An Intentionally Engineered Platform for a More Responsible Internet
At Akamai, our sustainability strategy is ambitious, transparent, and integrated into every aspect of our business, including our products. Our customers demand performance, security, and scale — and Akamai delivers all three on a platform that's also built for sustainability.
Our uniquely distributed architecture means the technology that accelerates applications and protects assets also reduces our customers’ carbon footprint. Let’s explore this a bit further through each of our three product pillars.
- Cloud computing
- Security
- Content delivery
Cloud computing: Powering your future on a more sustainable cloud
Akamai Cloud allows our customers to build and scale their applications on a platform where sustainability is a feature of the architecture, not an afterthought. Our platform is intentionally designed to be massively distributed, placing compute resources closer to end users. This isn't just for performance; it's also the logical choice for efficiency.
Unlike the energy-intensive, centralized data centers of hyperscalers, Akamai Cloud provides thousands of edge locations. This distributed network shortens data paths, which directly translates to lower energy use for every compute task and data transfer.
By minimizing the distance that data travels, we inherently reduce energy consumption, offering a more responsible and cost-effective way to power applications online.
Prioritizing renewable energy
We are also actively pursuing our goal to power our platform with 100% renewable energy by the year 2030. As we build new compute regions, we prioritize areas where we can directly invest in new, local renewable energy projects, like wind and solar, which can help decarbonize the grid itself.
We also work directly with our data center partners to increase the amount of renewable energy that powers our platform each year.
Security: Protecting the internet, preserving its resources
When it comes to security, the most effective method is also the most efficient. Akamai’s security intelligence is woven into the fabric of our distributed edge platform. Products like Akamai App & API Protector and Akamai Prolexic neutralize threats at the earliest possible point, long before they can traverse global networks.
This strategy not only provides superior protection but also prevents the immense energy waste caused by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and malicious bot traffic and preserves internet resources for legitimate use.
Efficiently reducing energy consumption
Delivering security from our global platform also eliminates the need for customers to deploy and maintain power-hungry on-premises appliances. This reduces their direct energy consumption, Scope 2 emissions, and supports a circular economy by minimizing e-waste, a key pillar of our goals.
In addition, our unparalleled visibility into global internet traffic allows our algorithms to be incredibly precise. We use only the necessary compute resources to provide maximum protection, reflecting our company-wide commitment to engineering efficiency into everything we build.
Content delivery: Optimizing performance, minimizing impact
To meet our customers’ content delivery needs, Akamai has optimized the internet’s digital supply chain for speed and reliability. This relentless focus on efficiency also delivers profound sustainability benefits.
Our delivery solutions, like Akamai Ion for applications and Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery for video, are engineered to make the journey from content to consumer as efficient as possible, reducing waste at every step and lightening the environmental impact of every digital experience.
Every request served from our edge saves the energy the origin servers would have spent. We maximize this "origin offload" through intelligent caching, features like tiered distribution, and products like Akamai Cloud Wrapper, which create a secondary caching layer. This drastically reduces infrastructure energy needs and operational costs.
Our platform also intelligently adapts content for peak efficiency. Adaptive Media Delivery ensures video is streamed at the optimal quality for each user's device and connection — not a bit more. Akamai Image & Video Manager automatically transforms and compresses visual assets in real time, ensuring the fastest experience with the smallest possible data footprint.
Driving continuous innovation
Our goal to build a more efficient platform drives continuous innovation. We constantly evolve our software to handle more traffic on the same hardware. We engineer custom servers optimized for performance-per-watt to reduce power consumption and heat generation across our entire global network. This is sustainability by design.
Experience the Akamai difference
Our thoughtful engineering of the Akamai platform allows us to collect incredibly rich data. We collect power data at the hardware level, which allows us to operate with high levels of accountability and empower our customers to tell their own sustainability story with specificity and credibility.
By using the Carbon Calculator, which can be found in the Akamai Control Center and in our industry-leading custom emissions reports, our customers can see the emissions associated with their use of our platform, empowering them to track their own Scope 3 emissions and make data-driven decisions.
When you work with Akamai, performance and sustainability aren't a trade-off; they are one and the same.
Learn more
If you are interested in diving deep into your carbon footprint with Akamai, reach out to your Akamai account representative today.
