Nobody wants to browse a sluggish online shopping site — it doesn’t matter if you’re at a Starbucks with a smartphone or sitting in front of a networked PC. That need for speed is why Radware is acquiring Strangeloops, a specialist in web performance optimization.
Terms of the deal, announced Thursday, were not disclosed but the move is a natural for Radware, a Tel Aviv-based application delivery vendor.
And it’s not unprecedented. Almost a year ago to the day, content delivery network (CDN) leader Akamai bought Blaze to speed up performance for people using web and mobile applications.
As GigaOM’s Stacey Higginbotham wrote at the time, in buying Blaze:
” … Akamai is acknowledging that web sites today are accessed in more places … but also that the sites themselves are different. They use richer media and offer links back to more applications. Things like sharing something on Twitter or liking it on Facebook via a simple button add seconds to load times and complexity to the overall site. Complicated CSS scripts and lagging ad networks don’t help either.”
This addiction to speed doesn’t just apply to consumer apps — ever-more- mobile workers don’t want to wait for their Salesforce.comor other SaaS apps either. That’s why acquiring technology that can deliver rich content quickly over wireless connections to any device is a good idea.
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