On Friday, cloud data delivery and security provider Radware (RDWR +0.67%) announced that it has purchased website speeder-upper Strangeloop Networks for $8.4 million.
Investors reacted poorly to the news, bidding down Radware shares by 1.3%, to $35.65, in response. But management defended the acquisition, pointing out that Strangeloop uses "an advanced set of proprietary site acceleration treatments to simplify and streamline Web pages in real time."
According to Radware, this is key to the problem of the time lag users experience with software located on servers far away. Radware sees Strangeloop's services as an antidote to this problem, speeding up response times on websites "in the most efficient way possible."
As Radware Chief Operating Officer Ilan Kinreich argued: "online retailers and financial services are dependent on their customer-facing web applications. Therefore, speed and performance are two of the most critical factors in order to increase customer satisfaction [and] conversion rates and generate revenue."
