Constant Technologies, Inc. created an operations center for Akamai Technologies’ new headquarters at 145 Broadway in Cambridge, MA, which officially opened on November 1. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, Senator Edward Markey and Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito joined Dr. Tom Leighton, co-founder and CEO of Akamai, to celebrate the opening.
Now home to 1800 Akamai employees, the 19-story tower is the tallest office building in Kendall Square. Previously, Akamai leased six area buildings; the new headquarters was designed to unite all area employees under a single roof. The driver behind this move was the power of connection—employees can better embrace collaborative opportunities when they are in a single building.
Since its inception over 20 years ago, Akamai has now grown into a trusted cloud delivery and security platform for some of the world’s best-known brands. “Massachusetts remains a global hub for groundbreaking technological advancements,” said Governor Baker. “As a home-grown Massachusetts company that has expanded significantly over two decades, Akamai remains a crucial part of this important sector of our economy, and we are glad to help celebrate their new global headquarters.”
The building was developed and is owned by Boston Properties, which has granted Akamai a 15-year lease on the space. The architect for the interior work was Watertown-based Sasaki. The general contractor for the interior buildout was the Boston office of Turner Construction. Constant Technologies designed and installed the interior command center space.
Each element of Akamai’s new headquarters has specific design intent that reflects Akamai’s business, core values, and culture. The custom operations center by Constant Technologies is no different.
“Billions of people around the world depend on Akamai every day for fast, intelligent and secure digital experiences,” said Dr. Leighton. “In fact, it’s not a stretch to think of Akamai’s new headquarters as the mission control of the internet. From this location, the world’s smartest engineers are controlling a quarter-million computers in 4000 locations across 1000 cities and 137 countries, on a platform designed to make sure that the world’s internet traffic is reaching end users instantly and reliably and that their data is secure.”
For a company that considers itself the command center of the internet, the physical spaces they use to conduct their work are critically important. Constant Technologies provided audiovisual integration for Akamai’s large-format operations center video walls which increase operators’ situational awareness. Constant also manufactured and installed custom console furniture to outfit their mission critical spaces.
The new command and control center in the building provides a behind-the-scenes look at what’s happening across the internet. Up and running 24/7/365, the command and control center:
- Provides a bird’s eye view of the internet, monitoring internet traffic and activity around the world
- Shows everything being broadcast by Akamai around the world, from breaking news to major sporting events
- Highlights where DDoS attacks are detected and mitigated by engineers who escalate alerts and block changing attack vectors in real time.
Akamai’s services are wide-ranging, but its fastest growing segment is cybersecurity. They help secure websites for all kinds of industry verticals, from banking and government to media and e-commerce. Leighton has said that Akamai’s security business has grown at a rate of approximately 30% a year.
“We’re investing a lot in security – in staying ahead of entities that would steal identities, steal money online, protecting our customers’ websites from defacement or denial of service,” he said. The ever-increasing demand for cyber security causes him to predict “a lot of growth ahead for Akamai both in the region and globally.”
Assisting Akamai in creating spaces where they can conduct cyber defense was one of Constant’s key priorities with this installation. Akamai is a long-time, valued client for Constant and we are excited about how their new headquarters will benefit them. Brad Righi, president of Constant said, “We originally met Akamai’s founder Tom Leighton in 1999. I would describe him and his organization as forward thinking and setting the bar in the services they offer and their approach to the operations centers they use to conduct their day-to-day work.
We have been long time partners, providing state of the art monitoring centers around the world for them since our initial meeting. The current center at the new headquarters truly encompasses their technical requirements and corporate message.”
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About Constant Technologies: Constant Technologies, Inc. is a premier mission critical systems integrator providing customized audiovisual integration and console furniture solutions worldwide. With over three decades of experience, Constant’s team has experience with sensitive environments in both the public and private sectors and has implemented turnkey solutions all over the globe. Constant designs, installs, and services projects of all scopes and size to create solutions with the highest levels of security, aesthetics, and functionality in mind.
About Akamai: Akamai secures and delivers digital experiences for the world’s largest companies. Akamai’s intelligent edge platform surrounds everything, from the enterprise to the cloud, so customers and their businesses can be fast, smart, and secure. Top brands globally rely on Akamai to help them realize competitive advantage through agile solutions that extend the power of their multi-cloud architectures. Akamai keeps decisions, apps and experiences closer to users than anyone – and attacks and threats far away. Akamai’s portfolio of edge security, web and mobile performance, enterprise access and video delivery solutions is supported by unmatched customers service, analytics, and 24/7/365 monitoring.
If you are interested in learning more about what Constant can do for your operations center, contact us today.
