Who is Akamai Technologies?
Akamai Technologies is a cloud services and content delivery provider that offers edge computing, application delivery, and security capabilities for internet-facing workloads.
- Content delivery and edge caching for web, media, and software distribution (content delivery/networking)
- Application and Application Programming Interface (API) protection including web application and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) defenses (application security)
- Zero trust and secure access services for users, devices, and applications (zero trust network access)
- Edge compute and serverless execution for latency-sensitive and distributed applications (edge computing)
- Cloud-based threat detection, threat intelligence, and traffic management (security/traffic management)
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More About Akamai Technologies
Akamai Technologies provides a distributed cloud platform that places compute, security, and content delivery resources at the edge of the internet, close to end users and devices. Enterprises use Akamai to improve the performance, reliability, and protection of public-facing websites, APIs, and media services without deploying and operating equivalent global infrastructure on their own. The company operates a large globally distributed network of Points of Presence (PoP) that act as an overlay on top of existing internet routing, handling caching, traffic steering, and security inspection for customer workloads.
In content delivery and web performance (content delivery/networking), Akamai caches static and cacheable assets, optimizes connections using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), HTTP/2, HTTP/3, Transport Layer Security (TLS), and related web protocols, and provides routing and load distribution mechanisms to manage user requests across origin locations. Enterprises running e-commerce, media streaming, software distribution, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms use these services to address bandwidth offload, latency, and throughput requirements while maintaining control at the origin infrastructure or cloud provider of choice.
In security, Akamai offers services in Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) (application security), DDoS mitigation (DDoS protection), and bot and account abuse management. These services System Integration Testing (SIT) in front of customer origins as a cloud-based control point, inspecting traffic at the edge and enforcing security policies before traffic reaches enterprise networks or cloud environments. The platform uses threat intelligence, rules-based controls, and protocol-aware inspection to reduce exposure to common web and network attack patterns.
Akamai also provides secure access and zero trust offerings (zero trust network access), enabling organizations to publish internal applications to users without relying exclusively on traditional Virtual Private Network (VPN) architectures. In this model, access decisions are enforced in the cloud based on user identity, device context, and application-level controls, and traffic is proxied through Akamai’s network instead of exposing internal IP ranges directly to the internet.
In edge computing (edge computing), Akamai exposes compute and logic execution closer to end users for use cases such as personalization, API aggregation, traffic manipulation, and data processing that benefit from reduced round-trip times. Developers can integrate these capabilities into existing cloud and on-premises (on-prem) architectures to distribute parts of the application stack across regions and networks, while still managing core business logic and data stores in central environments.
From a marketplace and directory perspective, Akamai aligns with categories such as content delivery/networking, application security, DDoS protection, zero trust network access, and edge computing. Its offerings are typically deployed in conjunction with public cloud platforms, on-prem data centers, and hybrid environments, acting as an intermediary layer between end users and customer-managed infrastructure to address performance, resilience, and security requirements for internet-scale applications.
Our description of Akamai Technologies. Updated December 2025.
