Cisco plans to integrate Akamai Unified Performance technology into its ISR-AX routers. The companies have agree to co-develop enterprise network offerings that are optimized for delivering public and private cloud applications to remote offices.
Akamai said its Unified Performance technology caches and delivers content in-branch behind the firewall through a connection to the Akamai Intelligent Platform. This may be an enterprise’s own digital content or other content delivered by Akamai. The Akamai solution is also capable of transparently caching other third-party content from top domains.
The two companies intend to combine the power of Cisco Intelligent WAN (IWAN), which includes Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) and Application Visibility and Control (AVC), with Akamai Unified Performance to extend the corporate data center and the Akamai Intelligent Platform into the branch, specifically to offload existing network links and improve performance for web and business critical applications.
“With the proliferation of public and hybrid cloud architectures, Cisco and Akamai customers face the need to increase bandwidth and deliver business critical applications utilizing the Internet as a fast, secure, and cost effective WAN option,” said Rob Soderbery, SVP and GM, Cisco Enterprise Networking Group. “We are looking forward to integrating Akamai’s exciting new branch capabilities into the industry leading application delivery platform, the Cisco® ISR-AX. With our joint product development plan, Cisco and Akamai have taken a big step toward delivering the optimal branch experience.”
“Akamai and Cisco share a common vision of improving the speed and reliability of the Internet to provide enterprises with a very cost-effective way to meet the bandwidth and performance needs of branch offices,” said Tom Leighton, CEO of Akamai. “Our ultimate goal is to integrate best of breed technology from the two industry leaders in networking and application delivery and enable customers to extend the strength of our platform behind their firewall.”
