What is our primary use case?
So one of our main use cases is website hosting. It can be the website primarily targeted at a specific demographic or global. That's one use case.
Another use case is providing an out-of-the-box solution for video streaming. If your business is primarily focused on live video streaming, Akamai might be the right solution for you. Other content delivery network (CDN) solutions, like Virtual Sand, do not support video streaming. That's the main reason for choosing Akamai.
Additionally, Akamai is leveraged by many Fortune 500 companies. If there's an outage or any issues, you don't need to worry about the service level agreement (SLA) because most of your competitors and top-level business companies also rely on Akamai.
How has it helped my organization?
What needs improvement?
From my perspective, there are a few areas that need improvement, especially in terms of security upgrades. Currently, Akamai does not provide the same level of security as Cloudflare, which supports applications through SSL HTTPs. This is one aspect that needs attention.
Another aspect is the pricing. Akamai should target mid-level and small to medium-sized businesses, not just enterprise-level companies. The larger companies already benefit from it, so it shouldn't be the sole focus. We should focus more on medium-sized businesses as well.
Mostly, I would like to see improvements in the security aspect. The web application firewall needs to be enhanced and offers more customization options. Additionally, while there are many available servers, they come as add-ons. This limits our ability to explore all the features, as they require additional payments.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Akamai for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a highly scalable solution.
How are customer service and support?
If you have an in-house team of engineers to manage, you may not require much technical support. However, if you have limited support or are new to the platform, you might need customized software and dedicated technical support, which comes with an additional cost.
Therefore, you need to pay extra for the support.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
Setting up Akamai is a bit more complex compared to Cloudflare or similar services. It's more like an enterprise solution, so you need to sign a contract. The initial setup requires expertise either within your team or with support from Akamai to configure it for your infrastructure.
We have an in-house application because our main focus is website development. Additionally, we are working on an application that has a global reach.
What about the implementation team?
Deployment primarily involves providing all the necessary services. Once you run the agent software on your infrastructure server, the client runs on the cloud infrastructure, such as Amazon, Azure, or GPT, or even on-premises data centers. Akamai, or any CDN solution, can be deployed as a cloud solution. You connect the DNS from your application to the Akamai cloud. When a request is made to your domain, instead of going directly to your server, it goes through Akamai first. Akamai then forwards the request to your internal server. This way, information is cached based on the local regions, improving performance.
Generally, a minimum of two to three engineers, preferably site reliability engineers, are required to handle the deployment and maintenance effectively.
Moreover, maintenance can be a bit challenging. Only someone with end-to-end knowledge of Akamai would be able to maintain it effectively.
Documentation and resources are available, but they are not publicly accessible. Only enterprise-level customers who are committed to Akamai receive the documentation. However, you still need support from their teams, especially when new features are rolled out. Unfortunately, there isn't an open support community where people can help each other. Cloudflare, on the other hand, offers more support in these aspects.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features.
Akamai offers many additional services, but they often come as add-ons. On the other hand, Akamai is acquiring smaller companies to expand its offerings, particularly in the areas of security and other aspects. However, they are still in the incubation stage in terms of these aspects.
In comparison, Cloudflare is more focused on security. The choice between these companies depends on your specific use case. For example, if you are an e-commerce platform, the high-quality resolution of product images is crucial for the end user. In such cases, Akamai may be the best solution, especially for handling high-resolution images and video streaming.
However, if your application is a general website and you need CDN for caching and instant traffic from your server, Cloudflare and other similar solutions may be suitable.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Cloudflare comes with default denial-of-service protection, but if you're considering Akamai, you may also need to think about additional solutions like Reblaze for better security. Akamai primarily functions as a CDN, while Reblaze specializes in preventing SQL injection and DDoS attacks.
If you're focused on security, you should consider Reblaze. After deploying Akamai, if you experience numerous bot attacks on your site, you can implement Reblaze for additional security measures.
After installing Akamai, we introduced Reblaze to handle various security aspects. Our setup involves data coming from Reblaze to Akamai and then to our servers.
What other advice do I have?
There are multiple benefits. Depending on the use case, if you only need a CDN for caching content, whether it's static or dynamic, they can consider using Cloudflare. It could be the cheapest option compared to Akamai, which comes at a higher cost.
Another factor to consider is if your website primarily streams videos. If you're a publication or media company with a website that heavily relies on images and streaming videos, Akamai is a suitable tool and platform, especially considering the Content Delivery Network (CDN) capabilities.
I would rate Akamai a nine out of ten, as it is a market leader.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
*Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator
