Akamai and Cisco working together

Akamai Technologies, Inc. has announced plans for future integration of Akamai Unified Performance technology into the Cisco® ISR-AX series of routers.

Both companies intend to co-develop enterprise network offerings, aimed at delivering the world’s first enterprise WAN and Internet optimization solution to provide a secure, high-quality end user experience for both public and private cloud applications to all remote offices.

Akamai Unified Performance technology stems from 15 years of engineering and customer experience and brings Akamai’s performance and optimization technology behind the firewall into the branch office. Akamai Unified Performance technology caches and delivers content in-branch through a connection to the Akamai Intelligent Platform. This may be an enterprise’s own digital content or other content delivered by Akamai, which consistently delivers 15 to 30 percent of all Web traffic. The Akamai solution is also capable of transparently caching other third-party content from top domains.

The two companies intend to combine the power of Cisco Intelligent® WAN (IWAN), which includes Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) and Application Visibility and Control (AVC), with Akamai Unified Performance to extend the corporate data center and the Akamai Intelligent Platform into the branch, specifically to offload existing network links and improve performance for web and business critical applications.

IT organizations are under tremendous pressure to meet the growing bandwidth demands of public and private cloud traffic, mobile devices, and guest Wi-Fi and to support the increase in high bandwidth applications like video-based employee training, multimedia product information, corporate web applications, interactive kiosks, and even third-party web content. Cisco and Akamai intend to deliver best-of-breed technology from two industry leaders, enabling customers to significantly offload traffic from their enterprise WAN and Internet links while addressing a series of performance challenges brought on by bandwidth hungry applications and the proliferation of mobile devices. As a result, these customers are expected to be able to control IT costs and avoid massive bandwidth upgrades, all while providing users with a superior experience.

At Akamai’s Edge 2013 Customer Conference today, Mark Lohmeyer, vice president of product management for the Cisco® Enterprise Networking Group, and Tom Leighton, CEO of Akamai, will demonstrate a working technology preview and discuss the organizations’ shared vision for next generation networks.

“With the proliferation of public and hybrid cloud architectures, Cisco and Akamai customers face the need to increase bandwidth and deliver business critical applications utilizing the Internet as a fast, secure, and cost effective WAN option,” said Rob Soderbery, SVP and GM, Cisco Enterprise Networking Group. “We are looking forward to integrating Akamai's exciting new branch capabilities into the industry leading application delivery platform, the Cisco® ISR-AX. With our joint product development plan, Cisco and Akamai have taken a big step toward delivering the optimal branch experience.”

The intent of both Akamai and Cisco is to utilize the Internet as a fast, reliable, cost-effective WAN option to address the exploding traffic requirements on corporate networks and deal with the architectural challenges hybrid clouds impose on traditional hub–and-spoke networks.

“Akamai and Cisco share a common vision of improving the speed and reliability of the Internet to provide enterprises with a very cost-effective way to meet the bandwidth and performance needs of branch offices,” said Tom Leighton, CEO of Akamai. “Our ultimate goal is to integrate best of breed technology from the two industry leaders in networking and application delivery and enable customers to extend the strength of our platform behind their firewall.”