Akamai Juniper Networks, AT&T eye Israeli start-up Cotendo Ltd

US-based Akamai Technologies, a MIT student founded internet content accelerator, is vying with Juniper Networks Inc and AT&T to acquire Israeli start-up website and mobile applications accelerator solutions developer Cotendo Ltd, for around $300-350 million.

The Calcalist financial daily yesterday reported that Akamai is in advanced talks with Cotendo, which is based out of Sunnyvale, California and Israel.

Both Juniper and AT&T are strategic partners of Silicon Valley-based Cotendo, which was founded in 2008 by its current CEO Ronni Zehavi, research chief Udi Turgeman and tech chief David Drai, all former executives at Commtouch Software Ltd.

Cotendo, which has around 300 clients, including Facebook, Microsoft, Google and AT&T among others, has raised $39 million from Benchmark Capital, Sequoia Capital and Tenaya Capital. Juniper, Citrix Systems and Sequoia Israel managing partner Haim Sadgar have also invested in the firm.

With a $4.7 billion market cap, Cotendo is expected to post 2011 revenue between $20 million and $30 million in 2011. It also has a distribution agreement with AT&T, which is expected to generate about $30 million more in revenue over the next four years, the paper said.

Akamai's intelligent internet software helps companies improve their online performance through nearly 100,000 servers, deployed in 72 countries and spanning most of the networks within the internet.

Its platform makes millions of real-time adjustments in response to congestion, security threats and network failures to ensure there is no impact to our customers.

Akamai handles tens of billions of daily Web interactions for companies like Audi, NBC, and Fujitsu, and organisations like the US Department of Defense and NASDAQ.