Riverbed boosts portfolio with Zeus and Aptimize buys

Network performance specialist Riverbed has purchased two companies, Cambridge-based Zeus Technologies and New Zealand-based Aptimize.

The acquisitions, announced on Tuesday, will help expand its range of networked data centre and web app optimisation services, San Francisco-based Riverbed said.

Riverbed provides a platform to help enterprises streamline their IT structure using cloud computing, virtualisation and consolidation.

"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," Jerry Kennelly, president at Riverbed, said in a statement.

Zeus provides software-based load balancing and traffic management products for virtual and cloud environments.

The company will run Zeus as a separate business unit within Riverbed and aims to "retain the employees" Apurva Davé, vice president of product marketing for Riverbed, told ZDNet UK.

Aptimize is an intranet and website optimisation company.

"Aptimize's technology reorders, merges and resizes content according to who is viewing it and from where. The end result is the application is delivered more effectively—up to four times faster—regardless of the platform used," the company added.

Riverbed will pay around $110m up front for Zeus, and up to another $30m in performance related payouts. Financial terms of the Aptimize acquisition were not disclosed.