The Right Cloud for the Right Application

As more companies across industries look to satisfy consumer and user expectations for zero downtime and real-time experiences, they continue to evolve their use of cloud computing to optimize their data-intensive edge-native applications. These days, media and entertainment companies are further modernizing their cloud strategies by taking advantage of cloud computing resources at the edge, making it possible to deliver those experiences — powered by edge-native applications — even more effectively and efficiently.

As research from Forrester Consulting underscores, "With 98% of media respondents expecting a majority of their workloads to be cloud-native within the next 12 months, finding the right partner for a distributed cloud platform is essential. And the number one requirement for those partners, according to IT leaders? The ability to deploy and execute from cloud to edge."

That is the case for a popular social media platform that continually innovates as it drives the industry forward. Reaching billions of users, it regularly enhances capabilities and infrastructure to best enable the delivery of real-time digital experiences. As its users’ demands for flawless, individualized experiences grew, Akamai enabled this platform provider to extend its cloud computing workloads to the edge. This paved the way for the provider to deliver the next generation of interactive social experiences.

A cloud-native industry pioneer, this social media platform provider is continually pushing the boundaries to satisfy the newest generation of users. In its quest to reach and retain more subscribers, it turned to Akamai as a trusted partner as we continue to establish new baselines for digital experiences. Compelled by our vision to extend cloud computing to the edge, this provider knew it had found a way to achieve its next evolution.

It’s no wonder. According to a study by Forrester Consulting, personalization is a top workload challenge for media and entertainment providers. Additionally, our research found that “four out of five IT leaders in the media and entertainment industry said the ability to scale globally is either important or critical, emphasizing the need for multinational media companies to be closer to viewers around the world.” In the same Forrester study, 60% of media and entertainment providers say edge computing improves the customer experience.

To enable its vision, the social media company needed to shift cloud computing resources to the edge. It engaged numerous cloud providers that were able to provide computing infrastructure, but the centralized nature of the company’s platform led to regional challenges and difficulties in reaching emerging markets.

As it assessed its options, the company saw that Akamai stood out as the sole provider offering a solution for edge-native applications. Akamai provides infrastructure in more regions than other providers, cloud computing resources at the core and the edge, and the ability to power and globally scale low-latency, data-intensive applications designed to satisfy regional preferences.

This Akamai customer already grasps the strategic value of being on the edge. It has been moving workloads to the edge and building its own platform to manage edge capacity. This concurs with our own research on IT leaders in media and entertainment:

• 88% have six or more workloads that need to run in multiple regions
• 82% have six or more workloads running on the edge
• 65% have six or more workloads that need to run in multiple jurisdictions

The platform provider gained a partner with strong edge capacity and a far-reaching vision. It also gained advanced capabilities beyond what is enabled by our content delivery network (CDN), making it possible to efficiently move traffic across our global edge platform at highly competitive egress costs. 

We proved our edge compute capabilities to this customer via a three-month pilot program that focused on two use cases:

• Innovatively approaching low-latency streaming using technologies that are not supported via traditional CDN services
• Transcoding on the edge to enable fast turnaround for user-generated content — for example, when a user uploads a video, the provider can more quickly and efficiently transcode and push the video back to the user

The pilot program demonstrated that Akamai’s cloud computing capabilities provide the resilience and scalability that this global social media platform provider needs. At the same time, we impressed the customer by providing dedicated, round-the-clock priority support.

Based on the success of this pilot program and our partnership, the social media platform provider spun up its WebRTC workload on Akamai. Although WebRTC enables speed and real-time capabilities, it wasn’t built for one-to-many platforms that serve billions of users. Akamai makes it possible for the provider to scale while continuing to deliver high-quality, low-latency video to users around the world.

Now, the platform provider is exploring additional ways to take advantage of our cloud computing capabilities and added edge locations. Considering how often this high-profile company is approached by cloud providers — and knowing its high standards for technology — Akamai is thrilled to be considered a long-term strategy partner in its ongoing edge journey.