The buzz of the day is that Juniper is looking to take over Cotendo, a startup company with roots in Israel. The opposing contender is Akamai, for which Contendo is already a competitor. The entire acquisition process is believed to be of worth $350 million, and would be one of the most successful exits for an Israeli start-up in the last decade.

Contendo has many services similar to Akamai, and uses a network of distributed servers around the world to put content physically closer to consumers.  Like Akamai, Contendo also specializes in speeding up delivery to mobile phones and tablets.  But it has the added advantage of having the reputation of providing faster and cheaper services as compared to Akamai.

Both Akamai and Juniper are battling hard to put Contendo in their kitty. Juniper is trying to get it in a joint deal with AT&T, and this has made later really happy.  The reason behind it is that AT&T is also a big Cotendo customer, as well as being Juniper’s customer.  If this deal goes well for Juniper, it will be great for both parties.

Besides, Juniper is all set to rise high, even in this sluggish economy. The company is all prepped to release its much awaited switching technology, QFabric, a family of products and services that aims to collapse the traditional three-layer datacenter network structure, which naturally got Juniper some well-earned hype when it first rolled out.  Juniper has also partnered with QLogic to bring 10G Ethernet to QFabric. Additionally, Juniper has teamed with GE, where both companies will be working closely to develop a family of rugged, highly secure routing and network security appliances designed for military/aerospace deployment in harsh environments, where data security is paramount.

But Akamai’s had a few developments of its own.  The company announced a couple of significant hires last month, including the appointment of Kumud Kalia as its CIO, and Rick McConnell as Executive Vice President of Products and Development.  The company also managed to debunk rumors of its acquisition by Google.

In a recent analysis, Forbes estimates that Akamai’s shares could reach $46 thanks to the company’s value-added services.  It has been showing some growth recently, including a partnership with Apple to help optimize downloads from the Mac App Store.