Akamai Technologies unveiled plans to embed cloud computing capabilities into its massive edge network. Akamai's Generalized Edge Compute (Gecko) advances Akamai's strategy to be the cloud computing platform for companies that want to deliver better experiences by running workloads closer to users, devices, and sources of data. Akamai's move comes at an exciting juncture for the technology industry.

In a worldwide study conducted in 2023, ClearPath Strategies found that two-thirds of IT decision-makers said their use of distributed cloud services is expected to increase over the next 12 months. More than one-third of respondents said the benefits of distributed cloud ? including the ability to process and analyze AI and machine learning data quickly and efficiently ?

are mission critical to their IT strategy. Akamai has been conducting early trials of Gecko with several of its enterprise customers. The company anticipates that customers in AI inferencing, multiplayer gaming, and social and streaming media are best positioned to take advantage of the power of Gecko.

Akamai sees future use cases in areas such as immersive retail, spatial computing, data analytics, and consumer and industrial IoT. Current industry architectures treat cloud and edge networks separately. Gecko is designed to enable generalized compute to be deployed on top of Akamai's existing worldwide edge network, taking advantage of existing tools, processes, and observability to provide a consistent experience across the entire continuum of compute from cloud to edge.

Gecko will move heavier, traditional compute ? usually confined to centralized data centers ? to the edge of Akamai's network.

This will bring full-stack computing to hundreds of previously hard-to-reach locations, allowing customers to move workloads closer to their users. By injecting cloud computing into places that traditional cloud providers have struggled to reach, developers will no longer have to think about building for the cloud or building for the edge. As developers demand more from their cloud and edge providers, Akamai's plan is to unlock opportunities to innovate across the entire continuum of compute by driving the convergence necessary to put cloud computing power at the edge ?

convergence not possible before Gecko.