GigaOM

Akamai has bought Nine Systems for about $160 million dollars, the company announced this morning. We had previously reported on this pending merger exclusively. We had asked Akamai to respond, but kept on waiting, only to read about the news on the wires.

The transaction price is being pegged at around $150 million, or roughly nine times revenue. Our sources say that the deal could be announced sometime later this month. Nine Systems specializes in streaming rich media over the Internet, and will become a value-added service for Akamai, which needs to add more such services in order to fight off commoditization of its CDN business, when that happens.

Under terms of the agreement, Akamai will acquire all of the outstanding common stock, preferred stock, and vested and unvested stock options of Nine Systems by issuing approximately 3.1 million shares of Akamai common stock and approximately $7 million in cash. Akamai plans to integrate Nine Systems’ Stream OS, a suite of configurable rich media management tools that enable easy production and publishing of content online, into the global Akamai network, the company said in a press release.

If Nine employees want to let us know how they feel about this deal, drop us a line. We would certainly love to keep close tabs on how Akamai treats its “acquisitions” after they have closed.