Akamai CDN vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Network Connect

Akamai is a well-established brand name with a great product. It meets and many time exceeds the needs for global content delivery and security management layer at the edge. Fine grain security tuning seems cumbersome as the definition of the app keeps changing. It also requires an investment of time for the setup which doesn't necessarily make sense for smaller scale scenarios. Some products offered by AWS, Azure or the Google Cloud can be more tightly integrated with cloud provider offerings thus easier to configure.

Incentivized

F5 Distributed Cloud Network Connect provides Intent-Based Policies and Unified Operations which is equal for all customers . Complexity is eliminated and common services and rules are provided across clouds and on-premises settings with the help of an integrated service stack and automated deployment. There is nothing specific scenario where we found that it is not suitable for current environment.

Incentivized

• Content offloading - once rules are set up within Akamai you don't need to even think about how many images or large JavaScript or CSS files (for example) are being served from your own estate, Akamai takes care of it all via rules that are quick, easy and flexible.
• Page caching - for pages that don't change very often Akamai allows you to set up rules, quickly and easily, to serve up your page content for you, which takes even more load away from your origin servers.
• Quick rollback - the Akamai system allows easy testing of rules and changes via a staging system, and also offers a quick rollback option, which is perfect for the rare occasions when something has been set up incorrectly.

Incentivized

• Centralized Hybrid ingress for our cloud workloads
• Centralized ingress for our existing on-prem BIG-IP devices
• Application visibility to address end-to-end visibility into the end-user experience

Incentivized

• The interface in their control centre could be a bit more user-friendly with some of the settings in places that you wouldn't expect them to be. The search offsets this problem to an extent but it's still sometimes slower than you'd like to find what you are looking for.

Incentivized

• The support model needs a quite a bit of work. I personally have experienced an outage on the platform. due to mis-configureation Although the outage was due to engineer error it took over 2 hours before we were able to speak to an engineer
• Proxy v2 protocol to allow our organization to capture and view the source IP address

Incentivized

Architectural change with a focus on multi-cloud

Incentivized

Overall, F5 Distributed Cloud Network Connect is responsive and has many features. There is minor clunkiness in how certain scroll bars are layered. This may cause some adverse experience when trying to manage this product through a zoomed browser. Page loading and refresh timers were all very much responsive. There is a good amount of feedback from the interface as well.

Incentivized

Their support documents are excellent and provide a lot of useful information for all their services. The only reason I didn't give them a 10 is that the time it takes for them to respond to an issue could be slightly faster.

Incentivized

We've used -- and considered -- a whole number of CDN offerings. The good news is that almost all of the CDN products on the market are terrific, and will pay for themselves via increased customer satisfaction and lower monthly hosting bills. For some cases, we're still more likely to suggest CloudFlare (which has a free tier) or an integrated offering from a cloud provider, like Cloudfront.

Incentivized

This software as a service (SaaS) links, divides, and protects network traffic over one or more edge sites, data centers, and public clouds. It offers the adaptability needed to operate across many transit choices, such as the F5 Global Network, private corporate networks, and cloud provider linkages. Additionally, faster time to resolution and more effective issue management are achieved by end-to-end monitoring and troubleshooting.

Incentivized

• Akamai RoI improved over a period of times since it comes with heavy costs, however global deliveries in over 100 counties and global web platforms usage helps improve RoI
• With the complex UI challenges, ROI could be impacted negatively when you have to invest in operations and time.

Incentivized

• Improved Network Performance and Reduced Latency
• Enhanced Security and Cost Savings on DDoS Mitigation
• Automated Cloud Network Provisioning and Increased DevOps Efficiency
• Better Network Visibility and Performance Analytics

Incentivized