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Arming small businesses to compete against industry giants
Netstock is a U.S.-based, AI-enabled SaaS company delivering supply and demand planning software to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) worldwide. As it scaled AI-enabled automation to 2,400+ customers in 67 countries, it needed a cloud provider that could deliver high-performance compute, regional data residency, predictable costs, and hands-on support. With Akamai cloud computing services, Netstock built a multicloud, multi-region foundation that powers data-intensive workloads, supports rapid innovation, and helps the company scale without compromise.
Democratizing enterprise-grade inventory intelligence
Founded nearly 16 years ago, Netstock was launched with a clear mission: Bring enterprise-level inventory intelligence to SMBs in a way that’s intuitive, affordable, and fast to deploy.
“Earlier in my career, I built these systems for large enterprises,” said Barry Kukkuk, CTO and Co-Founder. “I helped found Netstock to give smaller businesses the same sophistication, without the complexity or cost. Essentially, we enable them to punch above their weight.”
Wanting to further empower SMBs, Netstock now harnesses next-gen AI automation so its customers can more quickly resolve challenges and take action on intelligent predictions.
Today, Netstock generates 120 billion records, enabling 2,400+ customers across 67 countries to manage $25 billion in inventory. That global footprint shaped the company’s cloud strategy early on.
“People want their data close to them, especially our customers in Europe,” Kukkuk explained. “That’s one of the reasons we started with Akamai cloud computing services years ago.”
Choosing cloud infrastructure built for data-heavy workloads
From day one, Netstock’s platform processed massive volumes of customer data from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems: extracting, transforming, analyzing, and returning insights daily. Performance and database efficiency were nonnegotiable.
“What Akamai gave us was the right balance,” Kukkuk recalled. “Good price, strong performance, and enough memory and storage to do serious computation.”
Akamai’s local NVMe-based storage proved especially valuable. Netstock is extremely database heavy. “When data is far away, performance suffers. Akamai gives us the horsepower to churn through data efficiently,” Kukkuk continued.
With Akamai’s global footprint, Netstock can host customer data locally wherever its customers exist, without changing its architecture. “Akamai’s cloud computing services work the same no matter where we host,” Kukkuk said. “That’s brilliant.”
Powering a modern, microservices-based architecture
Netstock runs a complex, end-to-end data pipeline on Akamai Cloud. Customer ERP data flows through Kubernetes-based orchestration services, into staging databases, and then into compute-heavy application servers where calculations occur.
Over time, Netstock evolved from a monolithic application to a microservices-based architecture. “We now have microservices for forecasting, safety stock, risk measurement — you name it,” said Kukkuk. “Kubernetes lets us scale those independently as demand changes.”
Akamai solutions supporting this architecture include:
- LKE: Managed Kubernetes Engine: Managed Kubernetes for scalable data orchestration and microservices
- CPU: High-performance virtual machines (VMs) for analytics and application workloads
- Object Storage: Cost-effective data exchange between systems
- NodeBalancers: Simple, reliable traffic distribution for Kubernetes clusters
- Cloud Firewall: Network-layer protection for globally distributed infrastructure
Hands-on support that made the difference
As Netstock adopted Kubernetes, Akamai’s support stood out. “Kubernetes is powerful, but it takes time to get right,” Kukkuk said. “Akamai helped us not just make it work, but optimize it and make it more resilient.”
Unlike hyperscalers, Akamai provided direct access to experienced engineers. “When we raise a ticket, we get actual humans, not just FAQs and bots making suggestions,” he said. “We have a dedicated account manager and get white-glove service.”
That support extended further with Akamai’s Enhanced Compute Support, giving Netstock higher-touch assistance as its platform scaled.
Predictable costs for a price-sensitive market
Serving SMBs means margins matter. Netstock needed cloud infrastructure that wouldn’t introduce billing surprises.“With AWS, unpredictability is a real issue,” Kukkuk explained. “Someone downloads a large report a few times, and suddenly the bill spikes.”With Akamai, costs are stable and transparent. “We appreciate the performance-to-price ratio. Akamai provides better compute, generous ingress and egress, and predictable bills,” he said.
“That matters enormously to our business. It’s amazing that we can provide high-end compute to our customers while delivering a cost-effective service.”
That predictability has become a competitive differentiator, one that even Netstock’s private equity owners track closely. “We consistently benchmark as the most cost-effective infrastructure in the portfolio,” Kukkuk noted. “Akamai is a competitive advantage for us.”
Enabling faster innovation and new revenue streams
Akamai’s flexibility also allows Netstock to launch new products quickly. One example: a BI integration that lets customers connect tools like Power BI to their Netstock data without impacting production workloads.
“We spun up separate VMs, replicated data daily, and had customers in beta within a month,” said Kukkuk. “Now customers click a button, and everything provisions automatically via APIs, without engineering needing to get involved.”
That same infrastructure mindset makes it easier for Netstock to innovate without re-architecting or overpaying. “We don’t need exotic services,” he explained. “We spin up another VM and move on.”
Building an AI-driven future with confidence
Netstock is now embedding AI directly into workflows: explaining inventory risks, recommending actions, and even drafting supplier communications.
“We’re doing more than providing chatbots,” Kukkuk said. “We’re helping users understand what’s happening and what to do next.”
For example, if a ship is delayed in a canal during a 90-day lead time from China, Netstock’s AI intervenes. It can proactively recommend switching to air freight or sourcing from an alternative vendor. While these options may carry higher upfront costs, the AI quantifies the value: preventing a stockout and capturing sales that would otherwise be lost.
Looking ahead, Netstock plans to train its own machine learning models on terabytes of customer data — and Akamai’s roadmap plays a key role. “We can’t afford to buy high-end GPUs,” he said. “But we can rent them from Akamai to train models securely, and that’s incredible.”
A cloud partner, not just a provider
As Netstock expands into new markets and builds more AI-driven capabilities, Akamai gives the company confidence to move fast. “When we plan expansion, I don’t worry about hosting,” Kukkuk said. “I know Akamai has it covered.”
More than infrastructure, Akamai delivers alignment. “Akamai understands that we rely on its infrastructure and services upstream so we can serve our customers downstream. It works with us at every step — and that makes all the difference,” Kukkuk concluded.
About Netstock
Netstock is a global leader in inventory optimization and supply chain planning software for SMBs. With over 2,400 customers in 67 countries, Netstock’s AI-driven solutions help businesses streamline operations, improve forecasting, and optimize inventory to meet market demands. From automated recommendations to actionable insights, Netstock enables companies to enhance decision-making, reduce costs, and improve overall supply chain efficiency. Visit netstock.com to learn more.
About Akamai
Akamai is the cybersecurity and cloud computing company that powers and protects business online. Our market-leading security solutions, superior threat intelligence, and global operations team provide defense in depth to safeguard enterprise data and applications everywhere. Akamai’s full-stack cloud computing solutions deliver performance and affordability on the world’s most distributed platform. Global enterprises trust Akamai to provide the industry-leading reliability, scale, and expertise they need to grow their business with confidence. Learn more at akamai.com and akamai.com/blog, or follow Akamai Technologies on X and LinkedIn.