Juniper Networks has announced it will buy WAN traffic optimiser Peribit Networks for $US337 million (NZ$465 million).
The move is part of Juniper's plan to add traffic processing intelligence to its networking products and means Peribit's New Zealand customers, who include Air New Zealand, Tait Electronics, the Department of Conservation and several other government departments, will have a new vendor — or one fewer if they're already Juniper customers.
The Department of Conservation uses sequence reducer devices from Peribit to optimise the performance of its satellite links to remote field offices on the Chatham Islands, Great Barrier Island and Aniwaniwa on the shores of Lake Waikaremoana.
Juniper will also buy Redline Networks, whose products maximise the performance and scalability of web-enabled enterprise data centres and public websites, for $US132 million (NZ$182 million). In March, Juniper announced plans to acquire border controller vendor Kagoor Networks.
Juniper chief executive Scott Kriens has said "application acceleration is the best kept secret in networking". Analyst Gartner says the application acceleration market was worth $US1 billion (NZ$1.38 billion) last year and is growing.
The Peribit acquisition is expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year when staff from Peribit and Redline will be incorporated into Juniper in a new unit called the applications products group.