Akamai Unveils Platform to Automate Software Deployment on Kubernetes Clusters
Akamai Technologies this week at the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2024 conference launched a platform that enables organizations to invoke customizable templates to deploy applications on Kubernetes clusters in less than an hour.
Based on an Otomi platform that Akamai acquired from Red Kubes earlier this year, the Akamai App Platform, in addition to automatically provisioning Kubernetes clusters, includes an opinionated framework that integrates a suite of tools for continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), observability, security, workload compliance, secrets management, service mesh and storage. That approach eliminates the need for IT organizations to configure Kubernetes clusters themselves.
Ari Weil, vice president of product marketing for Akamai, said that the self-service framework ensures best practices are followed in a way that can also be extended to include add-ons that IT teams need to deploy on Kubernetes clusters, said Weil.
Those platforms can then be deployed anywhere, including at the network edge using the Akamai Connected Cloud service. Aside from the console and the application programming interface (APIs) provided by Akamai, the rest of the configuration code created for Kubernetes environments remains highly portable should an organization decide it needs to move workloads to another platform, said Weil. As a result, organizations do not have to be concerned about being locked into an opinionated framework, noted Weil.
That’s crucial, because as application requirements change over time, many of the cloud-native applications being deployed today on one platform may need to be shifted to another platform capable of running them more cost-effectively, he noted.
There is little doubt that organizations of all sizes are trying to accelerate the deployment of cloud-native applications. A Techstrong Research survey finds roughly 60% work for organizations making significant investments in container and orchestration technologies over the next two years. Well over half of respondents work for organizations that have already deployed cloud-native applications in a production environment, with another 22% now evaluating whether to follow suit.
The challenge is not every organization deploying these applications has extensive DevOps expertise. Akamai is addressing that issue via a framework that automates the configuration of software and platforms that might otherwise require weeks of time and effort.
As the pace at which applications are being built continues to increase thanks to the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, there is little doubt that pressure to also increase the rate at which those applications can be deployed is only going to grow. Many organizations are embracing platform engineering as a methodology for centralizing the management of software deployments.
The challenge is applications today are typically built in the cloud but may need to be deployed closer to where the data they access actually resides, which often is either in a data center or at the network edge.
One way or another, there will soon be more cloud-native applications running everywhere from the edge to the cloud than ever. The challenge now is not just finding ways to deploy that software but just as importantly updating and maintaining it as containers are regularly ripped and replaced.
