Cambridge, Massachusetts-based cloud services provider (CSP) Akamai Technologies (AKAM) today unveiled Cloudlets, extensions to Akamai solutions that are designed to help customers reduce their development, infrastructure and maintenance costs.

Akamai said Cloudlets provide self-service options to help developers offload infrastructure demand.

“Cloudlets open up great possibilities for customers to personalize their use of the Akamai platform for benefits that extend beyond performance to solve specific business or operational challenges,” Akamai Product Marketing Manager Anthony Larkin told Talkin’ Cloud. “We look forward to customers designing for Akamai and using the Cloudlets marketplace to choose which added functionality is best suited for their business, where they can click to buy and click to provision quickly and easily.”

Akamai also noted these extensions are accessible via the Akamai Intelligent Platform and ensure developers can deliver “fast, reliable and secure” web experiences to users worldwide.

“With the introduction of Cloudlets, we continue to extend the value our platform provides to our customers via a new set of capabilities that are designed to provide a positive impact on the overall user experience,” Ravi Maira, vice president of Akamai’s web experience business unit, said in a prepared statement. “We are giving our customers these capabilities in a self-service manner that is easy, convenient and as cost-effective to deploy as possible.”

What do Cloudlets offer developers?

Akamai customers can access three Cloudlets:

Cloudlets can be deployed and purchased via Akamai’s Luna Control Center.

Akamai said it plans to launch new Cloudlets regularly to form “a marketplace of extensions where customers can choose which capabilities are best suited to help simplify the development and delivery of their websites and applications.”

“We’re excited for the future of Cloudlets to help customers innovate even more rapidly using the platform in new ways to enable cutting-edge online experiences,” Larkin added.

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