New Delhi, Feb 16 (IANS): Web services company Akamai Technologies has announced to acquire Linode, an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform providers, for $900 million.

With the acquisition, Akamai aims to provide businesses with a developer-friendly and massively-distributed platform to build, run and secure applications for modern digital experiences.

The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter this year, the company said in a statement late on Tuesday.

"The opportunity to combine Linode's developer-friendly cloud computing capabilities with Akamai's market-leading edge platform and security services is transformational for Akamai," said Dr. Tom Leighton, chief executive officer and co-founder, Akamai Technologies.

"This a big win for developers who will now be able to build the next generation of applications on a platform that delivers unprecedented scale, reach, performance, reliability and security."

Together with Linode, Akamai aims to become the world's most distributed compute platform, from cloud to edge.

"We built a cloud computing platform trusted by developers and businesses around the world. Today, those customers face new challenges as cloud services become all-encompassing, including compute, storage, security and delivery from core to edge," said Christopher Aker, founder and CEO, Linode.

Solving those challenges requires tremendous integration and scale "which Akamai and Linode plan to bring together under one roof. This marks an exciting new chapter for Linode and a major step forward for our current and future customers," he added.