VentureBeat/Midjourney

Particularly in this dawning era of generative AI, cloud costs are at an all-time high. But that’s not merely because enterprises are using more compute — they’re not using it efficiently. In fact, just this year, enterprises are expected to waste $44.5 billion on unnecessary cloud spending. 

This is an amplified problem for Akamai Technologies: The company has a large and complex cloud infrastructure on multiple clouds, not to mention numerous strict security requirements.

To resolve this, the cybersecurity and content delivery provider turned to the Kubernetes automation platform Cast AI, whose AI agents help optimize cost, security and speed across cloud environments. 

Ultimately, the platform helped Akamai cut between 40% to 70% of cloud costs, depending on workload. 

“We needed a continuous way to optimize our infrastructure and reduce our cloud costs without sacrificing performance,” Dekel Shavit, senior director of cloud engineering at Akamai, told VentureBeat. “We’re the ones processing security events. Delay is not an option. If we’re not able to respond to a security attack in real time, we have failed.”

Specialized agents that monitor, analyze and act

Kubernetes manages the infrastructure that runs applications, making it easier to deploy, scale and manage them, particularly in