* Behind F5’s acquisition of Swan Labs
The application acceleration shopping spree continued last week as application traffic management vendor F5 Networks made a play for WAN optimization vendor Swan Labs. F5 announced it would acquire Swan Labs in a $43 million cash deal, set to close by the first quarter of 2006.
The market consolidation isn’t a surprise to some, but the speed at which companies are snapping up competitors is noteworthy. Perhaps because vendors recognize that the application acceleration market is set to grow, they are making their move to pump up their product suites while the price is still right. Market research firm Gartner estimated earlier this year that the potential for application acceleration could reach $1.5 billion in 2005, a 33% increase over 2004. And the firm also recently estimated that by 2009 the market is expected to reach about $2.3 billion in end-user sales.
Swan Labs’ product suite was built on the acquisitions of Pivia and NetCelera technology from ITWorx.
F5, known for Layer 4-7 switching and application traffic management with its Big-IP switches, plans to incorporate the WAN optimization and application acceleration technology from Swan Labs. Swan Labs’ WANJet devices can help speed application traffic over WAN connections with a variety of technologies.
F5 said last week that the integration of F5 and Swan Labs’ technology will “offer an integrated framework that extends application and network security, acceleration and availability to remote, branch and private users regardless of where they are coming from.” Specifically, F5 indicated that it plans to integrate its Traffic Management Operating System with Swan Labs’ WANJet and WebAccelerator.
With a more complete product suite, F5 will face direct competition from Cisco, which acquired FineGround and Juniper, which picked up two vendors – Peribit and Redline Networks – to increase its chances in the enterprise application acceleration market.
