Citrix takes a Byte out of the Video Optimization market

Bytemobile, the leader of the video optimization segment with over 50% market share  has been acquired by Citrix Systems. The companies had announced a strategic partnership in February 2012, where Bytemobile product offering was declared Citrix-ready, a move to enable Bytemobile video optimization to avail of the enhanced scaling and emerging cloud computing deployments in this market segment.


The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.


After Allot's acquisition of Ortiva and Openwave's exit to Marlin Equity Partners, this is the third exit in that market segment in a short period of time, signalling a strong consolidation trend, as major players such as Cisco, Alcatel Lucent, Huawei, Ericsson, F5, Tellabs and others have started positioning themselves through their own offering, reselling or OEM agreements. Notably, this is possibly the first exit that is not an asset or technology sale.


One week before the video optimization forum, which I will be chairing in Brussels, this announcement promises much activity for network vendors looking at sharpening their video delivery portfolio. More to come on this shortly.