Unlocking the Next Wave of Edge Computing with Serverless WebAssembly

WebAssembly has four things going for it: speed, portability, security, and easy integration.

Cold start times of a WebAssembly runtime are under one millisecond, making it orders of magnitude faster than Docker containers, virtual machines, or even modern cloud-based serverless functions.

A WebAssembly binary can run on any operating system and system architecture, meaning it is a true build-once, run-anywhere platform.

Its well-validated security model is more robust than containers. The WebAssembly’s security sandbox can execute code with strong isolation. With a capabilities-based security model, deployment time security constraints can specify which hosts, databases, and files an app is allowed to access.

Because WebAssembly is an open standard, it enjoys huge adoption. The open source Spin development tool supports coding in JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Rust, Python, .NET or other languages. And it works with your existing IDE, CI/CD, and version control systems. It deploys into Akamai’s edge without so much as a recompile.

We are excited to announce that WebAssembly sits at the heart of our new edge functions offering powered by Fermyon WebAssembly Functions. This fully managed hosted platform automatically load balances and routes traffic across the global network. When an application is deployed, it is available in all supported regions within seconds.

It has never been easier (or faster) to build edge native applications that integrate with services ranging from AI inferencing and SQL databases to object storage and beyond. Build and deploy anything from standard edge functions to entire content management systems or even hyper-distributed microservices. WebAssembly offers:

• Content management and acceleration: Dynamically compose content on the edge, generate customer-specific media, and distribute your digital experiences platform across the edge.

• Edge microservices: Build applications that run entirely on the edge and let WebAssembly Functions distribute them across the Akamai network automatically. Microservices, user-facing apps, and middleware all move closer to the user and farther away from expensive cloud egress charges.

• AI applications: Execute large language model inferencing, voice-to-text conversion, image analysis, and other AI tasks in the fastest environment available. Create personalized product recommendations. Convert voice commands to text and react quickly at edge. Summarize user-generated content without sending all that data upstream to your origin.

• Cost savings: Create applications that run at the edge and avoid the costly egress fees associated with centralized cloud providers.

• Edge utility coding: Handle cross-origin security, parse and react to JSON bodies, perform complex traffic redirection, and prevent unauthorized content access.

In addition to Fermyon WebAssembly Functions, the fully managed option running on Akamai Cloud, a self-managed Kubernetes alternative is available for deployment on Linode Kubernetes Engine. Fermyon Platform for Kubernetes enables running many functions in varying languages within a single runtime, thereby maximizing resource efficiency with scalability and density unmatched in the cloud native ecosystem.