Embracing Change with Akamai Connected Cloud

Since 2009, Akamai has worked hard to develop our best-in-class approach to sustainability. We have spent countless hours researching the program and working with industry partners and our trusted NGOs to best position our business for the future. The recent launch of Akamai Connected Cloud has confirmed that our sustainability program has always been ready and prepared for what comes next. 

As a leader in both delivery and security services across the globe, this latest chapter is an exciting one in Akamai's continued efforts toward sustainability. It is going to help us further embrace our mission to make life better for billions of people, billions of times a day.

Unique in the marketplace

If you have a background in sustainability or have knowledge of what your sustainability team is up against from a reporting perspective, you are probably wondering what I’m talking about. But, just think: Akamai built this chapter of our business to provide a unique cloud offering in the marketplace. 

With this build-out of our cloud computing infrastructure, we are prepared to see power growth, space growth, and data center expansion from what will be considered the most distributed cloud platform in the world. 

Change is good

Now, let’s put this into perspective for those who are not familiar with the current sustainability industry. Our unveiling of the next chapter of Akamai is happening while external standards of how private and public sector operations measure and report greenhouse gas emissions — such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the newly adopted Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive in the European Union, and the proposed environmental impact rules from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission — could materially change how we calculate our emissions impact on society. 

When you approach sustainability today, with all that is going on in the world, you have to be ready and willing to change. This may be difficult for those who struggle with change, but change tends to be good when it comes to environmental impact. 

Think about it: when guidance evolves, it provides an opportunity to get stronger. When rules are enacted, it pushes us to reach higher. When legislation is adopted, it helps us be better stewards of the world around us. Although it may be difficult at times, I truly have that glass-half-full view of the world when it comes to sustainable change. 

Sustainability with meaning

Regardless of what change comes next, Akamai will keep our sustainability program focused on Emissions First. We are ready to embrace change with open arms because flexibility is important to building a sustainability program that has meaning, brings value to our stakeholders, and helps evolve our long-term goals. 

The efficient use of our platform will always be at the forefront of our agenda because we recognize that generating meaningful and lasting emissions reductions will bring challenges. The platform will grow, Akamai Connected Cloud will become more distributed, and we will be up against some very tough global challenges — but that does not mean we are going to slow down. We are going to take that energy and use it to propel our sustainable growth forward.

A fundamentally different approach

I’m excited by the launch of Akamai Connected Cloud and the growth of our computing services for many reasons, both as an engineer and sustainability professional. However, there is one area that is particularly attractive to me: our unique distributed approach to all of it. 

Instead of employing highly concentrated facilities in the traditional clouds, Akamai is using a fundamentally different strategy for cloud computing than providers who base their platforms solely on core data centers.

Not only does the Akamai Connected Cloud bring better performance, new decentralization benefits, and the ability to bring your most important workloads closer to the end user, but it also brings critical efficiency factors that affect sustainability that many organizations do not consider.

5 areas of improved efficiency

It became clear to me through my discussions with our world-class engineering teams that we would gain efficiency in five areas when compared with a traditional cloud just by distributing the footprint. The five areas include:

1. Reduced energy consumption: Akamai Connected Cloud is a distributed platform, located closer to the end user, which decreases the distance that data needs to travel and makes it more energy efficient.

2. Lower emissions: The reduced amount of energy needed to power Akamai Connected Cloud lowers our overall emissions output compared with a more traditional cloud.

3. Improved resource efficiency: Akamai Connected Cloud will help make workloads more resource-efficient by enabling processing and utilization closer to the source or end user. 

4. Increased reliability: Akamai Connected Cloud will improve reliability and resilience and reduce the risk of downtime that could cause negative environmental impact.

5. Sustainable performance: Akamai Connected Cloud will improve operational efficiency and will enhance the sustainability of our products and services.

By combining these five areas of improved efficiency with our commitments to build a best-in-class way to calculate our emissions impact, optimize our power utilization, and even look for way that we can best make a difference with purchasing renewable energy and partnering with key data center partners, Akamai is doing what we do best — innovating, architecting, engineering, and executing a fundamentally different approach to the new world of distributed cloud.