To call Acme Packet's (APKT) 25 fold rise the last two years parabolic would be an understatement. It's been more like a vertical lift-off starting at $3/share in early 2009 and hitting $77 on 3/4/11. The stock ricocheted off the top of its all time high last month, and you could have scooped it up for $67 on April 1st, but it has since bounced back to the $75 range. The digerati like this company and it comes as advertised. Its signature technology is the science of our time.

Back in the late 1990s George Gilder used to evangelize about the telecosm (infinite bandwidth) and how increased use of broadband would engulf us and dictate consumer and business behavior. Well that time has come. Acme Packet is serving notice that it is an elite class of technology company and is building a global franchise. The company seemed to be locked

As someone who’s day-traded stocks regularly for 15 years, I’m not a huge fan of “marrying” my money to a stock, and I usually try not to carry many, if any, positions overnight. Essentially, those are the pillars of trading—like the rules that the friendly TV serial killer Dexter learns repeatedly from his dad: get in and get out quickly, and avoid the risk of waking up to a major market swoon and a bunch of underwater holdings. Occasionally, though, I’ll find a company that sets off a little voice in my head, which says “buy and hold me, buy and hold me, buy and hold me.” Snap Interactive (STVI.OB) is one such company.

The reason I like Snap’s long-term outlook can be summed up in one word: Facebook. Snap is directly leveraging Facebook’s customer base for their dating application, AreYouInterested.com, and those dating app revenues have been growing at

Investors have recently asked my opinion on Level 3 (LVLT), inquiring as to if I continue to hold the stock. In my article in November 2010, the stock was trading at $1.12. At that point, I stated that I expected LVLT to hit $2 by April, 2011. As those who follow the stock know, it recently hit a high of $1.65. And currently, I think the recent pullback to the $1.30 range represents a compelling entry point. The stock offers investors much more upside reward than downside risk. My 12-month price target is $2.75 (over 100% upside) and my 3-year target is $5. Here are the key reasons behind my conviction:

Fresh off its recent secondary, Limelight Networks (LLNW) could well look to put some of that recently raised cash to work in some shopping trips. (It now has more than ample resources. Last week’s offering netted Limelight $77m, essentially doubling its cash holdings.) If it does look to do a deal or two, we expect that Limelight’s next acquisition will complement its core content delivery network (CDN) business. The company has already been broadening the range of services it can provide in the video ecosystem, most notably with the $110m purchase of EyeWonder’s ad campaign creation business in December 2009 and most recently with the tiny acquisition of Delve Networks, a provider of online video platform services.

One area Limelight could buy into is peer-to-peer (P2P) delivery, since the CDN industry is facing growing concerns about the ability to manage increasing loads of Internet video traffic. There are some providers

A quick look at year-to-date performance for data center related stocks highlights a few interesting things:

Click to enlarge

The REITs category is the sub-sector with the most defined performance. All stocks basically achieved a 14% increase since the beginning of the year. It is interesting to note that Digital Realty (DLR) and Dupont Fabros (DFT) already reported Q4 2010 results, while Coresite (COR) will report quarterly results on Thursday, March 10.

The two network neutral players under our scrutiny, Equinix (EQIX) and TeleCity (TLEIY.PK), listed in London, are slightly positive, but their sub-sector is the worse performer so far, excluding the CDN category, which needs a specific analysis.

The best performances came from Savvis (SVVS) and Rackspace (RAX), both of which probably enjoyed the most from the cloud computing acquisition binge that positively impacted the stocks along with Internap (INAP) at the end of January. As a reminder, we

Internap (INAP) reported Q4 and full 2010 results on Thursday night, and the numbers seemed to be appreciated by the market, which greeted the company with a 6% increase on the following trading day, one of the best post-earnings performances among its peers.

A quick look at some of the highlights:

• Q4 revenues were about $60.0 million, a 6% decrease from the same quarter of last year ($63.5 million).
• Revenues for the full-year 2010 were $244.2 million, compared with $256.3 million in 2009, for a 5% decrease that was mainly attributable to the IP Services segment (-8%).
• Data center services revenues for the full-year 2010 decreased by 2 percent to $128.2 million; we'll see later on why this number must be analyzed in connection to some proactive churn in partner sites.
• GAAP net loss was $(3.6) million, or $(0.07) per share for the full-year 2010, compared with a GAAP net

Jack James is technology sector analyst for Camlin Asset Management, a Vancouver, B.C.-based investment firm that applies a catalyst-driven investment approach.

If you could only hold one stock position in your portfolio (long or short), what would it be?

One of our high conviction ideas for 2011 is Blue Coat Systems (BCSI).

Tell us more about the company behind the stock.

Blue Coat Systems is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and designs, develops, and sells products that optimize and secure the flow of information over a Wide Area Network (WAN). In 2010, revenue grew 11% to $496 million - a high for the company.

Blue Coat has over 15,000 customers worldwide in five major verticals: Finance, Healthcare, Government, Education,

Content stories are catching positive play in the financial media of late, and with Limelight Networks (LLNW) jumping higher in Monday's after-hours trade longs are not sitting on the fence. They're in.

Limelight, which provides content delivery network services, gained Monday evening after beating Q4 revenue expectations and setting its outlook in line to above the Street view.

Our history on LLNW is strong on the upside, and we would follow the trend and peg a long-side play on the shares Tuesday.

LLNW has recorded an earnings-driven after-hours gain in 8 of the last 12 quarters tracked in our MT Pro database. Also, 100.0% of the time (8 out of 8 times) the stock followed-through in the same direction by the close of the next day's regular session compared to the extended hours "effective close." When it followed through, the price closed further in the same direction on average by

By Ben Kolada

No stranger to inorganic growth, video asset management provider KIT Digital (KITD) just announced three acquisitions worth $77 million. The company’s recent dealmaking brings its total M&A spending to $151 million since 2006 – a hefty sum considering that KIT currently sports just a $350 million market cap. While similarly sized firms might stop for a breather, KIT plans to announce another large purchase by the end of the quarter.

KIT has bought KickApps, Kyte and Kewego as it continues to consolidate the video asset management market and add social media to its platform. Kyte, the least expensive of the three targets, will provide KIT with mobile video content delivery while Paris-based Kewego provides a video distribution software platform for internal communications to enterprises in the EMEA region. KickApps, arguably the most valuable of the acquired assets, provides social media software for interactive video to enterprises. (A

For unexplained strategic reasons, last month Google (GOOG) said it didn’t want the semi-open H.264 video codec supported in its Chrome browser, but was favoring its semi-open WebM codec instead. This meant that the most popular HTML5 video format would not be available for Chrome users.

Not available, that is, until the intervention of an unlikely savior. Wednesday Microsoft (MSFT) announced that it is supporting H.264 on the three main Windows browsers: its own IE9, and via plugins for Chrome and Firefox. The latter two make use of the extensible browser platforms that their respective open source sponsor created to encourage third party support (albeit not originally intended to help Microsoft).

(Apple (AAPL) remains firmly committed to H.264 and HTML5 on both Mac OS and iPhone OS, as part of its pointed rejection of Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash.)

As a Mac guy, I rarely agree with Microsoft on standards battles, but

Here's an interesting development in the CDN space. Back in November I was hearing that AT&T was looking at possibly stopping development of their own in-house CDN platform and looking to license EdegCast's software to run AT&T's CDN. While both companies declined to comment for this post, I have been able to confirm that AT&T has in fact done a deal with EdgeCast and is in the process of using EdgeCast's CDN software to build out AT&T's retail CDN offering.akam

This is an interesting shift in thinking for AT&T but one that I think is really smart. It is similar to AT&T's recent reseller deal with Cotendo where AT&T decided they could get to market much faster by working with a partner as opposed to spending the time and money trying to build everything in-house. While EdgeCast might technically be considered a competitor to AT&T, the two companies are really

Not much news usually takes place on the weekend, but on Saturday afternoon, Engadget.com posted multiple screenshots of an Amazon (AMZN) page offering free unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows. Amazon wording on the page said, "Your Amazon Prime membership now includes unlimited, commerical-free instant streaming of 5,000 movies and TV shows at no additional cost". Shortly after it was reported, the Amazon user who found the page could no longer access it, but multiple screenshots at Engadget.com clearly show the details and this is the best proof yet that Amazon is getting ready to challenge Netflix (NFLX) with a subscription based streaming service.

Offering free streaming to Amazon Prime members would be a really interesting way for Amazon to enter the content subscription market, which was something the WSJ first reported rumors about in August of last year. For $79 a year, consumers can sign up for Amazon

The planned InterXion (INXN) IPO, scheduled for Friday, January 28, will draw investors' attention to the European network-neutral colocation industry.

IPOdesktop, on Seeking Alpha, has an interesting analysis of InterXion's main financials and metrics. The expected market cap, about $ 780 million using the mid point of the offering, speaks for the interest generated by the fast growing data center sector.

In this article we would like to put under the spotlight one little technical aspect related to the existing different approach toward interconnection services in Europe and U.S., which is often undervalued by investors, but very important, in our opinion, for a proper understanding of the European colo industry.

The potential implications on margins and churn are, as we will see, huge, and may justify using different modelings and metrics when evaluating European and North American colocation companies.

One of InterXion's main competitors in Europe, Equinix (EQIX), with operations

This is the second part of my "Glass is Half-Empty" series on stocks that could be ripe for some near-term profit-taking. Those of you who read my sell thesis article on NFLX understand some of my near-term concerns about recent trading activity by some 2010 high-flyers post their recent fourth quarter earnings and forward guidance. Another stock that hit my screen is Acme Packet (APKT) - one of the best performing SMID-cap names in 2010.

I should begin by saying that for long-term fundamental investors, Acme Packet looks like an attractive, niche company in a rapidly growing market. They have a huge opportunity ahead of them, and on the fundamentals, there's actually a lot to like here. But the stock is currently priced accordingly by the market. In other words, it is a classic small-cap earnings momentum story -- one that could maintain a high multiple for a long time

InterXion Holding N.V. (INXN) expects a $233 million IPO with a market capitalization of $780 million at a price range mid-point of $12. Scheduled for Friday, January 28, 2011. Six others scheduled for the week of January 24 totaling $3 billion

INXN provides co-located data centers and has 93% recurring income. Its market is projected to grow 34% annually through 2014.

Adjusting for a non-recurring finance charge, INXN priced at 32 times annualized, adjusted earnings. Compare to Rackspace (RAX) at 32x; Equinix (EQIX) at 129x; and Digital Realty Trust (DLR) at 107x.

INXN Valuation Metrics

INXN supports over 1,100 customers through 28 data centers in 11 countries enabling them to protect, connect, process and distribute their most valuable information. The data centers enable customers to connect to a broad range of telecommunications carriers, internet service providers and other customers.

INXN’s data centers act as content and connectivity hubs that facilitate

Beaten with an ugly stick is an understatement for the shellacking F5 Networks (FFIV) just endured. With 2 billion in market cap, 21% in stock value gone. I listened intently to the earnings call to figure out what happened. At the end of the call, I still didn’t quite get it. However, the CEO, John McAdam, made it clearer, at least to me, on his CNBC appearance Thursday.

The CEO said that October, the first month of the company's new fiscal year, was slower than had been anticipated. I used to work in sales, so I know exactly how the game is played. Sales guys pull-in any and every deal possible into the fourth quarter. From a compensation perspective, a deal in Q4 is much more valuable than a deal in Q1 and I am not talking about a few bucks. It could be a high five figure difference.

So,

I am usually cautious around earnings season, since the bi-polar knee-jerk reactions to a company based on 90 days of business and/or a few phrases on future guidance are not something I like to be whipsawed with. But this earnings season is especially fraught with danger. Many stocks have run up since their last earnings report without pause, to the tune of 30-50%, and valuations have gone ballistic.

The type of investors who pile in at this stage (rather than 18 months ago) are the momo chasers who often do little research other than to see which stocks are at the top of the Investors Business Daily Top 100 list (or Cramer is shouting about), and away they go. Everything is wonderful, when stocks only go up week after week ... until they don't.

Indeed just yesterday I warned on one of the companies I've been a big proponent of