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Akamai announced an agreement to acquire Prolexic on December 2, 2013, and completed the deal on February 18, 2014. The acquisition added Prolexic’s cloud-based defenses against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on data centers and enterprise IP applications to Akamai’s security capabilities.
When did Akamai acquire Prolexic?
Akamai announced a definitive acquisition agreement on December 2, 2013. The transaction closed on February 18, 2014, according to Akamai’s completion announcement. Akamai’s closing release described the completed acquisition and its strategic purpose.
How much did Akamai pay for Prolexic?
The two reported figures reflect different documents and dates, rather than a single figure stated identically throughout the transaction. In its December 2013 agreement filing, Akamai disclosed approximately $370 million in net cash consideration, subject to closing adjustments, plus the assumption of unvested options. Akamai’s 2014 annual report later recorded $392.1 million in cash and assumed unvested stock options. The annual-report figure is the amount reported after the deal, not the initial estimate in the agreement filing. Akamai’s 2013 filing and 2014 annual report provide the respective disclosures.
What did Prolexic do?
At the time of the deal, Akamai described Prolexic as a privately held company based in Hollywood, Florida, that provided cloud-based security for data centers and enterprise IP applications against DDoS attacks. These attacks can overwhelm a target with internet traffic, disrupting access to the services and systems that depend on it.
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Akamai said the combined technologies and teams would help protect enterprise web and IP infrastructure against attacks at the application layer, network layer, and data center. The acquisition was therefore an enterprise security capability expansion, not a consumer product purchase.
Why did Akamai buy Prolexic?
Akamai’s stated rationale was to broaden protection for enterprise infrastructure. Prolexic brought cloud-based DDoS mitigation focused on data centers and IP applications, complementing Akamai’s effort to address threats across web applications, networks, and data centers. In the February 2014 closing release, Akamai CEO Tom Leighton said: “Cyber-attacks are on the rise all over the world, with many resulting in significant economic or reputational damage to enterprises, governments, and end-users.”
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How did Prolexic’s service evolve after the acquisition?
Later Akamai announcements show subsequent development; they should not be read as terms or capabilities necessarily included when the deal closed.
2022: planned expansion of DDoS defense capacity
In 2022, Akamai described Prolexic as a cloud-based DDoS scrubbing platform for applications in data centers, public clouds, and colocation facilities. It announced new software-defined scrubbing centers that would extend dedicated defense capacity to 20 Tbps. That was a capacity announced in 2022 in connection with the planned rollout, not a verified current capacity or a measure of the acquisition’s impact. Akamai’s 2022 announcement explains the planned expansion.
2023: network cloud firewall
In 2023, Akamai announced Prolexic Network Cloud Firewall, which lets customers define and manage access control lists. Akamai Senior Vice President and General Manager of Infrastructure Security Sean Lyons said: “The feature most requested by our Prolexic customers is the network cloud firewall.” This was a later product development, not a feature identified in the 2013 acquisition announcement. Akamai’s 2023 product announcement describes the firewall.
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