SEATTLE - (Business Wire)
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced its support of Microsoft
’s Get Virtual Now launch event. Through tightly coupled integration efforts, F5 and
Microsoft’s solutions together enable organizations to unlock the power of a comprehensive virtualized ecosystem
—from the data center to the desktop.
“As customers seek to reduce costs while improving the dynamic nature of their IT infrastructures through virtualization, coupling that desire with the availability of Microsoft’s broad offerings spanning the desktop, data center, and management will enable them to accelerate the adoption of virtualization technologies,” said David Greschler, Director of Integrated Virtualization Strategy, Microsoft Corp. “F5’s integration with the System Center management offerings will provide our mutual customers greater visibility into the network and the ability to respond to changing network conditions to help maximize their virtualization investments.”
Microsoft’s virtualization strategy and F5® solutions work in tandem to provide a comprehensive and dynamic infrastructure framework, giving joint customers the IT agility to adapt to varying network and business conditions. With solutions from Microsoft and F5, organizations can now integrate virtualization technologies into their infrastructures to cut costs and improve performance, while maintaining the manageability and familiarity of their legacy IT environments.
“In a virtualized IT environment, effective resource management becomes the most critical pain point,” said Zeus Kerravala, Senior Vice President of Global Enterprise Research at Yankee Group. “With Microsoft providing familiar interfaces and common management consoles for customers to implement virtualization technologies, the network becomes an extremely powerful tool in connecting users to the best-performing resources. F5’s strategic position in the network, together with their integration with Microsoft’s System Center portfolio, enables them to provide significant performance and optimization benefits for customers seeking to implement an end-to-end virtualization strategy.”
Deploying F5 solutions within Microsoft’s virtualization framework enables customers to:
- Gain essential visibility into the network – F5 provides tested deployment guidance for Microsoft System Center, delivering the “network awareness” necessary to maximize the advantages of virtualized environments without sacrificing network or application performance.
- Optimize end-user experience through network flexibility – The F5 Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, an add-on software module available in the first half of CY09, enables Operations Manager to monitor and respond to changing network conditions in real time, optimizing the use of network resources and easing the management of Microsoft virtualization environments. And F5’s PowerShell-enabled iControl® API allows System Center to proactively and dynamically modify the network to ensure the best end-user experience.
- Leverage storage virtualization to scale IT environments – As a key component of Microsoft’s virtualization ecosystem, storage virtualization enables customers to manage and access their data in virtualized environments. The F5 Acopia® ARX® solution provides unique virtualized storage capabilities that create an intelligent abstraction layer between users and disk, allowing customers to more efficiently leverage storage investments and scale their infrastructures.
“Organizations adopt virtualization solutions to dynamically migrate their server, application, storage, and desktop resources into a fluid IT environment that ensures optimal use of IT resources at all times,” said Jim Ritchings, VP of Business Development at F5. “To truly take advantage of the performance gains offered by virtualization, it’s essential that the network supporting these virtualized resources be dynamic as well. F5 solutions enable the network to perform in lockstep with application services and make sure that users are always seamlessly directed to the most available and best-performing resources.”
About F5 Networks
F5 Networks is the global leader in Application Delivery Networking. F5 provides solutions that make applications secure, fast, and available for everyone. By adding intelligence and manageability into the network to offload applications and optimize the data storage layer, F5 extends the power of intelligent networking to all levels of application delivery. F5’s extensible architecture intelligently integrates application optimization, protects the application and the network, and delivers application reliability. Over 16,000 organizations and service providers worldwide trust F5 to keep their applications running. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington with offices worldwide. For more information, go to www.f5.com.
Product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.
This press release may contain forward looking statements relating to future events or future financial performance that involve risks and uncertainties. Such statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential," or "continue," or the negative of such terms or comparable terms. These statements are only predictions and actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these statements based upon a number of factors including those identified in the company's filings with the SEC.
F5 Networks
Alane Moran, 206-272-6850
a.moran@f5.com
or
Connect Public Relations
Holly Hagerman, 801-373-7888
hollyh@connectpr.com
