Redpanda is joining Akamai’s Qualified Compute Partner Program as an ISV in a move to jointly provide cloud-to-edge data streaming services for agentic AI applications.
Redpanda has struck a strategic alliance with cloud computing giant Akamai through which Redpanda’s data streaming technology will run on the Akamai Cloud platform, providing enterprises with a way to adopt high-performance data streaming services for real-time, AI-driven applications.
In an announcement scheduled for Tuesday (Dec. 16), Redpanda has joined the Akamai Qualified Compute Partner Program as an independent software vendor (ISV).
The new partnership extends an existing relationship between the two companies under which Akamai has been using Redpanda’s data streaming platform as part of the underlying technologies within Akamai’s application security services.
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The expanded partnership, according to the two companies, is designed to broaden the access to high-performance data processing for customers building edge, agentic, and data-intensive applications, particularly in regions where buyers prefer the Akamai platform.
“Data streaming is a core part of agentic AI,” said Alex Gallego (pictured), Redpanda founder and CEO, in an interview with CRN.
Redpanda, founded in 2019 and headquartered in San Francisco, was started as a data streaming alternative for the open-source Apache Kafka data streaming software. The Redpanda product has since evolved into a high-performance streaming data platform for building real-time data pipelines for AI, analytics and event-driven applications.
“We want to mediate access for all private data. The next frontier for AI is private data,” Gallego said. “You can imagine that all frontier models have already indexed all public data. What makes a bank unique is not that they have checking products…It’s the customer relationships. It’s their data—that’s the alpha. And I think in the age of AI, we help the global 2000s unlock private data for agentic access.”
“And it means [data] governance, it means access controls, it means observability. And it means authentication and authorization,” he said.
Redpanda Data Plane Vision
In October Redpanda acquired Oxla, a developer of distributed SQL engine technology. At the same time, the company launched the Redpanda Agentic Data Plane, combining its data streaming software with the Oxla SQL engine and Redpanda Connect, the company’s extensive suite of around 300 data connectors.
With the launch of the Agentic Data Plane, Redpanda is following a larger vision. “We’re no longer just a streaming company. We’re no longer just about Kafka. We are trying to become the data plane for agents,” Gallego said.
Gallego, who worked at Akamai before leaving to start Redpanda, said Akamai provides “world-class infrastructure” backed by the company’s “relentless innovation.” Through the new alliance, enterprise customers can run the Redpanda data platform on “one of the most proven, globally distributed networks on the planet.”
Akamai, meanwhile, has been steadily expanding its cloud service offerings after it bought cloud computing provider Linode in February 2022, noted Zak Putnam, Akamai senior director of business development, also in an interview with CRN.
“We have been focused on building highly distributed networks, and we understand the value of taking what was once highly centralized, whether that’s content or data or security rules and implementations, and getting that as close to the end users as possible,” Putnam said. “That is very much in line to how real-time applications work and that is extremely important if you’re doing real-time communications, real-time applications, decisioning—you need that data layer to be there alongside you in a highly performant, highly distributed manner.”
“We think the future of agents is going to be closer to the edge,” Putnam said. “So when you add Kafka-compatible data streaming capabilities, plus Akamai’s highly distributed compute locations, all managed with Akamai’s high-performant, low-latency backbone, you have a really compelling edge-based data platform that can really reduce latencies and reduce costs for our end customers.”
Online applications that require real-time responses, such as customer personalization and recommendations engines, are potential uses cases for the Redpanda system running on Akamai, Putnam said.
The Akamai Qualified Compute Partner Program
Akamai launched the Qualified Compute Partner Program in February 2023 with the goal of identifying and partnering with highly curated ISVs that develop applications deemed strategic for the Akamai Cloud. The program, which now has 30 ISVs, includes joint go-to-market and co-selling efforts and development of joint use cases.
“It’s a really important go-to-market engine for Akamai,” Putnam said. And he said Akamai and Redpanda partners, including solution providers, system integrators and MSPs, can benefit from the ability to sell comprehensive Akamai-Redpanda solutions and services.
By joining the Akamai Qualified Compute Partner Program, Red Panda expands its market reach, potentially gaining access to global buyers and C-level executives, Gallego said. Customers can more easily deploy Redpanda Enterprise Edition directly on the Akamai Cloud, with billing and support through a single provider, and leverage Akamai’s globally distributed compute environment for improved performance and cost-efficiency.
For Akamai, offering the Redpanda platform will drive data consumption and, in turn, increase demand for Akamai’s portfolio of cloud services.
“The partnership with Akamai is super strategic in that we share some of the world’s largest customers, whether it’s the largest television [networks] in the world, the largest automakers in the world, the largest manufacturing companies in the world,” Gallego said.
“This is a way to accelerate our go-to-market and give Akamai customers agentic capabilities. We bring new technology, new ways of thinking to unlock data for agents.”