Network Appliance Buys WebManage for $75 Million

Network Appliance (http://www.netapp.com) announced Monday that it was acquiring privately-held WebManage Technologies, a content management company for about $75 million.

Network Appliance is a caching and delivery provider. Among its line of products are NetCache 4.1, a streaming media appliance for distributing QuickTime, Windows Media and RealSystem G2.

"The acquisition of WebManage ushers in a new era for Network Appliance. We are leveraging our leadership in network attached storage and content delivery to redefine enterprise data infrastructure development," said Dan Warmenhoven, CEO of Network Appliance. The company says that WebManage will enable customers to build content delivery networks (CDNs) on their own networks.

The combination seems to make a lot of sense; WebManage makes software that distributes content between different end points. "Our content distribution and analysis solutions will become an important piece of NetApp's end to end solution, enabling customers to optimally manage, store, and deliver data and content to all points of the network," said Vijay Basani, president, CEO and founder of WebManage.

As part of its acquisition today, Network Appliance said it was rolling out a new "end-to-end" strategy in storage and caching solutions. NetApp's Warmenhoven said, "The ability to deliver timely, reliable access to content in various forms -- data, audio, video, multimedia -- has become crucial for business success. Our acquisition of WebManage will pair their expertise in content management with our high-performance storage and delivery solutions. This enables our service provider, telco, and enterprise customers to easily develop, deploy and manage seamless and highly scalable content delivery networks (CDNs.)"

"Our approach promises to change the way companies do business, and usher in the next wave of the Internet's evolution," promised Warmenhoven.

This market is heating up. Last week networking giant Cisco purchased PixStream and unveiled its own content delivery platform.