Now that the dust has settled on Google CDN, we can discuss the repercussions it will have on the CDN landscape. First, lets start off with Akamai, since they’re the biggest CDN out there. Does Google CDN impact Akamai? Yes. Maybe not this month or this year, but definitely next year. Even though Google CDN is a bare-bones product today, you can bet it will become a full featured CDN in due time, just like Amazon CloudFront. Rest assure that Google CDN will become Amazon CloudFront #2 of the industry. The CDN Market can support one Amazon CloudFront and still thrive, as it has for the last several years. However, can the market support two Amazon CloudFront’s and continue to thrive as it has in the past? Unlikely.
What can Akamai due to repel the threat? Nothing to repel it, but it can continue to grow the business by going upstream market, specifically security. And the way to go upstream is through an acquisition. Akamai’s recent introduction of the Bot Manager is a great product. However, it’s as good of a product as Akamai’s DDoS Mitigation service was prior to the Prolexic acquisition. Thus, Akamai must make a Prolexic type move and acquire Distil Networks to beef up its security arsenal, and become the Bot Mitigation leader from one day to the next. It will simply take too long for Akamai to develop its Bot Manager into a Distil Networks like offering. And it shouldn’t stop there, but hungrily add to its value added services portfolio through acquisition and product development so its two steps ahead of Google and Amazon. “Disclaimer: We are not financial experts so please do not use this rant for investment purposes”.
