Akamai, a leader in Content Delivery Services (CDN) is on an acquisition spree. On October 4, it acquired a California-based startup called Soha Systems for an undisclosed amount. Founded in 2013 by Haseeb Budhani,  Soha Systems provides enterprise secure access for the cloud. Recently, it had raised just under $10 million in venture funding from Andreesen Horowitz and Menlo Ventures, and was considered a successful tech startup. This was an all-cash deal, though the exact amount was not revealed by either companies.

This acquisition comes on the heels of another acquisition that was made last week by Akamai, when it bought a New York-based startup called Concord Systems for another all-cash deal. Earlier, it had also acquired companies like Bloxx and Prolexic respectively.

These acquisitions are expected to give a big boost to the operations of Akamai, as it looks to consolidate its position as the leading provider of content delivery network in the world. Currently, it has one of the largest distributed computing platforms in the world, and this company alone is responsible for 15 to 30 percent of all digital traffic.

Soha systems, an innovator in the sphere of cloud security, was a natural partner for Akamai, as the latter looks to provide more secure enterprise applications in the cloud. Over the last few years, Akamai has been looking to make a foray into cloud enterprise security applications, which acts as a natural complement to its web traffic services. In fact, providing employees with secure access to enterprise applications is a core component of web access, especially with the enterprise trend of moving more applications to the cloud. In this sense, Soha systems’ security service is expected to be the perfect product for Akamai’s expansion plans.

Also, there have been many rumors that Akamai is preparing to itself to be a potential acquisition target for Microsoft or Google, as they look to take on competition from Amazon’s AWS.  Since Soha Systems offers secure access delivered as a service, this acquisition is likely to boost its chances of getting acquired by one of the big companies in the near future.

Further, this acquisition can help Akamai to tap into a new business segment – cloud security. Today, more companies are looking to move their applications to the cloud for better performance, and in such a scenario, security becomes absolutely vital. IT teams today, are grappling with providing security, access, and performance, without compromising one for the other. Akamai’s strategy can go a long way in providing security across a range of different devices, and this way, it can help its enterprise customers to make the most of key trends driving the cloud and mobile services.

This deal is expected to give Soha Systems a boost too, besides the cash deal for founders. Soha’s cloud security is likely to be a high-value component of Akamai’s massive global platform, thereby giving it more visibility on a global stage. The existing operations of Soha Systems along with its employees and clients would not be affected, according to a press release from Akamai.

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