We are excited to announce the merger of Highwinds and StackPath! Bringing together the strengths of these two companies will help us accelerate our vision of a frictionless, global security platform with unparalleled scale. Here is the official announcement:
Leading Global CDN Service to be Integrated with Secure Cloud Services Platform
DALLAS—February 6, 2017—StackPath, the rapidly growing provider of inherently secure cloud services, today announced its acquisition of Highwinds, an industry-leading Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider. Highwinds’ services and platform will be integrated with existing StackPath offerings and operations to create a single global platform with the industry’s best security features and performance. The integration puts StackPath at more than 300 employees with more than 20,000 CDN customers and one of the world’s largest global network backbones. StackPath is backed by ABRY Partners.
“We founded StackPath to make the internet safe. Merging Highwinds with StackPath not only serves that mission, it accelerates our progress towards it,” said Lance Crosby, founder, chairman and CEO of StackPath. “Our two companies had the same view that CDN security and innovation hasn’t evolved as quickly as it needs to. Developers leverage CDNs for practically everything they’re building in the cloud these days—and for far more than simple content delivery. But CDNs still tend to be add-on services, not built-in. Merging Highwinds and StackPath technologies and teams gives us the scale, scope, and experience to more quickly bring the market an integrated, next-generation platform with unprecedented security advantages.”
According to Markets and Markets, the CDN market is expected to grow from $6.03 billion in 2016 to $23.22 billion by 2021, at an estimated Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 30.9 percent. Highwinds has been a major player, with strong leaders and a talented team that grew the company to become one of the top CDN providers in the world. The combined organization’s size and body of experience gives StackPath added efficiency and reach to address the growing market.
“I’m as excited about the future of Highwinds as part of StackPath as I am proud of what we built,” said Steve Miller, Highwinds founder and CEO. “Each company’s strengths complements the other’s. StackPath has focused on WAF, DDoS mitigation, full website delivery, and frictionless customer experience. Highwinds has strong success in large-scale throughput, enterprise applications, and high-touch engagements. Bringing all of this together creates an even more complete, more compelling offering.”
Financial details of the transaction are not being disclosed. Moving forward, the Highwinds team in Winter Park, FL, will serve as the core of StackPath CDN engineering, building on that teams’ more than ten years of experience serving clients ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies.
The transaction furthers what has been considerable growth for StackPath in a short amount of time. “We came out of stealth less than a year ago. At the current multiple for security companies, we’re already a multi-billion-dollar operation,” said Mr. Crosby.
StackPath provides inherently secure cloud services that enables developers to build safe solutions. Its platform leverages collaborative intelligence so that with every threat detected it makes each service smarter, more secure, and easier to use. More than 30,000 customers already use StackPath technology, ranging from Fortune 100 companies to early stage startups. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, StackPath has offices across the U.S. and internationally. For more information, visit stackpath.com and follow StackPath at facebook.com/stackpathllc and twitter.com/stackpath.
Founded in 1989 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, ABRY Partners is an experienced and successful private equity investment firm focused on media, communications, healthcare services, insurance services, business and information services. Since its founding, ABRY has completed more than $62 billion of transactions, representing investments in more than 550 properties.
