Akamai to Deploy 12 New Linode Data Centers in Global Expansion

When content delivery specialist Akamai acquired Linode in February, it described the transaction as a “transformational” deal that will expand its global infrastructure platform from the cloud to the edge. That included plans to expand Linode’s infrastructure to scale up the cloud computing platform.

This week Akamai is filling in the details, announcing plans for a significant expansion of Linode’s infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings, which previously featured data centers in 11 global markets. That includes 12 new data center locations, as well as 50 edge computing nodes.

“We plan to add more than a dozen new Linode data centers – equipped with Linode’s full product suite – across North America, APAC, LATAM, and Europe by the end of 2023,” wrote Shawn Michels, Akamai’s VO of product management for computing, in a blog post. ” Our first planned new location is targeted for Ashburn, Virginia, later this year with more to follow in the first half of 2023. Along with Ashburn, we are targeting deployments in: Amsterdam, Chennai, Chicago, Delhi, Jakarta, Los Angeles, Osaka, Miami, Paris, Rome, São Paulo, Seattle, and Stockholm to name a few.”

The additional data centers will allow Linode to develop availability zones for application resiliency, much like Amazon Web Services. ““Today, Linode does not have the notion of availability zones, so that is an evolution that we will be bringing to them as we expand the service,” Michels told Protocol Enterprise.

Akamai also will introduce “Distributed Sites,” a new offering designed to bring basic compute capabilities into locations “currently underserved by traditional cloud providers,” and has identified more than 50 cities for these deployments. Distributed sites are somewhat similar to cloud extensions like AWS Local Zones, Google Distributed Cloud  or Microsoft Azure edge modules. The goal will be to provide lightweight compute infrastructure for applications with latency or localization requirements.

Akamai is a pioneer in online video delivery and has long been the largest content delivery network, with more than 325,000 servers in a network spanning 135 countries around the globe. Akamai delivers daily Internet traffic reaching more than 100 terabits per second for blue chip customers including 56 percent of the Fortune 500. Akamai is also a leader in Internet security, and as an early leader in distributed computing, has embraced edge computing services.

Linode specializes in infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings for the developer community, with 1 million customers in 185 countries and data centers in 11 global markets.