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The company also launches Fastly Labs, a community hub offering developers free access to cutting-edge new tech in edge computing

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (Nov. 20, 2018 ) -- Fastly, the leading edge cloud platform, has seen continued adoption at scale, with more developers using edge computing to grow and evolve online business. Since the platform’s launch last year, the company has seen an increase of over 70% in edge compute traffic, and a nearly 150% increase in the use of its edge compute features. Fastly’s platform is built by and for developers to write and deploy code instantly at the edge. The platform helps businesses meet customer expectations for secure, zero downtime, high speed, and personalized experiences at scale. Today, Fastly invites the developer community to freely imagine and create like never before with Fastly Labs, a living hub of in-progress, edge-harnessing projects and big ideas, built on a philosophy of trust, transparency, and Fastly’s long history of edge innovation. Fastly Labs launches with a peek at Terrarium - a first of its kind tool that democratizes edge development by giving developers more freedom to push enterprise technology to the edge at scale, without vendor-defined limitations.

Leveraging the network edge is quickly becoming a staple for businesses, as consumers expect highly responsive, mobile-optimized, global experiences by default. By pushing applications to the edge of the network, businesses can easily surpass their consumers' expectations across security, performance, and experience, while also reducing the cost of data transmission and latency. However, most of today’s edge computing tools are cumbersome, limited, or vendor-controlled: developers are frequently bound by previously-defined languages and APIs, making it difficult to scale applications quickly, securely, and efficiently. Fastly liberates businesses from those constraints, allowing them to safely scale at the edge in order to meet customer needs quickly.

“We were faced with some tough challenges about how to scale our business rapidly,” said Michael Wuehler, Director of Blockchain Infrastructure at ConsenSys and co-founder of Infura. “By leveraging Fastly’s edge cloud platform, we’ve distributed our software globally, growing to 10 billion daily requests with ease. Fastly is a key part of our growth strategy as we continue to scale the power of blockchain.”

Fastly has a proven track record of empowering enterprises to innovate at the edge. The company has helped some of the world’s largest online destinations solve unique technical and business problems by building custom solutions at the edge, including A/B testing (allowing companies to test new features quickly and easily), website redirects (giving businesses unprecedented agility when launching new experiences), and authentication (facilitating personalized experiences at scale). Powered by Fastly's modern network design and real-time capabilities, these applications have helped its customers reduce complexity and improve user experience from the very edge of the network.

“USA TODAY NETWORK uses Fastly on more than 100 of our digital properties, including USA TODAY, Detroit Free Press and Arizona Republic. With Fastly’s edge computing technology, we can build the tools needed to evolve our platform and create unique experiences for our end users,” remarked Erik Bursch, VP of Product Technology at USA TODAY NETWORK. “Fastly provides the support to allow us to push our products forward and best serve an audience that reaches millions of readers a month.”

With Fastly Labs, Fastly introduces a new community hub for bold developer ideas and research that will help solve the internet’s big challenges. Fastly Labs also serves as an interactive space for feedback and safe experimentation with edge innovation that will improve our daily lives.

“At Fastly, we’ve built our platform to improve the internet and empower and inspire developers, freeing them from the struggle between scale, safety and the speed of delivery," explained Tyler McMullen, CTO of Fastly. "With Fastly Labs, we're taking edge computing a step further, laying the foundation for an edge ecosystem in its own right. We invite the community to challenge and push the limits of what they believe the edge can do.”

Fastly Labs has launched with an initial suite of projects aimed at pushing the edge forward, including:

• Terrarium (Edge Compute Sandbox): Terrarium allows developers to harness edge computing using the languages they already know. The platform moves edge computing past the limitations of existing serverless implementations and frees users from the need for specific languages, APIs or proprietary add-ons that stymie innovation and cause vendor lock-in. Terrarium allows for experimentation with the next generation technology that will power Fastly’s platform at the edge.


• Fastly Fiddle: Fastly Fiddle allows developers to quickly and seamlessly trial, debug and test custom Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) on the Fastly platform. Fastly Fiddle lets developers write and test code rapidly on Fastly’s edge without having to set up servers. Fiddle allows developers to experiment with new ideas on Fastly’s current platform, without affecting their production service.


• Fastly Insights: Fastly Insights is a project to make the internet better and faster. An opt-in program built on Fastly’s edge, it aims to improve network performance by charting the topology of the internet via large scale, open source datasets that track network transactions. Insights is a living, breathing example of the kind of project that can be built and grown at the edge.

“The need for brands to embrace edge computing as part of their growth plan is a no-brainer, and we’re seeing that need reflected in our own business,” remarked Fastly President Joshua Bixby. “From flash sales and breaking news, to high profile streams and gaming, Fastly and edge computing empower unprecedented growth and scale, easily. We’re thrilled to help drive edge computing’s rapid adoption, and look forward to enabling more companies to build at the edge.”

Fastly is trusted by brands like Airbnb, The New York Times, Pinterest, Condé Nast, and thousands more across e-commerce, travel, and hospitality, digital publishing, SaaS industries, and financial services.

To learn more about Fastly’s edge cloud services, visit: fastly.com/products/edge-compute

To learn more about Fastly labs, visit: fastlylabs.com