Riverbed buys Zeus Technology for $140 million

 

Riverbed Technology, the IT performance company, announced that it has acquired Zeus Technology,
a privately-owned company that delivers high-performance software-based load
balancing and traffic management solutions for virtual and cloud environments.

 

The Zeus organization will become a new business unit of
Riverbed, led by the former CEO of Zeus, Jim Darragh.

 

Riverbed also announced the acquisition of Aptimize, a
privately-owned company that is a market leader in web content optimization.
The acquisitions of the two companies will form the cornerstone of Riverbed’s
asymmetric optimization strategy.

 

Zeus pioneered the development of software-based highly
scalable application delivery controllers (ADCs). The Zeus virtual ADC (vADC)
delivers the highest performance, and supports the broadest range of
hypervisors, including VMware, Xen, HyperV and KVM. 

 

Zeus vADC solutions are used by over 1,500 customers
worldwide, including seven of the top 10 telcos, a majority of the leading
cloud service providers, major broadcasters, and top media and e-commerce
companies.  

 

Riverbed is the performance company. Our goal is to have
the broadest and best portfolio of performance optimization products to solve a
range of customer performance problems. The acquisition of Zeus is a perfect
fit with that strategy. The Zeus solutions are designed for how people want to
architect their applications now high-performance software for cloud
environments,” said Jerry Kennelly, president and CEO, Riverbed.

 

Zeus approached product development differently by
architecting a software-based ADC. As a software-based solution, the Zeus vADC
has many advantages over its hardware-originated peers:  it is better
suited for virtual and cloud environments, it can migrate across environments,
and it can scale on demand.  

 

In addition, because it is integrated into the
application stack, IT organizations can more flexibly script, automate and
deploy the Zeus vADC than is possible with legacy hardware-based approaches. In
addition, there is great potential for integrating both symmetric and
asymmetric acceleration approaches in order to deliver the best solution for
performance in both private and public cloud environments. 

 

According to industry analysts, the virtual ADC market
is expected to grow about four times faster than the traditional ADC market
over the next 4 years. Zeus is well positioned within this market as customers
look for ADC solutions for public and private clouds that truly integrate into
their application stack,” Kennelly added.

 

Under terms of the acquisition, Riverbed
will pay approximately $110 million in cash for the securities of Zeus
and up to an additional $30 million in cash based on the achievement of certain
bookings targets in a defined twelve month period following the closing. The
acquisition is expected to be approximately breakeven to Riverbed earnings in
the second half of 2011 and accretive beginning in 2012.

 

Riverbed is a strong technology player with a proven
solution for global enterprises. There is great synergy between our
technologies, employees and corporate strategies, and we share Riverbed’s
vision of delivering performance solutions for all applications,” said Darragh.

 

By Telecomlead.com Team

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