Akamai Technologies announced on Oct. 11 that it is acquiring privately held DNS solutions vendor Nominum. The all-cash deal is expected to close at the end of the current quarter.
Nominum was founded in 1998 by DNS inventor Paul Mockapetris and has raised approximately $41 million in funding over the course of existence. Since 2011, the CEO of Nominum has been Gary Messiana, who is no stranger to Akamai. Back in 2007 Messiana was the CEO content and application delivery network provider Netli, which he sold to Akamai for $170 million.
Nominum’s technology platform includes the Vantio CacheServe, which is a carrier-grade caching DNS server. Nominum also as an authoritative DNS service called Vantio AuthServe that aims to outperform traditional BIND DNS server based solutions.The Nominum N2 Big Data Connector provides a way for organizations to look at DNS in a Big Data analysis platform to derive insights.
Akamai already had its own product in the space called Fast DNS that provides a cloud-based solution for improving both performance and security. The plan with the Nominum acquisition is to further improve and expand those capabilities.
“Akamai knows how critical it is for carriers and enterprises to ensure their online experiences are safe, reliable and fast for their users,” Robert Blumofe, executive vice president, platform, and general manager, Enterprise and Carrier Division, stated. “We believe this acquisition is a key investment in our security capabilities because Nominum will bring complementary technology, engineering, technical support and sales talent to better reach and serve our carrier partners and their enterprise customers.”
The market for standalone DNS vendors has gotten smaller in recent years. In 2016, Oracle acquired Nominum’s rival Dyn.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
