implemented by cloud providers who wish to extend the core benefits of the Akamai Intelligent Platform to their customers in a manner and at a price point that maps to how cloud services are typically consumed. For example, pre-configured bundles facilitate the ability to give cloud platform customers access to desired new services. Integrated reporting provides subscribers with a holistic view of their combined services. For providers, it matches the elasticity and agility necessary for adoption of cloud services through the ability to securely provision thousands of domains on demand. In addition, new granular visibility and reporting down to the individual URL makes it convenient to support multiple billing models based on how customers want to take advantage of the services offered.

"As cloud adoption continues to increase, the need for cloud providers to differentiate their current services and prepare for future customer demands is paramount to ongoing success," said Willie M. Tejada, SVP and GM, Enterprise Cloud Division, Akamai. "With the introduction of Terra Cloud Catalyst, Akamai expects to deliver on both requirements by making it easier and more cost effective for cloud providers to use the power of the Akamai Intelligent Platform to differentiate their core offerings as well as introduce new and compelling services that will help them grow a loyal, satisfied customer base."

Terra Cloud Catalyst is part of the Akamai Terra Enterprise Solutions product family that is intended to empower businesses to leverage the cloud for application adoption without borders while eliminating costly networks and specialized hardware.