Internap Closes The Door On VitalStream Acquisition: Takes $99 Million Writedown

It should come as no surprise to anyone that yesterday, in a 8-K filing with the SEC, Internap announced they would take a write down of "approximately $99.7 million" for the value of the CDN business Internap purchased from VitalStream for $217 million in 2007. While some have been speculating that the write off should have been closer to $200 million, Internap's CDN business does have some value and has to be assigned some sort of fair evaluation. With Internap reporting earnings next week, I expect we'll hear more on how they decided on the $99.7 million number and how they value their CDN business moving forward.

For Internap, it's been a really rough year for their content delivery business. With the write down now behind them and the uncertainty of what they may or may not do out of the way, hopefully this now closes the door on the VitalStream acquisition mess and allows Internap to move forward with their CDN offering. Next year is a clean slate for Internap's CDN business and if I were them, I would treat their CDN business as if it was a new startup in the market and completely re-align and re-brand their content delivery offerings.