Driven by a relentless pursuit for amazing: F5 Networks

‘Building unified application delivery architecture that provides security, stability, and agility.’

F5 Networks, Inc. is an American-based company that specializes in application delivery networking (ADN) technology for the delivery of web applications and the security, performance, availability of servers, data storage devices, and other network and cloud resources. F5 originally manufactured and sold some early load balancing products. Today, F5 offers products and services in application delivery, security, and cloud-focused markets.

The company name was inspired by the 1996 movie Twister, in which reference was made to the fastest and most powerful tornado on the Fujita Scale: F5. Founded in 1996, F5 is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and has other development, manufacturing, and sales/marketing offices.

F5 believes in making apps go—faster, smarter, and safer. The company’s solutions strengthen the security, performance, and availability of applications, servers, and data centers. All F5 products are highly programmable and integrate into any environment, whether in the cloud, on premises, or in a hybrid environment. To date, 49 of the Fortune 50 companies rely on F5 to deliver apps that customers and employees can securely access at any time, on any device, from any location.

Today’s app revolution requires an application delivery evolution

Load balancing has evolved into something much greater. That something is application delivery, which includes traditional load balancing for delivering any application, plus a range of security, performance, and management services. These services help you follow through on the promise of your applications.

Apps have been F5’s focus for 20 years. As leaders in the application services industry, our expertise in helping power fast, available, and secure applications forms the foundation for our entire catalog of solutions.

Customers and employees rely on your applications. Customers expect fast, uninterrupted access to rich, dynamic applications wherever they are. Employees expect the same. To keep all users satisfied, F5 solutions help accelerate application response time, minimize latency and delays, and reduce the number of data round trips necessary to complete a web request—so apps just work.

The hardware you need—only from F5

The BIG-IP appliances and VIPRION platforms deliver quick and easy programmability, multi-vendor service orchestration, software-defined hardware, and line-rate performance. Accelerate private clouds and secure critical data at scale, while lowering costs and future-proofing your infrastructure.

F5’s new BIG-IP iSeries platform features TurboFlex optimization technology that offloads specialized functions from the general CPU, resulting in up to twice the price/performance over our leading competitors. TurboFlex allows you to choose from different performance profiles, and switch to new ones as your business needs change. Best of all, software updates enable additional optimizations and profiles in the future.

Run BIG-IP software on commodity hardware in the public or private cloud

Flexibility and agility are more than buzzwords: They’re the reality of the application world. Frequent refresh cycles and changing demands limit how quickly you can react. When you need to move faster than hardware allows, BIG-IP virtual editions (VEs) are the virtual application delivery controllers—and other programs—you need.

The virtual editions of BIG-IP products offer the same breadth of features available in hardware solutions. F5 gives you the scalability, security, customization, and adaptability BIG-IP products are known for, all in software designed for virtual, cloud, and hybrid environments.

Meet the Master

John McAdam, President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director: Shortly after joining F5 in July 2000, McAdam successfully navigated the company through the turbulent post-dot-com era, bringing F5 to profitability and positioning it for further growth. During his tenure at F5, the company’s annual revenue has grown from $108.6 million to nearly two billion. McAdam has also served as Board Chairman and has overseen numerous successful acquisitions, guiding F5 into new and adjacent markets that enhance the company’s core application delivery solution offerings. Under McAdam’s leadership, F5 was added to the S&P 500—one of the world’s most widely followed stock market indices.

McAdam has also received numerous leadership awards, among them Puget Sound Business Journal’s 2013 Executive of the Year, Seattle Business Magazine’s 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award, and Best in Business Awards’ 2012 Executive of the Year, silver category. He was also named to Business Insider’s 2013 list of 50 Most Powerful People in Enterprise Tech and CRN’s list of Top 25 Innovators for 2012.

Prior to joining F5, McAdam served as General Manager of the Web server sales business at IBM. From January 1995 until August 1999, he was President and Chief Operating Officer of Sequent Computer Systems, a manufacturer of high-end open systems, which was sold to IBM in September 1999.

McAdam serves on the board of directors of Tableau Software and Apptio. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

“Our BIG-IP product family blends software and hardware to help you inspect and control all traffic that passes through your network—ensuring apps are fast, available, and secure.”