You gotta love Akamai, because they’re playing Wall Street like a fiddle and no one sees it. Akamai has been in the Wall Street game for sixteen years now, and they understand the analyst mindset like the back of their hand. And the recent acquisition goes to show it. Akamai’s Q3 earnings strategy was brilliant – “first we’ll tell The Street our Media Delivery earnings are flat for Q4, then we’ll wait a couple days to let the hysteria die down, and then we’ll announce an acquisition that is a “game changer” unlike anything in the past.
Watch out Palo Alto Networks and Zscaler, here comes Akamai. If there is one event in the history of our industry that signifies the collapse of the CDN and Security space, this is it – Akamai just acquired Bloxx in all cash transaction. The move is a game changer, because Akamai catapults itself from the Edge to the corporate perimeter, via Secure Web Gateway technology. But the new corporate perimeter isn’t behind the firewall – its in the cloud. And you can bet this acquisition of a security company by Akamai is only the beginning.
Things will get really exciting now, as Akamai builds its product line to battle the likes of Palo Alto Networks and other traditional security vendors. How will Palo Alto Networks and other security vendors respond? Hard to say. Akamai’s message to The Street – the future is not all about Media Delivery Solutions, but Edge Security, and the upside in the Edge Security market is going to be staggering.