Oracle to Buy Web Service Provider Dyn
November 21 2016 - 9:50AM
Dow Jones News
Oracle said Monday that it would buy web service provider Dyn, a
company the came into the public eye after it was hit by a
large-scale internet attack in October that left dozens of popular
websites unreachable for parts of the day.
Dyn, based in New Hampshire, is among a handful of companies
operating domain-name-systems that help direct traffic across the
internet. Dyn's domain-name-system services are crucial cogs in
helping internet users reach websites by allowing web
addresses—Netflix.com, for instance—to take users to their final
destinations.
Oracle is rapidly building out its cloud business, particularly
in the markets of selling access to web applications and selling
access to tools to program and manage apps as well as analyze data,
as companies shift more of their computing operations off site and
into the cloud.
Oracle said Monday the deal gives its clients access to unique
internet performance data that can help them optimize
infrastructure costs and maximize revenue. Dyn works with companies
to help their websites load faster and are more reliable as their
traffic flows across the web.
Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
The October attack highlighted how the internet, which is
designed to ensure its own stability by distributing control of the
network across millions of computers, can still prove vulnerable to
targeted assaults.
Dyn said the disruption came in the form of a distributed
denial-of-service attack, in which devices connected to the
internet flooded Dyn's computers with junk data, blocking
legitimate users. Dyn said it had seen traffic coming from "tens of
millions" of internet Protocol addresses.
Founded in 2001 as Dynamic Network Services Inc., the company
grew out of a project of several students from Worcester
Polytechnic Institute. Co-founder Jeff Hitchcock, who is on Dyn's
board, created the company to be a directory of internet devices
for consumers, according to Dyn's website.
The company has since expanded as more nontechnology companies
demanded specialized services to keep their websites and corporate
IT networks running smoothly. In 2014, it acquired Renesys, another
New Hampshire technology firm known for its advanced internet
research. Dyn now has several hundred employees.
Write to Austen Hufford at austen.hufford@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 21, 2016 09:35 ET (14:35 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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