From large production and entertainment companies to enterprises and ecommerce sites with global audiences — they all share a common challenge: they need to deliver content faster and more reliably to customers who expect instant access by using infrastructure that is closest to each user. Content Delivery Network (CDN) enables a cloud hosted application to deliver content quickly and reliably across the globe by caching and accelerating the content. At Azure, we want to deliver best in class services through our cloud solutions and ecosystem of partners to enable our customers to achieve more.
Today we are excited to announce the general availability of Azure CDN from Akamai offering our customers an additional CDN provider to choose from. Akamai boasts more than 200,000 servers in over 120 countries, providing Azure customers an expanded global footprint and reach, particularly in Latin America and Asia. Ninety percent of the world’s Internet users are within a single “network hop” of an Akamai CDN server, providing a significant opportunity to accelerate applications built on Azure. With the integration of Akamai’s industry-leading CDN capabilities directly into the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, customers can instantly provision and go live within minutes.
Public sector customers will also enjoy more convenient access as both platforms have achieved the Joint Authorization Board’s (JAB) highest certification, FedRAMP. With Azure CDN from Akamai customers benefit from high performance, reliability, security and integrated support.
The relationship between Microsoft and Akamai is long-standing. We have partnered at global scale for delivery of some of the most important global events of the decade – working as critical technology partners for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, 2014 FIFA World Cup, and the 2015 NFL Super Bowl in addition to partnering on software downloads for Windows and Xbox. Michael Fay, vice president, media product and operations at Akamai said, “We are excited that the combined strength of Akamai and Azure creates a complete solution with global reach for developing, deploying and delivering – as well as protecting – web, mobile and media cloud-based applications.”
Last September, we announced our partnership with CDN market leader Akamai to deliver Azure CDN from Akamai. Since our preview in the fall, we’ve been working with a number of leading companies including LG, TVN, MEKmedia, TVB and several others in the broadcasting, production and media space. MEKmedia, a leading technology partner for smart TV apps, relies on quick, stable, secure and reliable delivery. Matthias Moritz, CEO of MEKmedia remarked,“Azure Media Services and Azure CDN from Akamai offers a scalable, secure, and cost-effective solution for our media workflows. Enabling us to deliver great experiences to our customers.”
For the last two years, Verizon has provided the CDN infrastructure for Azure that has benefitted a number of our large enterprise technology and media companies. In the Fall of 2015 we announced availability of the Premium version leveraging Verizon. Now, by joining forces with both Verizon and Akamai, Azure CDN creates new opportunities for our customers to achieve more with the power of the cloud – enabling them to select the right CDN for the regions in which they operate, as well as load balance across CDNs.
As an Azure customer, we are excited about the multi-CDN offering with services from leading global CDN providers Akamai and Verizon. This supports our global content delivery needs with streamlined support through Azure.”
– Andrzej Izdebski, IT project manager at TVN
Get started with the Azure CDN from Akamai today! If you are interested in exploring capabilities beyond the standard offerings, please contact us at cdnteam@microsoft.com.
