Akamai Puts Media Companies Back in Control with New Workflow Capabilities

Akamai (NASDAQ: AKAM), the cloud company that powers and protects life online, today introduced new video workflow capabilities at IBC that give media companies greater choice and control across every part of the video delivery chain. The new capabilities aggregate Akamai’s cloud and delivery platforms with the company’s growing partner network to give customers unprecedented flexibility to tailor media experiences to meet customer demands.

“Streaming services, broadcast networks, and online video platforms are all asking for more control over their workflows. They don’t want to be locked into one vendor. They don’t want to be taxed for moving content. And they don’t want to help subsidize competitive services. We’re giving them an open platform to bring their workflow components of choice and run them when and where they see fit,” Jon Alexander, vice president, product management, Akamai.

In a 2024 commissioned study of individual contributors and leaders responsible for building/maintaining end user applications conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Akamai, three-quarters of respondents said it was important or critical to have flexibility to deploy compute resources closer to the end user, while maintaining central management and control. Meanwhile, a 2023 survey of media and entertainment businesses found that 73% of the responding organizations were considering moving away from large, legacy cloud providers in favor of more portable, cloud-native setups due to cost pressures.

By opening its distributed cloud platform to applications and platforms across the media workflow ecosystem, Akamai gives customers control over every aspect of their workflow and access to a vibrant and growing third-party partner network. Support for multicloud architectures that eliminates vendor lock-in so customers can leverage the best products and services for their needs and evolve their use of cloud services as they grow. The scale of Akamai’s massively distributed and connected cloud gives it the unique ability to minimize egress fees and offer generous allowances, providing unmatched price-performance from core to edge.

Media companies can choose from multiple software and partner options across each step of their workflow to transport, prepare, process, deliver, secure, and monetize digital content. Akamai media services, trusted by all top 10 video streaming services, include solutions for contribution, transport, transcoding, packaging, digital rights management, ad insertion, and content security.

Earlier this year, Akamai added media-optimized, NVIDIA-based GPUs to its portfolio of cloud solutions. The new GPUs and workflow features extend Akamai’s push to give media and entertainment companies a more cost-effective and efficient way to build scalable, resilient architectures and deploy workloads that will be faster, more reliable, and portable, while taking advantage of the world's most distributed cloud platform and integrated content delivery and security services.

Akamai will show its range of cloud-based media delivery, computing, and security capabilities during IBC 2024 in Amsterdam, September 13-16. Akamai will host visitors at the Akamai Lounge, located at the RAI Amsterdam in the Elicium (Hall 13) on the third floor.