At least three companies – two strategic partners and a bitter rival – are in advanced talks to acquire content delivery and app acceleration company Cotendo, according to the Israeli financial site Globes.
Cotendo, which specializes in website acceleration, performance monitoring and reporting and analytics software, first made headlines on Sunday when the Calacalis daily financial site reported that competitor Akamai (News 
- Alert) Technologies was nearing a deal in the neighborhood of $300-350 million.
But sources told the Globes on Monday that two strategic partners – AT&T (News - Alert) and Juniper Networks – have also thrown their hat in the ring.
Cotendo first came on the scene in 2008, disrupting the content delivery network (CDN) and app acceleration markets dominated by Akamai, forcing the larger conglomerate to significantly lower its prices to remain competitive. Akamai then sued Cotendo in November of 2010, a common move for the Cambridge, Mass.-based company before it attempts to acquire a competitor.
In fact, Cotendo CEO Ronni Zehavi told Globes several months ago that Akamai is a “serial suer, and for us this is proof that our product worries it.”
Akamai seems to have reason to worry. Silicon Valley-based Cotendo boasts an impressive customer base of around 300 technology firms, including Zynga, Vistaprint and Facebook (News - Alert), according to Globes. The company also works with e-commerce sites, advertising networks and tier-1 telecommunications vendors like AT&T. Cotendo and other smaller competitors have wrestled away around 10 percent of Akamai's market share over the last few years.
Cotendo entered the market at an ideal time when static content like pictures and text is being replaced by bandwidth-hungry video and integrated communication applications. Content delivery and app acceleration solutions are used by websites and service providers to compensate for the network congestion that is created by bandwidth-heavy services like mobile video.
Brian Partridge, research VP at Yankee Group (News - Alert), said that Cotendo’s “customer base and delivery assets would provide a significant boost to either AT&T or Akamai in the fight for CDN value-added service supremacy.”
“If Juniper wins, the Cotendo assets would most likely transition from CDN services to capabilities delivered within Juniper’s CDN product line, similar to how Alcatel-Lucent transitioned Velocix (News - Alert),” he added.
Stay tuned for updates. Globes reported that a final decision will be made in the next few weeks.
Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Jennifer Russell
