Alibaba's cloud unit shows AI traction in Q2

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Alibaba's cloud unit is now approaching a $17 billion annual revenue and the company said it will continue to invest in AI services.

The company's Cloud Intelligence Group reported fiscal second quarter revenue of $4.22 billion, up 7% from a year ago, due to "double-digit public cloud growth, including increasing adoption of AI-related products."

As for profits, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group reported second quarter EBITA of $379 million.

Alibaba's cloud division said AI services grew at a triple-digit pace. "We will continue to invest in anticipation of customer growth and in technology, particularly in AI infrastructure, to capture the increasing trend of cloud adoption for AI," the company said in a statement.

Constellation ShortList™ Global IaaS for Next-Gen Applications

Despite trade restrictions in China, Alibaba has been investing in generative AI. The company recently open sourced its Qwen 2.5 large language models and has been cutting prices for AI workloads. Alibaba's cloud division cut prices for API calls and upgraded infrastructure to boost efficiency.

Alibaba, best known for its e-commerce properties, reported second quarter net income of $6.25 billion on revenue of $33.7 billion, up 5% from a year ago.

In a statement, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said:

"We entered into long-term collaborations with industry peers to broaden payment and logistics services on Taobao and Tmall platforms, which we expect will accelerate our overall growth. Growth in our Cloud business accelerated from prior quarters, with revenues from public cloud products growing in double digits and AI-related product revenue delivering triple-digit growth. We are more confident in our core businesses than ever."

Quantum computing all in on hybrid HPC with classical computing

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Quantum computing vendors are all bullish on hybrid supercomputing approaches that'll play well with the generative AI boom.

This hybrid mantra--with a heavy dose of commercial use cases today--started a year ago and has now become a common theme in the quantum computing industry. A few recent events include:

• IBM launched a series of Qiskit software services to go with its IBM Quantum Heron systems. The aim is to integration classic supercomputers with quantum computers in an architecture that can allocate workloads based on the best platform available.
• IonQ's recent earnings highlighted how its focus on commercial workloads that are enterprise relevant today is paying off nicely. At the SuperCompute24 conference in Atlanta, IonQ will highlight how its systems can integrate into hybrid quantum-classical infrastructure. SuperCompute24's agenda features a variety of quantum computing talks. More: IonQ’s bet on commercial quantum computing working, acquires Quibitekk | IonQ's quantum computing bets: Quantum for LLM training, chemistry and enterprise use cases
• Rigetti Computing CEO Subodh Kulkarni said the company is working with Nvidia at the Israeli Quantum Computing Center to understand how a QPU interfaces with the CPU and GPU. "We are absolutely committed to doing that kind of work to understand how quantum computing fits into the broader datacenter hybrid computing ecosystem," said Kulkarni on Rigetti Computing’s earnings call. "We believe that our 9-qubit Nuvera QPU is ideal for experimentation across a variety of research areas, including qubit characterization and hybrid quantum algorithms." Rigetti Computing quantum systems are collocated with Nvidia Grace Hopper systems. More: Why your quantum computing vendors are going to look familiar
• D-Wave Quantum CEO Alan Baratz said the company is focusing on using quantum computing to train foundational generative AI models. While Baratz didn't address hybrid architecture directly on the company’s earnings call, the door is open.
• Quantinuum's partnership with Microsoft primarily revolves around hybrid architectures.

The catch with these hybrid HPC efforts is that the hardware is dramatically different. The good news, however, is that the software ecosystem around quantum computing is rapidly developing.

• Quantum Computing Platforms
• Quantum Computing Software Platforms
• Quantum Full Stack Players

In recent research, Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller noted that quantum networking and hardware advances have been critical. Mueller has argued that the industry would have seen the year of quantum computing if it weren't for the buzz around generative AI. The hardware side of quantum computing is reaching maturity, but software will be what bridges hybrid quantum-classical supercomputers. These quantum-classical supercomputers will likely be consumed as a service through cloud vendors.

He said:

"We are seeing the hardware side of quantum technology reaching stability and maturity through the quarters of 2024—so the focus switches to quantum software development kits (SDKs), the software libraries that map quantum problems to quantum hardware."

For now, CxOs should investigate use cases for quantum computing now and in the future, plan investments and realize how critical the software stack will be, said Mueller.

• When Quantum SDKs Go to the Gym, Qiskit Wins
• IBM Boosts the Software Side of Quantum
• Everything you need to know about Qiskit 1.0
• Classiq CEO Minerbi on the intersection of quantum computing, HPC and use cases
• Quantum Brilliance, Oak Ridge National Laboratory aims to meld quantum computing, HPC

Cisco Q1 shows better demand, networking struggles continue

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Cisco reported better-than-expected first quarter results and said it saw "acceleration in product orders reflecting normalizing demand."

But Cisco's first quarter networking revenue fell 23% from a year ago.

The company said it saw product orders jump 20% in the first quarter compared to a year ago and 9% excluding the Splunk acquisition.

Cisco reported first quarter earnings of 68 cents a share on revenue of $13.8 billion, down 6% from a year ago. Without Splunk, Cisco's first quarter revenue would have been down 14%. The first quarter earnings include a tax benefit of $720 million.

Non-GAAP first quarter earnings were 91 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting Cisco to report non-GAAP earnings of 87 cents a share on revenue of $13.77 billion.

• Cisco Q4 better-than-expected, will cut 7% of global workforce
• Splunk adds genAI tools, more Cisco touchpoints across observability and security

As for the outlook, Cisco projected second quarter revenue of $13.75 billion to $13.95 billion with non-GAAP earnings of 89 cents a share to 91 cents a share. For fiscal 2025, Cisco projected revenue of $55.3 billion to $56.3 billion with non-GAAP earnings of $3.60 a share to $3.66 a share.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said "our customers are investing in critical infrastructure to prepare for AI."

By the numbers:

• Networking revenue in the first quarter was $6.75 billion, down 23% from a year ago.
• Security revenue was $2.017 billion, up 100% from a year ago.
• Collaboration revenue was $1.085 billion, down 3%.
• Observability revenue was $258 million, up 36%.
• Services revenue was $3.727 billion, up 6%.

On a conference call with analysts, Robbins said Cisco's portfolio is set up to capture demand for AI training infrastructure, AI networks and connectivity and observability.

He added that Cisco's new AI survey with Nvidia will ship in December and AI pods are available. Robbins said:

"As we look at what's occurring with AI, there are three key things. First, there is significant investment in back end AI networks with hyperscalers focused on training. Second, as enterprises look to adopt and deploy AI, they need to modernize and secure their infrastructure to prepare for pervasive deployment of AI applications. Finally, the combination of mature back end models with enterprise AI application deployment will lead to increased capacity requirements on both private and public front end cloud networks. Cisco is already playing a major role across all three of these significant opportunities."

Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said:

"Cisco can't catch growth for it's offerings. It was a struggle to grow in the cloud era and it seems to be one in the AI era as well. While 20% growth on product seems to be encouraging (unless you have not forgotten the previous focus on services) but half of it comes from the Splunk acquisition. Adjust for Splunk and Cisco is in medium single digit growth. When and where will Cisco grow again? Referring to government contracts as CFO Scott Herren did is not sustainable growth."

IBM launches Qiskit services for quantum computing

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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IBM launched a series of Qiskit software services to go along with its IBM Quantum Heron-based systems. The effort comes as IBM aims to meld quantum computing and classical computing today while aiming for quantum advantage later.

At IBM's inaugural Quantum Developer Conference, the company said IBM Quantum Heron, which is available in Big Blue's quantum data center, can now use Qiskit to run certain classes of quantum circuits with up to 5,000 two-qubit gate operations.

Qiskit research:

• When Quantum SDKs Go to the Gym, Qiskit Wins
• IBM Boosts the Software Side of Quantum
• Everything you need to know about Qiskit 1.0
• IBM upgrades IBM Quantum Data Center with Heron

This ability enables quantum computers to address scientific problems in materials, chemistry, life sciences and physics.

IBM's big theme at its developer conference revolved around integrating quantum computing and classical supercomputing. IBM is looking to leverage its Qiskit to enable supercomputers to split up problems and allow algorithms to use classical or quantum computing to solve them.

The IBM view was popularized by IonQ, which dropped talk of quantum advantage to focus on what quantum computing value can be delivered now. Most of quantum computing has come around to commercial benefits today, hybrid supercomputing and quantum advantage in the future.

• IonQ’s bet on commercial quantum computing working, acquires Quibitekk
• IonQ's quantum computing bets: Quantum for LLM training, chemistry and enterprise use cases
• Quantum Computing Platforms
• Quantum Computing Software Platforms
• Quantum Full Stack Players
• Will IonQ make quantum computing enterprise relevant in 2025?
• Why your quantum computing vendors are going to look familiar

IBM cited the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS), Cleveland Clinic and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as companies bridging quantum computing with supercomputers with Qiskit.

New IBM Quantum Platform and Qiskit services include:

• Qiskit Transpiler Service to optimize quantum circuits for quantum hardware with AI.
• Qiskit Code Assistant to generate quantum code with IBM Granite generative AI models.
• Qiskit Serverless to run quantum and classical supercomputing approaches.
• IM Qiskit Functions Catalog, which will make services from IBM, Algorithmiq, Qedma, QunaSys, Q-CTRL, and Multiverse Computing available.

Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said:

"IBM is making good on it's promise of advancing its hardware progress, with Heron2 being 50x faster year over year. Now scientific use cases are suddenly feasible and the game changes from hardware to software. IBM is well positioned in software with the recent release of its Qiskit Functions Catalogue. The real milestone to watch will be the coupling of two Heron systems soon and that is what CxOs are looking for."  

More quantum computing:

• IBM upgrades IBM Quantum Data Center with Heron
• IBM Boosts the Software Side of Quantum
• Quantinuum, Microsoft claim quantum reliability breakthrough
• Microsoft claims hybrid quantum breakthrough with Quantinuum, partners with Atom Computing
• Quantinuum raises $300 million, valued at $5 billion
• Classiq CEO Minerbi on the intersection of quantum computing, HPC and use cases
• Quantum Brilliance, Oak Ridge National Laboratory aims to meld quantum computing, HPC

ServiceNow launches AI governance tools, contract management, Five9 partnership

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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ServiceNow launched a series of AI governance features across its Now Platform, generative AI contract management tools and an expanded Five9 partnership.

According to ServiceNow, the company is dropping more than 150 genAI features on its platform. A big part of the portfolio additions are governance capabilities. Jon Sigler, senior vice president of Platform and AI at ServiceNow, said the Now Platform has "governance at the core." ServiceNow has been forging various partnerships to help expand its reach.

• ServiceNow posts strong Q3, launches Workflow Data Fabric, expands partnerships, hires Zavery as product chief
• ServiceNow's Xanadu release adds AI Agents, RaptorDB Pro, genAI enhancements
• ServiceNow Knowledge 2024: Model choices, genAI everywhere, automation, process optimization

The company said its governance and security tools will give customers guardrails for autonomous AI agents. Key items include:

• ServiceNow AI Governance for Now Assist, which connects AI to security and compliance features across the Now Platform. AI Governance for Now Assist includes a unified AI inventory data model and a foundation designed to operate as an "AI control tower."
• Now Assist Guardian, which monitors how genAI is used across the platform. Now Assist Guardian will include management and mitigation of offensive content, security vulnerabilities and exposure of sensitive information.
• Now Assist Data Kit, which provides tools to manage data for AI use cases and benchmark accuracy. Data Kit will also evaluate the effectiveness of experiences built with Now Assist Skill Kit.

Now Assist Analytics, which provides a view of users and how they use Now Assist.

ServiceNow also said Now Assist will support English, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese.

On the legal contract, health and safety front, ServiceNow added a bevy of tools to Now Assist. These tools include:

• Now Assist for Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which uses AI to keep a clean and accurate CMDB while reducing duplicate data.
• Now Assist for Legal Service Delivery, which is aimed at legal teams by auto-generating summaries of legal requests and use cases.
• Now Assist in Contract Management, which flags terms and missing sections in contracts.
• Now Assist for Health and Safety, a feature that simplifies incident tracking and uses genAI to summarize incidents and takeaways as well as suggested revisions for non-disclosure agreements.

In addition, ServiceNow's expanded partnership revolves around an AI joint effort that combines ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) and the Five9 platform. The new capabilities will be available in the first half of 2025. Key parts include:

• Five9 TranscriptStream will be integrated into ServiceNow Interaction Management to use genAI to take notes, generate summaries and reduce average handling times.
• Five9's automated routing engine will be able to route ServiceNow digital channels and cases in Five9 channels to the right agents. Metadata from ServiceNow will be used to enrich data in Five9's platform.
• ServiceNow's Native Call Controls in the company's Agent Workspace will integrate with Five9 in one inbox and work with other features.

Softbank Corp. first to land Nvidia Blackwell systems in bid to be genAI provider in Japan

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Softbank Corp will be among the first to build out an AI supercomputer using Nvidia's Blackwell platform. Softbank will get Nvidia's first Nvidia DGX B200 systems with plans to build out a Nvidia DGX SuperPOD supercomputer.

At Nvidia's AI Summit Japan, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Softbank will use multiple products including the Grace Blackwell platform, Nvidia AI Aerial accelerated computing and Nvidia AI Enterprise software.

"With SoftBank’s significant investment in Nvidia’s full-stack AI, Omniverse and 5G AI-RAN platforms, Japan is leaping into the AI industrial revolution," said Huang.

Softbank CEO Junichi Miyakawa said the supercomputer will look to reinvent networks for AI. Softbank recently floated a debt offering to pay for the Nvidia supercomputer and other growth investments.

• Is AI data center buildout a case of irrational exuberance?
• The generative AI buildout, overcapacity and what history tells us
• AI infrastructure is the new innovation hotbed with smartphone-like release cadence

Miyakawa tipped off the Nvidia news a few days before Huang spoke at Nvidia AI Summit.

Speaking on Softbank Corp.'s second quarter conference call, Miyakawa outlined the plans for the Nvidia supercomputer. Note that Softbank Corp. is the operating unit of Softbank. Softbank Group is the investment arm with the Vision Fund and equity stakes in OpenAI and others.

Miyakawa said:

"Since the end of October, our new AI computing platform, powered by Nvidia's 800, has been up and running. The number of GPUs on the platform increased to 6,000 to deliver five times better performance, which makes it one of the biggest AI platforms in Japan. We plan to increase the GPU count to 10,000 sometime in the first half of next fiscal year."

Softbank Corp. is aiming to be a leader in genAI in Japan. The company has built a large language model with 460 billion parameters focused on Japan research and development.

Miyakawa said the plan is to accelerate training for a commercial launch next fiscal year. Softbank Corp. has a consumer unit that offers mobile service with brands such as Y!Mobile, which is being converted to Softbank branding, enterprise services and integration, and fintech.

Ultimately, Softbank is investing to be Japan's genAI services provider.

More on Nvidia:

• Nvidia drops NVLM 1.0 LLM family, revving open-source AI
• Nvidia's uncanny knack for staying ahead
• Nvidia highlights algorithmic research as it moves to FP4
• Nvidia launches NIM Agent Blueprints aims for more turnkey genAI use cases
• Nvidia shows H200 systems generally available, highlights Blackwell MLPerf results
• Nvidia outlines roadmap including Rubin GPU platform, new Arm-based CPU Vera

Shopify increasingly becoming enterprise commerce OS, replaces incumbents

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Shopify is getting enough traction as an enterprise commerce platform that can deliver a real-time customer case study in two conference calls.

Speaking on Shopify's third quarter earnings call, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein cited On Running as a company that is betting on the company's platform. He said:

"Our platform's composability gives large brands the flexibility to choose modular components like On Running, who recently adopted our checkout commerce component. One of the best things about modular components is that integration can happen fast."

At roughly the same time, On Holding AG was reporting strong direct-to-consumer channel growth of 49.8% in the third quarter from a year ago.

As noted earlier in the year, Shopify was betting that it could expand its business into B2B commerce and larger retailers. So far, so good. The company reported third quarter net income of $344 million excluding the impact of equity investments on revenue of $2.16 billion, up 26% from a year ago. For the fourth quarter, Shopify is projecting revenue growth in the mid-to-high 20 percent range.

Shopify unveils Target partnership, new AI features

Finkelstein said larger brands and retailers are looking for a unified commerce system but are currently stuck with standalone single channel products. "This idea of having a modern future-proofed retail operating system that is unified across every channel like Shopify is very compelling," he said. Finkelstein added that Shopify's Commerce Components is enabling brands to expand on the company's platform. Sometimes it's the backend then checkout and other times its vice versa. With larger brands, enterprises are looking to consolidate checkout options.

"This idea that some of these large brands that are very sophisticated still don't have an optimized checkout like they would have on Shopify is becoming a competitive liability. And so, that's also driving things quite a bit," said Finkelstein.

Shopify is also pushing total cost of ownership and transparent pricing, which is often hard to find with large enterprise vendors. It's not clear what enterprises are replacing with Shopify, but you can check out our all-in-one commerce cloud Shortlist and figure it out.

Finkelstein said that brands, including B2B, are focusing more on direct-to-consumer sales.

He said:

"Once you're in the ecosystem, you begin to make that your retail operating system. Those gaps are getting closed pretty quickly. And we just think B2B, it is a huge -- I think there's like a $14 billion TAM. We're already seeing our B2B GMV doubled since last year. We think that's a great opportunity and we're able to close these future gaps quite quickly."

The game plan from here is for Shopify to replace commerce systems and shift "this narrative that Shopify is no longer just for small businesses," said Finkelstein. Shopify is adding data migration tools and working with systems integrators to expand its reach. "We're displacing the largest enterprise commerce companies in the planet, and that momentum is continuing. And the best part is we're winning these deals," he said.

And Shopify has plenty of runway. The company's US e-commerce market share is just above 10%.

Red Hat acquires Neural Magic

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Red Hat said that it will acquire Neural Magic, which specializes in generative AI inference workloads.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

For Red Hat, a unit of IBM, Neural Magic will enable the company to align its open platform to AI workloads. Red Hat said it is planning to make generative AI more accessible to enterprises via vLLM, an open source project for serving multiple models. Neural Magic has been a big backer of the vLLM project.

In a statement, Red Hat said it will combine Neural Magic's focus on vLLM with its hybrid cloud AI technologies to run open source models, fine tune LLMs and improve inference performance. Neural Magic has a vLLM-based stack with infrastructure choice, security policies and model lifecycle management and offers a unified library for optimizing LLMs.

Red Hat AI includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI, a foundation model platform, Red Hat OpenShift AI, a platform to train models across Kubernetes environments, an InstructLab, which fine tunes IBM's Granite LLMs.

Neural Magic's two primary products are Nm-vllm, an enterprise inference server for LLMs on GPUs, and DeepSparse, an inference server for models on CPUs.

• Snowflake launches Arctic LLM, to release details under Apache 2.0 license
• IBM open sources Granite models, integrates watsonx.governance with AWS SageMaker
• IBM rolls out Granite 3 models, makes default for Consulting Advantage
• Meta's Zuckerberg lays out AI vision with heavy dose of open source
• Nvidia drops NVLM 1.0 LLM family, revving open-source AI

Akamai launches Akamai App Platform as it scales cloud business

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

Akamai launched its Akamai App Platform, which aims to make it easier for developers to deploy cloud native applications on Kubernetes. Akamai's App Platform highlights how the company continues to transition to a security and cloud infrastructure company.

The Akamai App Platform is built on Kubernetes technology Otomi, which Akamai acquired from Red Kubes. The platform provides templates and tools to deploy, manage and scale Kubernetes clusters as well as frameworks and catalogs and a self-service environment.

Tom Leighton, CEO of Akamai, said the company hit two milestones during its recent third quarter. First, the company's annual revenue run rate topped $4 billion. And more than half of that was security. Akamai also showed cloud compute revenue growth of 28% in the third quarter.

We've documented Akamai's cloud ambitions previously:

• Akamai adds Nvidia GPUs to cloud network, initially targeting media
• Akamai launches Gecko, aims to combine cloud compute, and edge networks
• Akamai's IaaS vision: Become your cloud alternative

In the third quarter, Akamai said its compute revenue was $167 million, up 28% from a year ago. Overall, the company reported third quarter net income of $58 million on revenue of $1 billion. Security revenue and cloud revenue grew at double-digit rates, but Akamai's content delivery sales fell 16%. Non-GAAP earnings in the third quarter were $1.59 a share.

Leighton said:

"We continue to add new compute customers at a strong pace and we remain on track for our new enterprise compute solutions to exit the year with an annualized revenue run rate of more than $100 million. In Q3, we saw enterprise compute wins in the US at one of the largest retailers, one of the world's largest SaaS platforms, a large e-gaming platform, a large sports gaming platform, a nationwide passenger railroad and a global weather forecaster."

Leighton said retailers are using Akamai Connected Cloud to run mobile apps and AI workloads are revolving around image generation and processing, speech recognition, analytics and prediction and short-form video. See: Why generative AI workloads will be distributed locally

The Akamai App Platform is designed to acquire more workloads and position Akamai as an alternative IaaS providers with compute at the edge of networks. Leighton added that Akamai is selling cloud computing to more enterprises and a broader customer base.

Leighton added that Akamai's cloud compute unit is also seeing traction among independent software vendors across multiple industries.

However, Akamai needs to continue to invest in its cloud business. "We plan to shift more investment into the development of our cloud computing capabilities and new security products, as well as into the go-to-market resources and partner ecosystem to sell these services to a broader portion of the enterprise marketplace," said Leighton.