Acquisition is expected to complement the company's site acceleration solutions for improving the performance of customers' web sites and applications.

Akamai Technologies, Inc., a provider of cloud optimization services, yesterday announced that it has acquired Blaze Software Inc., a provider of frontend optimization (FEO) technology, in a cash transaction. The acquisition is expected to complement the company's market-leading site acceleration solutions with technology designed to optimize the speed at which a web page is rendered, regardless of end user device.

The company mentions that with the rapid adoption of rich internet applications and the increase in mobile browsing, new performance bottlenecks are emerging. Websites are becoming richer and more complex, with more compute requirements built into a single page, impacting performance in the browser or client device. As a result, content providers are faced with a growing set of challenges in maintaining a high-performing site and assuring a superior end-user experience.

According to it, Blaze provides technology designed to automatically optimize the code on a web page during the delivery process to ensure faster transmission of content and a faster rendering of the page, whether served to a PC, tablet or smartphone. As a cloud-based service that requires no software or code changes by the customer, Blaze's offering is designed to work with any web site. The company plans to integrate the technology into its global cloud platform for helping enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere.

"As businesses provide rich, interactive web experiences online and across devices, it is vital that end users receive a consistently high-performing site," said Rick McConnell, Executive Vice President of Products and Development, Akamai. "We believe Blaze has developed a powerful solution for frontend optimization, and that its cloud-based services approach is synergistic with Akamai's offerings. The team at Blaze will be an important addition to our focus on site acceleration. Our goal continues to be providing customers the most comprehensive set of technologies to optimize all aspects of their site performance."

"Core to our focus at Blaze is constant research and product development that enables us to improve the speed of our customers' sites by automatically applying the latest web performance optimization best practices," said Michael Weider, CEO of Blaze. "Our technology is aimed at reducing the number of requests required to load a page, reducing the size of each request, and improving the browser rendering experience for our customers. Combining our technology with the global Akamai platform is a big win for customers who are increasingly looking to take performance optimization to the next level."