**Editor’s Note: Please click

here
 for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting mergers in Q3 2013.**

Akamai Technologies, which sells through channel partners, will acquire Prolexic, a provider of cloud-based security solutions for protecting data centers and enterprise IP applications from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

Akamai provides solutions for defending websites and Web applications by leveraging its global platform to protect against DDoS and application-layer attacks. Prolexic combines DDoS mitigation solutions with security-operations expertise for protecting data centers and enterprise IP applications. 

By acquiring Prolexic, Akamai intends to provide customers with a comprehensive portfolio of security solutions designed to defend an enterprises Web and IP infrastructure against application-layer, network-layer and data center attacks delivered via the Internet.

Any company doing business on the Internet faces an evolving threat landscape of attacks aimed at disrupting operations, defacing the brand, or attempting to steal sensitive data and information,” said Tom Leighton, CEO of Akamai. By joining forces with Prolexic, we intend to combine Akamais leading security and performance platform with Prolexics highly regarded DDoS mitigation solutions for data center and enterprise applications protection. We believe that Prolexics solutions and team will help us achieve our goal of making the Internet fast, reliable, and secure.”

Today, business is defined by the availability, security and latency of Internet-facing applications, data and infrastructure,” said Scott Hammack, CEO of Prolexic. Being able to rely on one provider for Internet performance and security greatly simplifies resolution of network availability issues and offers clients clear lines of accountability. We believe that together we will be able to deliver an unprecedented level of network visibility and protection.”

Akamai is paying $370 million for Prolexic. The deal, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, is expected to occur in the first half of 2014.