Cloud-based content delivery service provider Akamai has announced the $268 million acquisition of mobile and web acceleration specialist Cotendo as part of a larger play to speed up the cloud.
As you may have guessed from my descriptions of the two companies involved, there’s a certain alignment of purpose between Akamai and Cotendo. In the official press release, Akamai definitely plays that up, as the company ramps up to “increase the pace of innovation in the areas of cloud and mobile optimization.”
Paul Sagan, president and CEO of Akamai, elaborated in a prepared statement:
“As we look to accelerate growth across the dynamic landscapes of cloud and mobile optimization, we are excited to be joining forces with Cotendo. Cotendo’s technology, partnerships and people are a strong complement to Akamai. 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.”
Under the deal, Akamai will add Cotendo’s 100 employees, headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., and Israeli technology center to its talent and resource pools.
The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2012. Akamai has generated some cloud chatter in 2011 around itself thanks to a strategic partnership with Rackspace way back in January, and TalkinCloud will continue to keep an eye on the company going forward.
Oh, on a final note: There are a couple of unexpected beneficiaries to this transaction, as both Citrix and Juniper stand to cash out on its earlier investment in Cotendo. In fact, it seems that Juniper was involved in bidding wars with Akamai and AT&T over this Cotendo acquisition. It seems this start-up was in hot demand — I’m looking forward to Akamai showing us why.
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