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08.09.07
Acopia Sells To F5...
 By
Steve Duplessie
For 210 Million reasons. It's a bit melancholy for me, however.
I understand the deal - F5 wants to be the guy in the mega-core to take on Cisco in large distributed networks, and the only way to do that is to be relevant - and the only way to be really relevant is to be part of the value chain, not just delivery chain.
Acopia, in theory, enables big shops to centralize, coordinate, and deliver file services on a global basis - over IP networks.
What's a drag is A: I thought that Acopia really had a shot to get a huge deal done - either thru a public offering or a bigger exit (in another year) and B: these were the last guys standing in the high-end network intelligence game.
Neopath got sold for a can of coke, and then promptly killed off. Rainfinity went out pretty big, but early, to EMC. Brocade bought Storage X for relatively small dollars. Now where is the excitement going to come from?
It's not like file virtualization and delivery services aren't needed - they absolutely are. Riverbed doesn't virtualize, but delivers, and is riding a huge multiple because of what they deliver - mostly files.
The world has moved on - it's all about the file, so the problems associated with the file aren't going to get easier to deal with, only harder. The value of the file isn't going to diminish, but increase.
Therefore, the folks who can make it easier to apply intelligence, management, and security to the file should have a natural spot in the value chain.
No one is offering me $210 clams for my two cents, so I can't say they should have held out. It's a lot of money, and lets face it, a positive portfolio exit means a lot to VC's who are sucking wind with their last 5 years of investments. I don't blame anybody for cashing out.
It will be interesting to see how F5 plays it - do they move into the space in earnest or do they just use it as window dressing?
They continue to face a tough battle in their own worlds, so seeing how they divest into new adjacent opportunities will be telling.
The fact is, they can get into more conversations with more big shops now than they could before - the question is will they?
Congrats to the folks in Lowell - which sounds like an oxymoron, I know.
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