The Encoder Got Faster While You Slept | How VPUs On Akamai Cloud Change The Cost And Scale Of Video Encoding

Cloud video infrastructure is getting squeezed from both sides: audiences expect better quality and more formats like AV1, while finance teams are staring down cloud bills that don’t scale with reality.We sit down with Sarah Walter from Akamai for a one-year check-in on VPU-accelerated instances powered by NETINT, and what stands out is how quickly the conversation has moved from pilots to production. Sarah shares what she’s seeing across customers, from hyperscalers expanding internationally to broadcasters and streaming platforms looking for a practical step between fully managed services and running everything on-prem.We dig into what’s driving adoption of VPUs for video transcoding and encoding on Akamai Cloud, including new locations in Europe like Frankfurt and London for higher availability designs. We also talk through the “bring your own software” challenge and how making Bitstreams available helps teams operate VPUs with a GUI instead of living in command lines all day.For larger deployments, we break down new eight-card plan options and why density matters when you’re measuring cost per stream across live streaming, VOD, premium content, and user-generated workloads.Operationally, we get specific about the parts nobody advertises: firmware updates, SDK dependencies, and how to balance rapid quality improvements with customer stability in an infrastructure-as-a-service environment.Finally, we connect the dots to NAB season themes like global hardware supply chain pressure and why “getting off the cloud” often really means finding a more sustainable cloud pricing model.Key topics• One-year progress on Akamai Cloud VPU adoption and new VPU-backed VM SKUs• Customer profiles including hyperscalers expanding beyond on-prem points of presence• Live streaming and VOD workloads across premium and user-generated content• Why Bitstreams matters as a GUI bridge for teams coming from managed services• Partner ecosystem support for advanced requirements such as DRM• The reality of firmware upgrade cycles in IaaS and how SDK dependencies affect rollouts• New European footprint with London and Frankfurt for higher availability designs• How to estimate VPU density using a 32× 1080p30 benchmark• What NAB conversations reveal about supply chain pressure and cloud pricing sustainabilityStay tuned for more in-depth insights on video technology, trends, and practical applications. Subscribe to Voices of Video: Inside the Tech for exclusive, hands-on knowledge from the experts. For more resources, visit Voices of Video.