Akamai Technologies Inc. is accelerating its evolution to support developers with the launch today of a new managed database service powered by Linode.

The new offering supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, and MongoDB databases and is designed to simplify database deployment and management for developers, helping them to reduce risk, increase efficiency and minimize complexity, Akamai said.

Akamai is aiming to provide software developers with a complete, distributed platform for building, running and securing next-generation applications. The company, which began life as a content delivery network services firm, splashed out $900 million in February to acquire the infrastructure-as-a-service platform provider Linode LLC to further those plans.

Linode is a much smaller and less complex rival to cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services Inc. and Google Cloud, aimed at independent developers that don’t want to be locked into those bigger providers or get hit with nasty surprises in their billing.

Akamai said managed databases were the most heavily requested feature by Linode’s existing customer base, so today’s announcement gives them exactly what they want. It added that the launch of Linode Managed Database reinforces its mission to develop what will be the world’s most powerful and distributed platform for developers.

It’s easy to see why developers would request such a service. The database is an essential component for virtually every kind of application. But they’re a necessary evil, and few developers enjoy the labor and resource-intensive process of managing databases.

Akamai’s Linode Managed Database offering is designed to free developers from that burden, so common deployment and maintenance tasks will be handled by Linode. Developers just select the availability configuration they require to meet their performance and uptime requirements and they’re good to go.

“Every web application needs a database,” said Akamai Compute Senior Director of Engineering Will Charnock. “Being able to automate aspects of database management is critical for applications that need to be scalable, highly performant, and resilient.”

Akamai said Linode Managed Database will be offered for MySQL databases in all of Linode’s 11 global data centers with flat-rate pricing, security and recovery measures, flexible deployment options and high availability clusters. Support for PostgreSQL, Redis and MongoDB will follow later in the quarter.

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