Oracle has a thing for buying up Boston-area software and networking companies. Usually, they’re pretty significant companies, too. Since 2010, the Redwood Shores, CA-based software giant (NYSE: [[ticker:ORCL]]) has acquired Phase Forward, Art Technology Group, Endeca, Acme Packet, and now Dyn.
Oracle said Monday it is acquiring Dyn, an Internet infrastructure company based in Manchester, NH, for an undisclosed sum.
Dyn (pronounced “dine”) has been in the headlines a lot lately. The company was the target of a distributed denial-of-service attack in October that temporarily blocked Internet access to a number of popular websites and apps, such as Twitter and Netflix.
The Oracle deal has probably been a while in the making. Dyn has been going through a leadership transition since raising a $50 million growth round earlier this year from Pamplona Capital Management, a private equity and hedge fund investment firm. One of the big players behind the scenes is Justin Perreault, a Boston-area partner at Pamplona, who serves on Dyn’s board. It’s safe to surmise the Dyn acquisition will make money for Pamplona, though the parties aren’t talking about the price.
“Oracle cloud customers will have unique access to Internet performance information that will help them optimize infrastructure costs, maximize application and website-driven revenue, and manage risk,” said Kyle York, Dyn’s chief strategy officer, in a prepared statement. “We are excited to join Oracle and bring even more value to our customers as part of Oracle’s cloud computing platform.”
It’s too early to ascertain how Dyn’s workforce and management team, including recently hired CEO Colin Doherty, will be affected. Dyn’s co-founder and former CEO, Jeremy Hitchcock, stepped down after the company raised its growth round, which was announced in May. At the time, Dyn had north of 400 employees.
Oracle’s longtime rival Salesforce has also been buying up and investing in companies in the Boston area. Salesforce now owns Demandware, which it acquired last spring, and HeyWire, which it bought in September. Salesforce Ventures also recently invested in SessionM, a local marketing-tech startup.
Dyn was started back in 2001 and has evolved significantly over the years, alongside the exploding use of the Web. The company was bootstrapped until taking its first outside investment in 2012 from North Bridge. (You can read more about Dyn’s growth, product plans, and acquisitions of its own.)
If Oracle’s other acquisitions are any indication, we won’t be hearing much from Dyn in the near future. The local companies that have joined the Larry Ellison machine have been very quiet about their progress post-acquisition.
