Macrometa Corporation, the Global Data Network (GDN) and edge computing cloud, has announced a new strategic equity investment, go-to-market partnership, and powerful product integrations with Akamai Technologies Inc., the cloud company that powers and protects life online.
In conjunction with Akamai’s equity investment in Macrometa, Andy Champagne, CTO of Akamai Labs, will join the Macrometa board as a non-voting board observer. This investment spearheads a deep technology and multi-year product collaboration to provide the world’s most ubiquitous edge cloud platform built for enterprise.
Akamai cloud computing based on Linode and EdgeWorkers edge computing technology combined with Macrometa’s Global Data Network (GDN) will help enterprise developers build, deploy, and run global apps and APIs seamlessly across edge and cloud. Developers will have access to the Akamai Intelligent Edge platform operating across 4,200 points of presence around the world, and Akamai cloud computing based on Linode regions, as well as AWS, GCP Azure, and telecom 5G networks. This integration is intended to fundamentally transform the way enterprise app builders architect and run real-time, data-driven web services and brings the Cloud and the Edge into a single, seamless multicloud/polycloud platform. Mobile apps, video streaming services, online multiplayer gaming and eSports experiences, e-commerce, SaaS, IoT, and more, will have access to the power to unleash next-gen services to users everywhere.
“This partnership and technical integration greatly simplifies the amount of work and effort that goes in to building applications and deploying them on the Edge, and it brings a certain level of elegance and velocity that allows faster time to market and a more modern experience of building these types of apps,” said Chetan Venkatesh, founder and CEO at Macrometa. “We are giving developers superpowers. The ability to create these kinds of applications, at the speed and velocity that enterprise requires, looks like magic to the casual observer. But that is the beauty of what this super platform does. We’re thrilled to be working with Akamai not only as an investor, but as an ongoing partner, as well.”
Edge applications need a new cloud
Over 20 years ago, Akamai set out to solve some of the toughest challenges of making the World Wide Web a platform that could serve billions of humans around the world. The Akamai platform offered edge computing in its earliest form, even before the advent of virtualization, and remains one of the most critical infrastructures for security and performance, underpinning the web as we know it today. The web needs a secure and performant edge computing infrastructure along with a Global Data Network (GDN) for real-time delivery of apps, APIs, and data-driven digital web services. This shared vision of a new, better cloud is what sparked the strategic partnership and product integrations with Macrometa. What was once cloud native can now be edge native; multicloud can transform into polycloud; small development projects can now become world-changing, enterprise applications that herald a new era of the cloud that’s faster and more accessible than ever before.
“Developers are fundamentally changing the way they build, deploy and run enterprise applications. Velocity and scale are more important than ever, while flexibility in where to place workloads is now paramount,” said Robert Blumofe, EVP & CTO at Akamai. “By partnering with and investing in Macrometa, Akamai is helping to form and foster a single platform that meets the evolving needs of developers and the apps they’re creating.”
Macrometa’s products will now be available through Akamai’s worldwide salesforce. The two platforms enable Akamai’s enterprise customers and partners to build and deliver applications on the Edge through Macrometa in minutes – not months, compared to alternative CDN-powered edge compute services. Akamai users can leverage Macrometa’s GDN as one of the options to build and run applications directly on Akamai’s edge network with one click. Macrometa will automate all parts of the edge devops workflow, including generating the code, compiling them into Akamai EdgeWorkers, deploying the edge workers across thousands of Akamai locations, and providing real-time observability, logging, and performance for apps built on the GDN and running on Akamai.
