IT performance company Riverbed technology has acquired Cambridge based technology firm Zeus Technology in a £68m cash plus deal.
Zeus Technology delivers software-based load balancing and traffic management offerings for virtual and cloud environments.
Riverbed said that post acquisition, the Zeus organisation will become a new business unit of Riverbed, led by the former CEO of Zeus Jim Darragh.
Riverbed has also acquired Aptimize Limited, a privately-owned company that works in Web content optimisation.
The company hopes the two acquisitions will enhance Riverbed’s asymmetric optimisation strategy.
Riverbed president and CEO Jerry Kennelly said, "Riverbed is the performance company."
"Our goal is to have the broadest and best portfolio of performance optimisation 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."
"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," continued Kennelly.
"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."
Under terms of the acquisition, Riverbed will pay approximately $110m in cash for the securities of Zeus and up to an additional $30m in cash.
"Riverbed is a strong technology player with a proven solution for global enterprises," said Darragh.
"There is great synergy between our technologies, employees and corporate strategies, and we share Riverbed’s vision of delivering performance solutions for all applications."
The acquisition is expected to be approximately breakeven to Riverbed earnings in the second half of 2011 and accretive beginning in 2012, said Riverbed.
