News
IBM, Akamai ship second grid package
- By Lana Gates
- December 17, 2003
Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai Technologies Inc. and IBM have started
shipping the fruits of a partnership that called for the building of software to
make it easier to deploy J2EE Web apps built on IBM's WebSphere across Akamai's
global computing platform.
Akamai's global network consists of 14,000 servers distributed across the
globe in 2,400 locations, explained Kieran Taylor, the firm's director of
product management. Taylor claims the network is ''the largest on-demand
computing grid in terms of sheer breadth, scale and processing power.''
Under an earlier pact, IBM and Akamai brought out a joint solution in May
called Akamai EdgeComputing, powered by WebSphere, that is said to allow
WebSphere customers to use the Akamai global network to more easily access and
process Web applications.
This month's move builds on the first agreement and enables the jointly
developed utility-like computing service to make effective use of WebSphere
Studio development tools, officials said. It does so by creating a single
environment for developers and application architects to deploy J2EE
applications.
The announcement provides customers with a seamless way to publish
applications to the Akamai network, said Taylor. ''This is not a new programming
model; it's simply a new deployment model. Instead of having to guess-timate,
enterprises can now deploy to the Akamai network and pay only for the processing
they require.''
What this adds to the developer environment, added Jay Parikh, director of
engineering at Akamai, is validation functionality to code. ''It allows you to
walk through a three- to four-page wizard and you can deploy this application
into the Akamai network automatically from a window,'' he said.
The combined technology is considered to be on-demand in that developers can,
from this environment, deploy an application instantaneously onto the Akamai
network without provisioning any new hardware or software, Taylor noted. ''We're
able to provide capacity on demand to run our customers' applications through
14,000 servers.''
About the Author
Lana Gates is a freelance writer based in Mesa, Arizona. She can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].