In a price-sensitive market like India, affordability has always differentiated us: Blair Lyon, Head of Cloud Experience, Akamai

Linode has been an early pioneer in creating the market for alternative clouds, and has seen massive growth by serving use cases that don’t require all of the capabilities and features offered by the big three cloud providers. Akamai was the first company to offer edge computing services. Now, with the acquisition of Linode, Akamai is expanding from delivering and securing applications to empowering developers to build on Akamai. With Linode, Akamai is taking the next major step in its evolution: marrying Linode’s experience in cloud computing with Akamai’s leadership in scale and security to create the world’s most distributed compute platform — making it easier for developers and businesses to build, run, and secure their applications.

Blair Lyon, Head of Cloud Experience, Akamai, shares with us his perspective on how the acquisition by Akamai is impacting Linode’s customers in India

Some edited excerpts:

How is the acquisition by Akamai impacting Linode’s customers in India so far?
At Linode, we believe that this acquisition is unlike any other, owing to the mutual vision behind it. Akamai and Linode have a natural synergy when it comes to understanding the power that developers hold as decision-makers in modern-day enterprises. Linode has already been nurturing this power with its developer-centric offerings like computing, block and object storage, managed database, load balancers and, most recently, a managed Kubernetes service. Akamai now helps in building out our services, expanding into new data centers and extending our feature set. We have also launched a new database-as-a-service (DBaaS) offering, which is likely to be followed by an expansion of our managed container services with more enterprise features. DBaaS will especially propel India’s fast-growing developer fraternity towards easier and faster cloud adoption.

Going forward, Akamai’s investments will help us add more virtual private cloud features. On the other hand, Linode customers will also be able to buy Akamai’s global CDN capabilities, likely by the end of this year. We are also planning to incorporate Akamai’s expertise in security by adding a basic web application protector (WAP) to Linode’s service. All in all, it’s a win-win for developers, startups and enterprises to be able to build the next generation of applications on a platform that delivers unprecedented scale, reach, performance, reliability and security.

There are increasing talks of the arrival of funding winter. How do you think startup ecosystem can survive this?
At a time when every dollar saved will count as two, all aspects of a business structure will come under scrutiny, and cloud expenditure won’t be spared either. This is where the power of alternative cloud players strongly comes to the fore, and we’ll see many more organizations recognize as myth or the perceived notion that purchasing the most expensive cloud solutions from hyperscalers or cloud giants is mandatory for superior tech performance. Additionally, I think that this cash crunch will underscore the importance of optimising resource utilisation, which in turn translates into a renewed focus on re-evaluating partner or vendor cost benefit. . Falling prey to big cloud player names won’t get SMEs endorsements in front of prospective VCs either, but astute spending on resources, of which cloud forms an integral part, will make an impression. Even when we ultimately overcome the funding winter, and profitability becomes the centrepiece for businesses, wise cloud spending will be a differentiator.

Can you highlight a few factors that distinguish Linode from the others in the industry?
For over 19 years, Linode has been known as a brand that is built by the developers for the developers. In a price-sensitive market like India, affordability has always differentiated us, but we are more than that. Our interface is simpler, easier and intuitive and not as complex and enterprise-focused like an AWS. This is because we believe that developers are the gatekeepers of innovation. And our aim is to let them focus more on the applications and less on running and managing cloud infrastructure. This makes things all the more easier for smaller businesses or startups because often these companies don’t have the resources, or they can’t hire or retain the resources, to manage complex cloud infrastructures.

Moreover, most of the offerings from hyperscalers operate on a self-service mode. The only time that customers can get even a call-back or response to email is if they spend $1,000,000 or more a month. Hence companies want to partner with alternative players like Linode where they can pick up the phone and talk to a real human who’s going to help them right then and there and solve that issue, and that is huge for a small business. And for this, the customers do not have to meet any kind of criteria. So if you are spending even $5 a month, you can pick up the phone and talk to the same Linux admin engineer at Linode that someone who maybe spends 10 or 20 or $50,000 a month would be able to talk to. A lot of our customers that migrate from hyperscalers cited issues like receiving bills that were triple the amount of what they thought it would be due to unexpected, hidden charges. Or the users may have faced a really bad support experience, such as needing help but not being able to get anyone to respond in a timely matter. And the worse scenario is when the customer cannot move away owing to lock-ins. You won’t find those problems at Linode.

What are some of the upcoming trends in cloud that you foresee in the coming times?
Cloud continues to grow and evolve with exciting new use cases, much like any other technology. Right now, the immediate trend that I see is the shift towards bringing intelligence to cloud computing. Complementary technologies like edge computing, AI or ML will make this possible, thus making large amounts of data-processing intuitive and quicker, bringing down response time and elevating end-user experience. There is also traction towards multi-cloud adoption to optimise business performance, while increasing organizational agility and optimizing returns on cloud investments. Consider a scenario in which your cloud vendor’s infrastructure fails or is attacked.

This hampers business delivery especially with a rising workforce of digital nomads or increasing shift towards Web 3.0, metaverse and such cloud-critical domains. In a multi-cloud environment, the user can swiftly switch to another service provider, backup, or a private cloud in an instant. Plus, many alternative cloud players, including Linode, don’t charge the users any transfer fee for the same. And lastly, the ever-critical concern around cybersecurity will keep enterprises’ focus on investing in breach-proof cloud solutions. Trends like these are all the more reason that the synergy between Linode and Akamai is timely, and Linode will greatly benefit from Akamai’s global cloud, edge and security expertise.

Cloud talent crunch continues to be an area of concern. What is Linode’s take on what comes next?
A report titled ‘Cloud Skills: Powering India’s Digital DNA‘ from last year, estimated a demand for over 2 million cloud professionals by 2025. This is parallel to the global drought in tech talent. While skilling programs for both existing and prospective employees are a long term resolution to the problem, cloud companies need to aim at democratising their platforms for a more immediate solution. An important way to do this is by making a consumer-grade or plug-and-play interface for developers or engineers that can help them self-explain and operate in just a few days. We believe that this ‘born in the cloud’ approach will help in pacing business continuity even amidst resource unavailability. Linode, for example, is designed in a way that eliminates the need for only cloud-certified professionals to be able to use the platform. This is unlike most hyperscalers.