Akamai Acquires Blaze

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM) announced today that it has acquired Blaze Software Inc., a provider of frontend optimization (FEO) technology, in a cash transaction.  The acquisition is expected to complement Akamai's market-leading site acceleration solutions with technology designed to optimize the speed at which a web page is rendered, regardless of end user device.

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With the rapid adoption of rich Internet applications and the increase in mobile browsing, new performance bottlenecks are emerging.  Websites are becoming richer and more complex, with more compute requirements built into a single page, impacting performance in the browser or client device.  As a result, content providers are faced with a growing set of challenges in maintaining a high-performing site and assuring a superior end-user experience. 

Blaze provides technology designed to automatically optimize the code on a web page during the delivery process to ensure faster transmission of content and a faster rendering of the page, whether served to a PC, tablet or smartphone.  As a cloud-based service that requires no software or code changes by the customer, Blaze's offering is designed to work with any web site.  Akamai plans to integrate the technology into its global cloud platform for helping enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere.

"As businesses provide rich, interactive web experiences online and across devices, it is vital that end users receive a consistently high-performing site," said Rick McConnell, executive vice president of Products and Development, Akamai.  "We believe Blaze has developed a powerful solution for frontend optimization, and that its cloud-based services approach is synergistic with Akamai's offerings.  The team at Blaze will be an important addition to our focus on site acceleration.  Our goal continues to be providing customers with the most comprehensive set of technologies to optimize all aspects of their site performance."

"Core to our focus at Blaze is constant research and product development that enables us to improve the speed of our customers' sites by automatically applying the latest web performance optimization best practices," said Michael Weider, CEO of Blaze.  "Our technology is aimed at reducing the number of requests required to load a page, reducing the size of each request, and improving the browser rendering experience for our customers.  Combining our technology with the global Akamai platform is a big win for customers who are increasingly looking to take performance optimization to the next level."

About Blaze
Based in Ottawa, Canada, Blaze was founded in 2010 with a mission to help clients deliver better performing Web businesses by making their sites faster.  User experience, conversions, search rankings and operational costs are all influenced by the speed of your site.  Blaze provides a cloud-based service that automates Frontend Optimization (FEO).  To learn more, please visit www.blaze.io.

About Akamai
Akamai^® is the leading cloud platform for helping enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere.  At the core of the Company's solutions is the Akamai Intelligent Platform™ providing extensive reach, coupled with unmatched reliability, security, visibility and expertise.  Akamai removes the complexities of connecting the increasingly mobile world, supporting 24/7 consumer demand, and enabling enterprises to securely leverage the cloud.  To learn more about how Akamai is accelerating the pace of innovation in a hyperconnected world, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai's management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about the expectations with respect to the integration of the Blaze technology and resulting benefits and the expected future business and financial performance of Akamai resulting from and following the acquisition. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, inability to successfully integrate the technology of Blaze or to develop products based on the technology and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.

SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.