News
Riverbed Acquires Zeus Technology for $140m
19 Jul 2011
London, UK, 19 July 2011: Zeus Technology (Zeus), the pioneers of Application Delivery Controller software, has been sold to Riverbed Technology (Riverbed), the IT performance company, announced today, generating strong returns to investors Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) and DFJ Esprit. Riverbed will pay approximately $110 million in cash and up to an additional $30 million in cash based on the achievement of certain milestones over the next 12 months.
Founded in 1995, Cambridge based Zeus delivers high performance software-based load balancing and traffic management solutions for virtual and cloud environments. Zeus enables enterprises to deliver applications and websites with a consistently excellent user-experience, whatever the demand, with the flexibility and economics of cloud computing.
DFJ Esprit led a re-capitalisation of Zeus in 2004, with SEP leading a Series A round in 2005. Both firms have helped to build the sales and marketing team and executive team enabling the company to win major clients around the world including the Amazon, Gilt Group, Rackspace, Joyent, BBC, ITV, PLAY.COM, PKR.com, Domino’s Pizza and Virgin Media.
Andrew Davison, a Partner at SEP commented: “When we invested in Zeus 6 years ago, we were confident that the company had some very strong technology, addressing a significant potential market opportunity. Since then, we have been very closely involved, helping to build a much more substantial business and a more robust strategy. We are pleased to see our efforts pay off.”
Nic Brisbourne, a Partner at DFJ Esprit added: “Over the last 7 years the Zeus team has done an incredible job, taking the company from restart to category defining global leader. DFJ Esprit is honoured to have been involved with this remarkable success story and grateful to the executives and employees who made it happen.”