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Rebuilding Media Infrastructure: Mitesh Jain, Regional VP, Akamai India on VPUs, Edge Cloud, & Future of Scalable Video Delivery
From high-resolution streaming and AI-enhanced content to immersive real-time experiences, the demand for video processing power is skyrocketing. In this exclusive interview, Mitesh Jain, Regional Vice President at Akamai India, breaks down how cloud-based Video Processing Units (VPUs) are addressing the critical gaps in media scalability, cost-efficiency, and compute agility—reshaping how the world creates and consumes video.
With over 23 years of experience in enterprise software sales, strategic partnerships, and business development, Mitesh has a proven track record of driving revenue growth and cultivating key relationships with CXOs. His expertise spans across greenfield business development, channel and direct sales, and alliances management. At Akamai, he leads a high-performance team that delivers cutting-edge digital security and cloud solutions to help businesses accelerate and secure their online presence. Before Akamai, Mitesh held leadership roles at Adobe, Subex, Micro Focus, and Oracle, where he played a pivotal role in expanding business portfolios, forging strategic alliances, and leading high-impact sales initiatives. Recognized for his industry contributions, he was a 2024 Titans Club Winner.
Akamai has made a significant leap by bringing VPUs to the cloud — Why have VPUs been missing from mainstream cloud compute offerings until now and what prompted this innovation now?
VPUs were historically absent from mainstream cloud computing because cloud platforms prioritized general-purpose CPUs and GPUs, which offered broad applicability across workloads. VPUs, by contrast, are specialized chips optimized for video encoding, decoding, and real-time media processing tasks traditionally handled in on-premises broadcast or production setups where scalability and customization were easier to control. Cloud providers focused on more universal demand, leaving VPUs in niche roles.
What’s changed is the explosion of video as a dominant medium across streaming, gaming, social media, and AI-driven content generation. This has outpaced the efficiency of using GPUs for video workloads, which are often costly and power-intensive when not specifically designed for this purpose. Akamai recognized that delivering high-performance video at scale requires a more targeted compute solution. By integrating VPUs into its distributed cloud, Akamai enables lower latency, reduced cost, and greater energy efficiency for video processing. The rise of AI-enhanced video use cases, 5G, and immersive experiences has made this a timely innovation, providing real-time, location-aware media experiences. Akamai’s global infrastructure gives VPUs the scalability and proximity to end-users they previously lacked, transforming how video is processed and delivered in the cloud.
Why has transcoding-optimized cloud computing been rare, and what hidden costs are media companies facing today?
Mainstream cloud providers have focused on general-purpose infrastructure, relying heavily on CPUs and GPUs that aren’t purpose-built for video processing. While GPUs can handle transcoding, they are expensive and overpowered for many media workflows, leading to inefficiencies. VPUs, which are specifically designed for tasks like encoding, decoding, and format conversion, haven’t been widely available in the cloud due to limited demand in early cloud eras and the complexity of integrating specialized hardware into scalable, multi-tenant environments.
Media companies today face several hidden costs when using traditional cloud infrastructure. A major one is egress fees - the cost of moving video content out of cloud environments, which can quickly escalate with high-resolution media. There are also performance inefficiencies from using non-specialized compute resources, which can drive up runtime and energy costs. In addition, data sprawl across regions and providers increases synchronization and storage expenses. Many companies also struggle with scaling pipelines efficiently for peak demands like live events or new content drops, resulting in over-provisioning or last-minute capacity issues. These factors make cloud-based video workflows costly and difficult to optimize.
How does this development reshape scalability and affordability for streaming platforms and content creators?
Akamai’s cloud-based VPUs represent a major advancement in scalable, cost-effective video processing. Unlike traditional CPUs and GPUs, which are not optimized for transcoding, VPUs are purpose-built to handle video workloads efficiently. This shift reduces costs, improves performance, and eliminates the need for resource overprovisioning. With faster encoding, lower latency, and dynamic scalability, media platforms can now meet rising demand across formats, geographies, and real-time streaming without compromising quality or incurring high compute expenses.
For content creators, this means affordable access to high-performance video processing capabilities previously limited to enterprise-grade infrastructure. Combined with Akamai’s distributed edge network, creators can deliver low-latency, high-quality video to global audiences with minimal technical overhead.
This development democratizes media processing, lowers barriers to entry, and allows platforms and creators to reinvest in content innovation instead of infrastructure. It positions VPUs as a foundational technology for the future of scalable, cost-effective video streaming and AI-enhanced media experiences.
In what ways will this shift benefit media companies and streamline large-scale content delivery?
This shift to cloud-based VPUs will benefit media companies by dramatically improving the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of large-scale content delivery. VPUs, optimized for video processing tasks like encoding and transcoding, allow companies to handle more streams with less compute overhead compared to traditional CPU or GPU-based infrastructure. This enables faster processing of high-resolution content, reduces latency for live and on-demand streaming, and cuts operational costs. It also allows media companies to deliver consistent video quality across devices and bandwidth conditions without overprovisioning expensive hardware.
By leveraging Akamai’s globally distributed edge network, media companies can move processing closer to viewers, which minimizes data transfer delays and lowers egress costs. This edge-based approach streamlines the workflow for delivering content to geographically dispersed audiences, reduces buffering, and improves start times and viewer satisfaction. For companies managing vast content libraries or high volumes of user-generated content, the ability to scale transcoding on demand simplifies operations, shortens time-to-publish, and supports new formats like 4K, HDR, and immersive video.
For media leaders evaluating their cloud strategy, what key factors should they consider when adopting VPU-powered solutions?
Media leaders should start by evaluating how well these specialized processors align with their core workloads. For organizations heavily focused on video streaming, transcoding, or real-time media delivery, VPUs offer significant performance and cost advantages over general-purpose CPUs and GPUs. Leaders should assess the potential for improved efficiency, lower latency, and faster content processing, especially when scaling for live events, high-resolution formats, or global audiences.
However, equally important are factors like total cost of ownership, integration capabilities, and edge infrastructure. VPU-powered platforms that reduce egress fees, support on-demand scaling, and integrate with existing media pipelines can streamline operations and reduce hidden costs. Providers like Akamai, which pair VPUs with a distributed edge network and modern orchestration tools, offer added value by enabling low-latency delivery and flexible deployment across regions. This makes it easier for media companies to deliver high-quality video experiences while maintaining cost control and operational agility.
What’s next for VPUs in the cloud, and how does this align with Akamai’s broader vision for disrupting media infrastructure?
The next phase for VPUs in the cloud will see them integrated more deeply into edge-native, AI-enhanced media workflows, enabling real-time video analytics, personalized streaming, and immersive content delivery at unprecedented scale and efficiency. As demand grows for ultra-low latency and adaptive experiences across devices and geographies, VPUs will become core to powering intelligent, automated media pipelines.
This trajectory aligns with Akamai’s broader vision to disrupt traditional, centralized media infrastructure by pushing compute to the edge, closer to users, data, and devices. By combining VPU acceleration with its globally distributed cloud and edge network, Akamai is redefining how media is processed, delivered, and experienced, making it faster, smarter, and more cost-effective for a new generation of content platforms.
