Oracle has agreed to acquire domain-name service provider Dyn in a move to enhance its cloud computing offerings, where it has historically struggled to compete with Amazon.
Manchester, N.H.-based Dyn monitors, controls and hosts some of the largest and most popular websites, such as Spotify, Twitter, Netflix and CNBC, optimizing internet applications and cloud services to deliver faster access and reduced page load times.
Oracle has been building its cloud computing business and pushing into the infrastructure-as-a-service market (IaaS), which provides computing and storage resources on demand over the web. Adding Dyn’s “best-in-class DNS solution,” Oracle said, will provide enterprise customers with a one-stop shop for IaaS and platform-as-a-service (PaaS).
“Oracle already offers enterprise-class IaaS and PaaS for companies building and running Internet applications and cloud services,” Thomas Kurian, Oracle’s president of product development, said in a news release. “Dyn’s immensely scalable and global DNS is a critical core component and a natural extension to our cloud computing platform.”
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Dyn was founded in 2001 as Dynamic Network Services Inc., growing out of a project of students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It was hit by a large-scale internet attack in October that left dozens of popular websites unreachable for parts of the day.
“Despite that attack, the DNS service provided by Dyn is very valuable to Oracle’s future in the cloud,” TechRepublic said.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison said at the company’s annual developer conference in September that “it would move aggressively into the [IaaS] market, challenging Amazon’s leadership in businesses where Oracle barely registers now.”
Amazon Web Services has its own domain-name service called Amazon Route 53.
“Oracle’s building out its IaaS and PaaS offerings as quickly as possible,” Forrester analyst Dave Bartoletti told TechRepublic. “AWS has a strong and popular DNS service in Route 53. It’s an essential element, and Oracle can buy its way in quickly with Dyn.”
