The concept behind the new Akamai business model is revolutionary. Although it’s still in infancy now, once the concept matures its going to disrupt multiple industries and companies including the SD-WAN market, Viptela, CloudGenix, Aryaka, Symantec, Palo Alto, Zscaler, and more. The concept is very simple – whether a remote office or remote mobile worker connects to HQ – all that will be required is an internet connection. No VPN hardware, software or client required. Everything is done thru 1 connection.
The remote worker using a mobile device will be able to access Salesforce, CNN and Oracle Financials through the one connection. Once the request hits the Akamai cloud, they take care of everything – authorization, authentication, security, DLP, firewall, etc. The remote branch is a little different, in that it will require branch accelerator software so it can perform WAN optimization. The idea of providing cloud based secure access over a CDN is genius and very hard to do. Akamai has figured it out and has a 6-12 month head start on the competition, with the exception of Cisco.
