Ziff Davis bought Ookla in 2014 for $15 million, according to a Reuters today’s report. The publisher said it expects the sale to close “in the coming months.”
In a statement, Accenture CEO and President Julie Sweet said:
By acquiring Ookla, we will help our enterprise and government customers securely scale AI and build the trusted databases they need to deliver reliable, seamless connectivity that creates value.
Accenture’s current public sector clients include the US Air Force, the US Social Security Administration and, recentlythe US Department of State
Speedtest and Downdetector are popular tools that help people quickly test their current Internet speed and the status of online services respectively. Downdetector is often cited in media reports discussing the availability of websites, apps, banks, and more.
Under Ziff Davis, both programs also have business-to-business (B2B) applications. Using Speedtest, for example, Ookla collects, aggregates and analyzes data from “billions of mobile network samples daily, measuring radio signal levels, network coverage and availability, and [quality of experience] metrics for a range of connected experiences, such as video streaming, video conferencing, gaming, web browsing, and CDN and cloud provider performance.” Ookla says. Currently, Speedtest B2B clients include telecommunications operators, regulatory and trade bodies, analysts, journalists and non-profit organizations.
Meanwhile, Downdetector Explorer is a monitoring tool that is supposed to help businesses detect outages. Its clients include streaming services, banks, social networks and communication service providers.
Should the Accenture acquisition close, the IT consultant will similarly use Speedtest and Downdetector data to inform clients, and individual users will be subject to a new privacy policy and any other changes Accenture may make.
An Accenture spokesperson told Ars Technica that Accenture plans to operate the “Ookla business as it operates today.”
