F5 Helps Latisys Offer Differentiated Private Cloud and Enhanced Managed Services

Managed services provider relies on F5’s VIPRION Application Delivery Networking solution to ensure its cloud services infrastructure scales rapidly and reliably to meet customer demand

SEATTLE, SEPTEMBER 19, 2011 - @PR2WEB – F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced that Latisys is implementing F5^® VIPRION^® Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) as a foundation of its private cloud and managed hosting solutions. Latisys provides IT outsourcing—such as data center colocation services, managed hosting, and cloud solutions—from its secure, high-density, Tier III data centers across the United States. The company is enhancing its high availability enterprise-grade managed services offering, which provides security, backup and recovery, storage, compute resources, and load balancing, to achieve service provider-grade performance levels. Through Latisys cloud services, customers will be able to expand their IT infrastructures dynamically to meet sudden increases in demand for computing resources while benefiting from a highly secure, fully redundant platform.

“Serving both enterprises and carriers, we need to ensure that our private cloud resources scale reliably,” said Christian Teeft, VP of Engineering at Latisys. “F5’s VIPRION is a high performance, cost-effective solution that delivers the on-demand resource provisioning we require.”

VIPRION, a chassis-based hardware platform with high-performance modular blades, is the most flexible and scalable ADC on the market. With VIPRION, Latisys can scale on demand to deliver higher levels of throughput and transactions per second without adding more devices, disrupting users or applications, or increasing management costs. Latisys chose the VIPRION 2400 as the cornerstone of its private cloud-based service delivery network. Using this midrange platform, Latisys can intelligently manage CapEx and OpEx while delivering a true pay-as-you-go deployment model for its customers.

Before selecting the VIPRION solution, Latisys evaluated application delivery products from competing vendors. “F5 came out on top in all categories, including performance, scale, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. Furthermore, we have firsthand experience with the company’s superior support team—and F5 is our customers’ first choice,” said Evans Mullan, Chief Operating Officer at Latisys.

Leveraging its existing BIG-IP^® Local Traffic Manager^™ and Global Traffic Manager^™ deployments, Latisys can use iControl^®, F5’s open application programming interface (API), to dynamically provision additional resources and ensure high availability. iControl enables Latisys’ management and orchestration tools to communicate directly with the BIG-IP devices, so application servers can be added to a pool when traffic load increases and removed as traffic volume drops. In addition, Latisys can take advantage of BIG-IP secure sockets layer (SSL) offload capabilities, which decrease server CPU utilization to provide additional cost benefits and resource conservation.

VIPRION devices also provide Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing (vCMP^™) technology, which combines virtualization and multi-tenancy capabilities. With vCMP, multiple instances of BIG-IP software can run on one device, so, for example, up to 16 individual BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager instances could run on a single, fully-loaded VIPRION chassis. vCMP enables organizations like Latisys to further maximize data center resources and efficiently manage application delivery services.

“We’re thrilled that Latisys is counting on VIPRION and BIG-IP technology to differentiate its new private cloud services,” said Jason Needham, Sr. Director of Product Management at F5. “The cloud deployment model is based on the premise of improving IT agility, reliability, and cost-efficiency. With the flexibility and advanced technology that F5 solutions provide, Latisys will be able to scale dynamically to meet customer demand and isolate virtual ADCs to provide each customer with the control they need.”

About Latisys

Latisys is a leading national provider of colocation, managed hosting, managed services, disaster recovery and private cloud solutions to medium-sized businesses, enterprise customers, and government agencies. With a heritage serving business customers since 1994, and multiple high-density, SAS70 Type II compliant data centers across the United States, Latisys offers scalable outsourced IT infrastructure management solutions that provide customers what they need, when they need it. The firm’s new, state-of-the-art Tier III data center campus in Ashburn, Virginia complements existing facility operations in Chicago, Denver and Irvine, California. As a data center-centric company, Latisys is quickly becoming the hosting and colocation company of choice for companies that demand more from their IT infrastructure partner. All while optimizing clients’ return on investment. All while ‘delivering more_’. Call 1-866-956-9594 or visit www.latisys.com for additional information.

About F5 Networks

F5 Networks, Inc., the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), helps the world’s largest enterprises and service providers realize the full value of virtualization, cloud computing, and on-demand IT. F5^® solutions help integrate disparate technologies to provide greater control of the infrastructure, improve application delivery and data management, and give users seamless, secure, and accelerated access to applications from their corporate desktops and smart devices. An open architectural framework enables F5 customers to apply business policies at “strategic points of control” across the IT infrastructure and into the public cloud. F5 products give customers the agility they need to align IT with changing business conditions, deploy scalable solutions on demand, and manage mobile access to data and services. Enterprises, service and cloud providers, and leading online companies worldwide rely on F5 to optimize their IT investments and drive business forward. For more information, go to www.f5.com.

F5, VIPRION, BIG-IP, Local Traffic Manager, Global Traffic Manager, iControl, and vCMP are trademarks or service marks of F5 Networks, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be 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.