The world is growing more connected, something Akamai Technologies calls “hyperconnection”. The cloud-based platform company held their annual customer conference, Akamai Edge, last October to demonstrate new solutions for application acceleration.
Alex Caro, the incoming Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Services for Akamai’s Asia Pacific Japan region was recently in town to talk more about the company’s plans for the region. According to Alex, Akamai usually deals with larger enterprise but also work with smaller companies who are growing. “We are fundamentally about software. How you make smart software and how that software can help in solving different problems like delivery of content,” said Alex. He views Software as a Service (SaaS) as a great equalizer for companies of all sizes and sees Akamai as playing a role of an enabler for new and interesting applications coming out of different places.
Akamai is taking a strong interest in Asia. Some trends in the region that Alex has observed, and shared with us, is that the mobile penetration in Asia is much higher than that in the US or Europe. “I really do think that Asia is going to be the place that we are going to try out some of the more interesting mobile technologies,” said Alex on Akamai’s 2012 plans for the region.
“Asia seems to be just younger, overall. So, I think the types of applications that are interesting in the Asian market tend to be more social, tend to be more media, tend to be more gaming. There’s quite a bit of gaming that’s very important in the Asian market. Where’s in the other markets, we see more growth in the enterprise space,” commented Alex on the Asian region, “the botom line is, we can’t treat Asia as a region. Each country has their own individual perspective. I think that’s something that I won’t say we are good at but we are getting much better at it.”
Alex also acknowledges that each country has their own strengths which makes it even more important that Akamai establishes strong partnerships locally. Some of the partners that Akamai is currently working with is Ericsson. “We are very good, Akamai obviously, at getting Internet traffic delivered from across the Internet or getting Internet traffic delivered to fixed line users. But once traffic hits the radio frequency spectrum, or the cellular network, we don’t have a lot of acceleration that we can apply to that. So, our partnership with Ericsson, given that in Asia there’s so much more mobile traffic, is how do we work with Ericsson, the biggest provider of cellphone infrastructure, so that at at the higher level, when traffic is coming from Akamai and it hits an Ericsson device inside of an operator, that Ericsson has made a relationship with that operator, that traffic then continues to be accelerated into the mobile device itself.” This partnership puts Akamai in the position to provide end-to-end accelerated services for business such as mobile banking. The technology that allows the prioritizing of traffic is already available, and Akamai is looking to put this technology into the hands of customers in a way that these customers can find value in it.
Other than looking to bring Akamai’s technologies into the cellular network, the company is also eyeing the enterprise networks. Akamai, having always been in the public Internet, has partnered RiverBed to assist in its entry into the enterprise world.
Having been with Akamai from its early startup days, Alex understands about building technology products for the future. He advises startups to decompose their application up front, understanding what has to run in which layer and also the services that are available on the cloud. “In the old days, you basically have to do everything yourself. You had to create the database, you had to create the application server, you had to create the front-end web servers. It is really important to decompose your application in a way that you have very clean interfaces between those layers. If you have clean interface between them, whether they are web API layers or RESTful URLs, that gives you the ability as a software developer to take that stuff and ship it out and put is some place else,” advises Alex. Doing this retroactively can be disruptive to a company’s operations and also cuts you off from technology choices.
Akamai is expecting to grow its presence more in Asia for 2012. To do this, Alex understands that investing in the right people is crucial. On top of that, Akamai has a lot to learn in better understanding the markets. “We talked about the markets and we need to understand the markets better. And each of the markets we are trying to develop what are the key, strategic customers that we need to have a deeper relationship with because it is really important to have long-term relationships. We have been a company that has been around for a reasonable period of time but I don’t think we have the relationships to the depth that we need to in Asia. So that is going to be a key focus,” said Alex. Alex also mentions that Akamai is changing the way their products are rolled out to the markets. Before this, new products were pushed to the US and European markets before going global. Akamai aims to change this discipline by going globally from day one, something that would take time to implement.
Probably the most memorable advice from Alex throughout the interview was his comment on building technology products. “It is not about the technology, it is about making it simpler. I think that is what’s going to win the day. Let’s keep the complexity under the covers.”
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