More Trial Versions of Products

We recently added ARX to the family of  F5 products that you can try for free.  If your organization is anything like ours, storage requirements are exploding.  Check out the virtual edition of ARX to see how you can make it easier and less expensive to keep up with all the files people and systems generate every day.

Spreading a Little Cheer

Last week I had the opportunity to work with Swedish Medical Center to film a public service announcement that encourages people to donate gifts for children who are undergoing treatment at their pediatric center.  The process of filming was a lot of fun and the the kids who participated were fantastic!  Hopefully some of the local media outlets will use the message to get the word out for this worthy cause.

Today we issued a press release that covers both toy donations and the “Holidays at the Hospital” event that takes place on December 19th.

If you’re in Seattle, please consider dropping off a toy for a child who could really use the distraction as they go through a challenging time.  If you’re outside of Seattle, I’m sure your local Children’s Hospital or the pediatric unit of your local hospital has a similar need for toys to help kids undergoing treatment and would welcome a donation.

F5 Added to the S&P 500

I turned my Blackberry on after landing yesterday to discover that FFIV was added to the S&P 500.  That’s a tremendous accolade for F5 and something that we’re very proud of.

More importantly, I think it speaks volumes about our customers who have invested their money and time in our products and the innovation they’ve been able to drive by using them.

CNNMoney.com wrote a piece about our addition today. One of the things I discussed with the editor was how my grandmother gave me a few shares in Eastman Kodak a long time ago.  I still have those shares due to sentimental value although my grandmother passed away some time ago.  Although it may be a little weird to hang on to them for that reason, I probably will continue to do so.

We did a little homework to see how we stack up on the local front here in Washington state. F5 is the 11th company from Washington to be added to the S&P 500 and based on our market capitalization for today, we’re ranked 7th.

Overcoming 7 Key Challenges to Virtualization

Dell recently published an interesting piece on how F5's BIG-IP and ARX address some of the key challenges people encounter when they embrace server virtualization.  The challenges they discuss are:

1. Resource Starvation
2. Lack of Application Awareness
3. Unanticipated Costs
4. Unused Virtualization Features
5. Increased Storage Requirements
6. Congested Storage Network
7. Management Complexity

The article From Dell's Power Solutions can be found here.

Tata Nano - The People's Car from Tata Motors - Powered by F5

Tata Motors in India is getting ready to begin taking orders for their $2,500 car - The Nano.  The car comes in 3 variations: the Standard, CX and LX. The Standard is pretty basic given that you can upgrade to the CX and get things like heating and booster assisted brakes.  Moving up to the LX offers options like fabric seats, fog lamps and a mobile phone charger outlet.

If the Nano is successful, it will significantly change the profile of who can afford to purchase a car.  The first production run is 100,000 cars and Tata expects to have a lottery to allocate them to prospective buyers.

What does this have to do with F5 you may be wondering?  Go to the website for the Nano and look at the bottom right portion of the screen.  "Powered by F5 Networks" - they are using F5 products like Web Accelerator to ensure their prospective customers have a good experience online. 

Just a neat old picture

This is Tom who is an F5er and rabid Seahawks fan.

Can You Drive Forward by Looking in the Rear View Mirror?

I read the CRN article that @lmacvittie cited in a tweet she sent this morning.  The article contains the following quote from a Nortel partner: “Alteon is still the standard by which F5 Networks sets its sites but it [the Alteon product line] needs a new lease of life,” 

We obviously need to engage with Darren Boyce, the person who made that statement as it couldn’t be farther from the truth.  If we were to use Alteon as the target for where we pointed our development efforts, it would be like driving a car down the road while we only looked in the rearview mirror.  As Mr. Boyce said, the Alteon products need a new lease on life, so why would we model ourselves on them?

What does dictates our direction?  Tons of feedback from customers, prospective customers and people who have selected competitive products.  That’s way more powerful than modeling ourselves after one of our competitors.

If Radware Succeeds in Purchasing Alteon, Will Anyone Care?

Both Radware and Nortel issued press releases yesterday that kick off a process that has been rumored for some time. 

Originally news outlets were reporting that Radware was going to purchase Nortel's Metro Ethernet switching business.  When I heard that, it just didn't sound right and prompted me to write this blog entry.  As it turns out, it was the Alteon business that Radware was targeting - the Metro Ethernet rumor just didn't make sense.

Since Nortel is in bankruptcy, the Radware announcement will trigger an auction process that will allow any other interested parties to bid for the Alteon business.  So, it's not a done deal yet.

If Radware is successful in the bidding process, I'm not sure how existing Alteon customers will react.  Customers would be going from a ship that is sinking to one that lost $7.1 million on revenues of $24.9 million last quarter.  Radware's net loss for all of 2008 was $31 million, up from $12 million in 2007.  The sum of Alteon and Radware's market share will still put them in a single digit range.

Many of the customers who purchased Alteon in the past will have done so because of Nortel being behind the product.  I believe that F5 can provide a better alternative for customers that want the best in technology, support and financial stability in this space.

F5 Makes Forbes' "Turbo Techs: 25 Hottest Tech Stocks List"

We came in at #12 on the list.  It's the first time that F5 has made an appearance on this list so that's pretty neat.

While I was surfing around the Forbes site, I also came across a funny thing that they track - a list of the wealthiest fictional characters called the Forbes Fictional 15.

[Update] And here's the article on F5 that goes along with the list.

My favorite quote of the week (so far)

“I would never go to an organization that deployed Cisco or Citrix LBs (and not F5) because I would have to question their decision making process there”

This was from a customer visit that one of our team members did this week.

Top 5 Internet Traffic Events

According to an article in The New York Times today, Barack Obama's inauguration ranked as the 5th highest traffic generator on the Internet as measured by Akamai since they started tracking this sort of stuff in 2005.

The top events in case you don't follow the jump are:

5. Barack Obama inauguration

4. 2006 College basketball playoffs day 1

3. 2008 College basketball playoffs day 1

2. US eliminated by Ghana in 2006 World Cup

and the #1 traffic generating event according to Akamai....

1. 2008 US presidential election

Today's inauguration event displaced day one of the 2007 US College basketball playoffs to capture the #5 spot.

Events are measured in terms of peak visitors per minute to Akamai's system.  It would be interesting to see what bandwidth consumption is like and number of concurrent connections to gauge how things like video streaming are altering traffic patterns.

A Different Competitive Landscape for 2009

2009 is a very different competitive landscape for our BIG-IP business than we've seen in a while.

Juniper exited the space early in 2008 when they shut down their Redline division.  Foundry was acquired by Brocade late in 2008.  And now Nortel has announced their bankruptcy.

For the history buffs out there, Nortel paid $7.8 billion for Alteon WebSystems back in 2000.

There are stories circulating that Radware has extended an offer for a portion of Nortel's business for $30-$50 million.  It's unclear if they are targeting the Alteon business.  If that turns out to be the case, the reduction in value between the acquisition price Nortel paid and the potential sale price is nothing short of astounding.  Radware reported that they had about $137 million in cash on their last earnings announcement. Their market cap is currently $112 million.

Nortel and Foundry combined represent about 10% of the Application Delivery Controller market.  F5 will compete vigorously to get more than our fair share of that as the landscape changes.

Product Placement on 24 Redux

A few years ago I commented on product placement used in the television show 24.

Last night I watched the 2 hour "Redemption" episode and noticed the following product placements:

1. Cisco Tele Presence. "Let's go to the tele presence suite" was worked into the script.
2. Hyundai vehicles featured prominently.
3. Verizon & Sprint - if memory serves me correctly, the outside of a mobile phone had one carrier and the screen had the other.

I'm sure there were others that I missed.  If you noticed some that I didn't catch, what were they?

3 Things I Like About my New BlackBerry Bold

Our folks in IT equipped me with RIM's latest version of the BlackBerry yesterday, the Bold.  Here are a few thoughts after almost 24 hours using the unit:

Things I like:

1. It should work in Japan (and S. Korea).  I'll be heading there soon and will be able to test it out. Hopefully I will have no more crushed hopes after turning on my old unit whenever I got there just in case something had changed only to confirm that it still couldn't connect!
2. WiFi connectivity.  Pretty much everything except voice traffic flows over WiFi once you've enabled the service and defined the networks you want to connect to. Sweet.
3. The screen.  Same caliber as my iTouch - fantastic!
4. A bonus thing I like - the ability to view and edit PowerPoint files.

The things that are on my watch list are:

1. Battery life.  3G+WiFi+Bluetooth+nice screen are sure to suck the life out of the battery fairly quickly.  Will see how that goes.
2. Size.  It's a little larger than previous versions.  Neither a positive nor negative for me yet, just different.  It still fits in my pocket.  I can't bring myself to wear it (or any previous version) on my belt with the holder that comes with it. Maybe I'm still scarred from seeing kids wear calculators on their belts in high school. 
3. The unit locked up twice today when enabling WiFi connectivity.  Power cycling resolved the issue and it's been fine since.

I should have some time to explore the unit a little more in the next week.