Named after the leader of the ancient Greek gods, Zeus Technology, a provider of sophisticated internet infrastructure solutions, is fast establishing itself as a leader in its own right by signing new partnership deals, doubling sales and increasing global penetration of its flagship product.

Cambridge-based Zeus, whose application level software ZXTM (Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager) helps to cut customers’ running costs and improve their website performance, has more than doubled sales in the first quarter of 2006, following a rapid rise in turnover in 2005.

Literally millions of internet services around the globe already rely on Zeus for website security and scalability and the intelligent management of complex application traffic. Users range from online auctioneer eBay to online retailers like Play.com. One of the biggest concerns for online retailers is loss of revenue due to network outages and Zeus says that ZXTM’s proven reliability is a key advantage for its clients.

David Turner is Systems Architect of Play.com, an online retailer of music, games, books and DVDs which has become the UK’s second most-visited online retailer. Turner says ZXTM enabled his company to provide a better and more reliable delivery of its web content and to plan for future growth by easily scaling up its infrastructure. Turner says simply: “It’s taken everything we have thrown at it so far.”

Zeus, in which SEP made a joint investment of £3 million with Cazenove Private Equity, is rapidly gaining a reputation as an innovator in the emerging field of harnessing virtual computing power whereby companies use virtualisation technology to leverage existing computing power at different locations.

Russ Cummings, a Director in SEP’s Information Technology group, says Zeus occupies a critical space, efficiently managing traffic flowing between server farms: “In Zeus we have an innovator who is doing really great work which is making the big names in the industry sit up and take notice,” he said.

Among the industry leaders who have done more than sit up and take notice is VMware, the Palo-Alto-headquartered global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems.

Zeus has just joined an exclusive list of appliance vendors including IBM and Oracle which have become classified VMware Technology Alliance Partners. VMware provides enterprise-level virtual infrastructure software to many of the world’s largest organisations and becoming a vendor means Zeus is now uniquely placed to make a breakthrough in managing traffic in virtual environments.

It has been a stellar period for Zeus which recently made its first sales in China and has added partners to sell its products in France and Germany. There are further plans for significant geographic expansion this year.

The company’s growing reputation has earned it a place in analyst firm Gartner’s ‘Magic Quadrant’ report identifying leaders in application delivery products. Zeus also won an innovation award from Network Magazine and was named by IT Week as among the world’s top 50 technology innovators.

Future growth of the company, which is headed by Chief Executive Paul di Leo, will come from a proliferation of strategic partnerships, building on its strong existing base of blue-chip partners which include HP, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Intel.

It will continue to enhance its top-selling product ZXTM which is now in its fourth version and its wider suite of products which include Zeus Web Server and ZXTM Load Balancer.

Operating in a highly complex area, Zeus has won plaudits from clients for creating a sophisticated product which is also user-friendly. One client says that ZXTM “took less time to learn, less time to use, was easier to understand, and much more intuitive than any other web application, firewall, switch, load balancer - anything.”

Five years ago the company’s technology helped charity Comic Relief successfully handle a record number of online donations on Red Nose Day. Its products have become more effective and sophisticated since then but it is still making customers smile.