Guest: Hillary Wilmoth (LinkedIn)
Company: Akamai (Twitter) | Linode (LinkedIn, Twitter)

Akamai has always been focused on helping developers deploy, secure, and deliver their services on the cloud in a way that is simple and accessible.

In this episode of TFiR Let’s Talk, Swapnil Bhartiya catches up with Akamai Director of Product Marketing Hillary Wilmoth at the Linode headquarters in Philadelphia. They discuss the new products and services since the Linode acquisition and how they are helping to democratize managed databases so that customers can scale their applications and be successful on the cloud.

Key highlights from this video interview:

• Wilmoth explains that they are allowing more developers to have access to simple, accessible cloud computing services from Akamai Linode cloud. The improvements to their marketplace application have meant the creation of more apps and UX improvements.
• The Linode managed database abstracts away some of the complexity of managing your own database and some of the admin and DevOps work.
• Complexity remains a top pain point. While organizations want to understand the build and structure of their infrastructure, there may become a point where the daily monitoring and maintenance requirements for the Kubernetes cluster require managed services to better handle these operational things.
• Akamai Linode is very solution-oriented, enabling customers to build something that is scalable, focusing on the need for the application to be successful on the cloud. Wilmoth discusses how their key goal is to help customers accelerate their workload without needing to bring on additional resources.
• Wilmoth discusses the contributing factors that go into determining the deployment style and managed services. This helps provide a level playing field with access to tools for your stack and infrastructure design without limitation of resources.
• Akamai Linode has added support for Kali Linux after working on a customer build that used Kali and realizing that they could enable it for all of Linode’s customers. They are one of their first providers to add it directly into the deployment process. He discusses how customers can select the distro of Kali Linux to add the security layer at the base.
• There has been a lot of discussion around the potential improvements of Linode’s products and services based on the reach and scope of Akamai within the industry.
• Wilmoth tells us that they are excited to expand their global footprint and provide additional data centers across the globe, which could lead to more distributed centers. This would help the cloud be more accessible to those harder-to-reach locations.
• Akamai will continue to focus on the integration of their products to enable people to deploy cloud to edge computing, incorporate CND delivery, and work with security tools that Linode did not formally have access to prior to the acquisition.

The summary of the show is written by Emily Nicholls.