Akamai to Buy a Cloud Services Provider
By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED
DealBook
New York Times
December 22, 2011, 8:13 am
Though the year is drawing to a close, there is no end in sight for cloud fever.
Akamai Technologies has made its first cloud services acquisition, agreeing on Thursday to buy a three-year-old company, Contendo, for about $268 million in cash.
Akamai is in the business of speeding up the delivery of Web content, but in Contendo it will acquire a host of technologies aimed at speeding up delivery of online content using so-called cloud computing, the use of the Internet to process data on remote servers. Contendo’s products include software that adjusts the speed of content delivery to match a user’s download speed.
“As we look to accelerate growth across the dynamic landscapes of cloud and mobile optimization, we are excited to be joining forces with Contendo,” Paul Sagan, Akamai’s chief executive, said in a statement. “Together, we believe there is tremendous opportunity for our combined technologies as enterprises embrace the move to the cloud and seek solutions for an increasingly mobile world.”
The deal is the latest attempt to buy into cloud computing, a sector that has drawn an enormous amount of interest this year among buyers ranging from tech giants like I.B.M. and Oracle to telecommunications companies like CenturyLink.
Contendo is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., but also has a technology center in Israel, where half of its employees are located. Its backers include Sequoia Capital and Benchmark Capital.
The deal — the 10th for Akamai, according to Capital IQ — is expected to close in the first half of 2012.
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