Source: The Venture Beat
American company, Akamai Technologies Ltd, is often thought of just as one offering content delivery network, cybersecurity and cloud service. It is also said to provide other computing services. However, the content delivery network company announced today that they have taken over Linode.
Linode is known for being an affordable place which provides virtual private servers on rent. It was launched as early as 2003 and has grown to make a quite a name for itself. It was the time slightly before Amazon Web Services (AWS) transformed cloud computing into a sort of buzzword.
Since the time VPSes were the only way for hosting one’s own web apps or websites, Linode had continued to expand what it had to offer. In turn, the company never took outside funding like its then emerging competitor, DigitalOcean.
Presently, Linode offers all faces of the core cloud services that is expected by the developers and had been before by early providers of VPS. The services include managed databases, block and object storage, load balancers, and most importantly, computing. Recently, it has brought forward a service for running containerised applications, a managed Kubernates service.
Dr. Tom Leighton, Co-founder and CEO of Akamai calls the acquisition of Linode ‘transformational’. He pointed out, how the chance to integrate the market leading platform of Akamai with Linode’s cloud computing services is phenomenal.
He announced , “Akamai has been a pioneer in the edge computing business for over 20 years, and today we are excited to begin a new chapter in our evolution. This is by creating a unique cloud platform to build, run and secure applications from the cloud to the edge…”
This merger could prove to be a huge victory for developers who will now gain access to building the new generation of applications. These applications would be on a leading platform that offer undefeated performance, security, reach and reliability.
Owing to its remarkable operational services, Akamai intends to make no changes to any aspect of Linode’s mode of function. They believe in the existing modes to reach success as it had previously.
Linode founder, Christopher Aker also displays faith in the acquisition by Akamai and believes the two companies to have ‘synergy’ in goals and strengths. He believes that the merger will provide customers with “a broader range of services to build, modernize, and scale the next generation of applications.”
Akamai and Linode’s union would prove to be advantageous for both the parties. It will help Linode fill in the gaps in the aspect of security. On the other hand, it would aid Akamai to offer the much expected self-serve “SaaS product” to developers.
