Akamai On Investing and Acquisition Rampage: Invested in ClearSky

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Its been a few days since Akamai announced earnings, and with the dust settled, the question now is why did Akamai wait one week before announcing the acquisition in Bloxx and investment in ClearSky? Maybe in the grand scheme of things its not about Apple, Facebook and Microsoft, but something more grandeur, like Edge Security. The video streaming and software download business is a pennies per GB business, much like the Supermarket business. On the other hand, Edge Security is a quarters per GB business.

Akamai, the sleeping giant has awoken from its slumber and is making move after move to refresh its business model. Akamai has matched CloudFlare and Amazon in announcing “game changer” updates. In 24 months, the competitive landscape of the Edge Security sector is going to look dramatically different, and for the unprepared, its going to get very ugly very fast. Akamai sees this coming, hence all the activity.

What kind of business model does ClearSky bring to Akamai’s dinner table? The diagram below speaks volumes of Akamai’s future.

Akamai Activity Recap

  • Invest in EdgeConnex – a data center company building colo’s in the suburban tier 2 markets like Memphis, TN
  • Invest in FireLayers – a cloud security startup protecting cloud application users of Salesforce, Workday, and so on
  • Invest in ClearSky – a last mile CDN that provides on-premise caching appliances which sit at the customers location
  • Aquires Bloxx – a pioneer in web and email filtering

ClearSky--Akamai-CDN

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