F5 Networks (NASDAQ: FFIV) today announced its new F5 Ready program that makes it easier for customers to use F5® solutions in the cloud environment of their choice. F5 Ready™ serves to verify that F5's software-based solutions support a broad array of cloud providers worldwide, making the agility, efficiency, and cost savings of cloud accessible to more organizations. With the introduction of this global program, customers can better ensure the security, performance, and availability of applications in these cloud environments.

Confidence in Deploying F5 with Industry-Leading Cloud Providers

F5 Ready promotes interoperability and resource efficiency, aiding the industry's migration of applications and services into private, public, and hybrid cloud environments. The program verifies F5 BIG-IP® virtual edition compatibility with a growing list of public cloud service providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Bluelock, BT, Cisco Intercloud, Datacom, Dimension Data, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace, SingleHop, Skytap, and VMware vCloud Air. F5 Ready will continue to add cloud providers from around the globe and across industries to best serve the diverse needs of customers worldwide.

IT Agility with Flexible Licensing and Consumption Options

Different application deployments have different licensing needs—whether organizations are testing a few apps or deploying hundreds into production. To align with the ways customers are adopting cloud, the F5 Ready program offers more choice and budget flexibility with a broad set of cloud-optimized consumption models:

-Bring Your Own License (BYOL) is portable, making it easy to extend existing BIG-IP virtual edition investments to and across cloud environments.
-The F5 Cloud Licensing Program enables utility (pay-as-you-go) billing and annual subscriptions to support temporary deployments (like app development and testing) or for customers who prefer an OpEx model.
-F5 Volume Licensing Subscription is a subscription licensing option for volume deployments, offering cost savings of up to 67% with BIG-IP virtual editions.

Commitment to Ongoing Innovation

F5 has invested in this new program and will continue expanding its efforts to support more cloud providers and ensure the latest F5 BIG-IP offerings are verified and available on-demand. The program launches with support for BIG-IP version 11.5.1, and F5 will provide verification for the forthcoming BIG-IP 12.0 code release upon availability.

This program enables organizations to more easily leverage the latest BIG-IP enhancements on-demand, in order to best meet their respective needs. Additionally, F5 Ready assures that customers can extend and use F5's programmable technologies like iApps® and iRules® in cloud environments.

SUPPORTING QUOTES

"Organizations going to the cloud want to know that they don't have to give up their valuable application services to get there," said Alex Rublowsky, Sr. Director, Licensing Business Models at F5. "Through the F5 Ready program, customers can keep their trusted security, availability, and acceleration services—even as they evaluate cloud service providers, combine technologies from multiple vendors, and look to scale additional application resources to public cloud environments."

"Building and running our applications within AWS is key to modernizing our data center, and core to driving a more agile business that responds quickly to our customers' needs," said Brian Singer, Senior Vice President, Products and Marketing at Orbitera. "Now with F5 BIG-IP virtual editions directly available and verified within AWS, we are able to extend our existing F5 skills and policies to ensure the performance, availability, and security of our cloud-based applications."

AVAILABILITY

The F5 Ready program is active and continues to add additional partners. Please contact a local F5 sales office for additional product and service availability information pertaining to specific countries.