Akamai
Akamai secures and powers the online experiences of billions of people every day through its global compute, content delivery, and security platforms. With a vast infrastructure and a customer base that includes major banks and enterprises, uptime and performance are non-negotiable. By leveraging Internet Performance Monitoring (IPM), Akamai strengthens its ability to detect, analyze, and communicate about incidents – delivering both resilience and transparency to its customers.
There’s a positive impact on the relationship between Catchpoint and Akamai, especially as more and more customers are used to these quick security mitigations and now expect robust reporting and analytics.
Problem
Scaling reliability for a massive, always-on platform
Akamai’s footprint spans over 200,000 servers across the globe, supporting critical online services for some of the world’s most demanding industries. For customers such as banks, even a brief outage can result in significant financial loss.
- Massive scale: Serving billions of users, billions of times each day.
- Complex data needs: Collecting, storing, and analyzing vast amounts of telemetry data in real time and historically.
- Zero tolerance for downtime: Customers expect uninterrupted service and immediate answers when issues arise.
“Keeping the uptime and having a super resilient platform is a must for us. It’s always one of the first things we think about when it comes to uptime and performance.”
- Matt Roberts, Principal Security Architect, Akamai
Solution
Proactive monitoring and deep analytics with IPM
Akamai integrates IPM into its operations to deliver both real-time and historic insights for internal teams and customers.
- Incident detection and triage:
When customers report issues—such as increased latency—Akamai’s team uses Internet Sonar to quickly verify if the problem is widespread and to correlate it with specific providers or regions. - Collaborative investigation:
Preliminary data helps Akamai escalate incidents efficiently to platform teams, who then conduct in-depth analysis using both Catchpoint and internal data. - Historic data and visualization:
Catchpoint enables Akamai to present clear, visual historic data to customers—something not available in their real-time-focused internal tools. This helps pinpoint the timing and source of incidents and supports transparent reporting. - White glove monitoring (SOC Premium):
For high-touch customers, including major financial institutions, Akamai sets up custom tests, providing ongoing monitoring, regular reviews, and proactive alerting. Alerts integrate with Akamai’s security operations and runbooks, enabling rapid action.
“Using a tool like Catchpoint, we can collect all that data, show detailed visualizations and a historic view to the customers and possibly pinpoint where something happens.”
- Matt Roberts, Principal Security Architect, Akamai
Results
Building trust through data and communication
The integration of IPM has a direct, positive impact on Akamai’s customer relationships:
- Faster, more accurate incident response: Akamai can quickly validate customer-reported issues, escalate efficiently, and provide data-driven updates.
- Enhanced transparency: Customers receive detailed analytics and visualizations, empowering them to explain incidents internally and maintain trust with their own stakeholders.
- Continuous improvement: Regular meetings with customers and ongoing monitoring ensure that deviations are caught early and addressed proactively.
“It all comes back to the analytics and telling the story.”
- Matt Roberts, Principal Security Architect, Akamai
Looking ahead
As Akamai’s platform and customer needs evolve, the partnership with Catchpoint continues to deliver the resilience, insight, and transparency that global enterprises demand—helping Akamai not only resolve incidents but also tell the full story behind every event.
