F5

Robotics Create Future Employees

Dan Matte — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:41:00 GMT

F5 is supporting FIRST Robotics again this year financially and by mentoring teams. For those of you who are not familiar with FIRST, it is the organization that’s designed to improve kids’ involvement in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The US is lagging behind other countries in terms of how many STEM graduates we produce and the FIRST program has proven to get more kids interested in STEM. For companies like F5, STEM graduates are our lifeblood and we need more of them - we have about 180 job openings today.

FIRST was started by Dean Kamen, the guy behind things like portable dialysis, portable insulin pumps and the Segway. His goal was to make science just as interesting as sports by making kids who get into FIRST feel like rock stars. If you’ve been to a FIRST event or have mentored a team, you know that his approach is working.

Compared to their peers, FIRST students are:

· More than 3 times as likely to major specifically in engineering.

· Roughly 10 times as likely to have had an apprenticeship, internship, or co-op job in their freshman year.

· Significantly more likely to expect to achieve a post graduate degree.

· More than twice as likely to expect to pursue a career in science and technology.

· Nearly 4 times as likely to expect to pursue a career specifically in engineering.

· More than twice as likely to volunteer in their communities.

Here’s what you can do:

The kids in FIRST need of people to mentor teams. Your knowledge of development, support, marketing, sales, finance, IT or just about anything can be very helpful for these teams. Here are 2 links to help you get connected to teams in your area:

· Map of teams with contact information for Washington

· Map of teams with contact information for all the USA

The kick off for this year’s FIRST Robotics Challenge for high school is January 7^th, 2012. These are open for anybody to attend. During the kickoff event, the specifics of this year’s game are revealed and will shape the kids’ robot design decisions. I hope that you get involved with this fantastic organization. I guarantee that you will be amazed and rewarded by the passion and creativity displayed by the kids. You also will be doing something that will help our country’s long term competitiveness. Here’s a quote sent last month from a student at high school near Seattle about his experience helping a team of younger kids: "I love FIRST- it’s part of how I define myself, and if I could choose the most meaningful event in my life, the one point where I felt that I made a DIFFERENCE, this would be it!"

More Trial Versions of Products

Dan Matte — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:49:19 GMT

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

Dan Matte — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:52:17 GMT

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

Dan Matte — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 23:48:56 GMT

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.

Ticker symbol

Company

Location of Headquarters

Market Cap (billions)

Rank

MSFT

Microsoft Corp.

Redmond, Washington

$                              233.9

1

AMZN

Amazon.com Inc

Seattle, Washington

$                                78.8

2

COST

Costco Co.

Issaquah, Washington

$                                30.8

3

SBUX

Starbucks Corp.

Seattle, Washington

$                                24.2

4

PCAR

PACCAR Inc.

Bellevue, Washington

$                                20.7

5

EXPD

Expeditors Int'l

Seattle, Washington

$                                11.9

6

FFIV

F5 Networks

Seattle, Washington

$                                11.6

7

WY

Weyerhaeuser Corp.

Federal Way, Washington

$                                  9.5

8

JWN

Nordstrom

Seattle, Washington

$                                  9.2

9

EXPE

Expedia Inc.

Bellevue, Washington

$                                  7.8

10

PCL

Plum Creek Timber Co.

Seattle, Washington

$                                  5.4

11

Overcoming 7 Key Challenges to Virtualization

Dan Matte — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:33:39 GMT

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:

Resource Starvation

Lack of Application Awareness

Unanticipated Costs

Unused Virtualization Features

Increased Storage Requirements

Congested Storage Network

Management Complexity

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

Lots of F5ers log at least 5 rides in the 5th month.

Dan Matte — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:45:24 GMT

For the past 3 years people at F5 have participated in "The Commute Challenge" that is organized by Seattle's Cascade Bicycle Club. When people accept the challenge, they agree to ride their bike to work at least 5 days during the month of May. It's a great way to get people out on their bikes for some exercise and save a little gas while they're at it.

Some of the highlights for us this year are:

147 F5ers signed up
21,443 miles ridden (which equates to roughly 21,443 fewer pounds of carbon dioxide generated)
1,354 days ridden
114 people rode 5 or more days during May
F5 ranked 7th for # of days ridden out of all Seattle organizations
F5 ranked 8th for # of miles ridden out of all Seattle organizations

A hearty congratulations go out to everyone who participated!

File Virtualization Webcast

Dan Matte — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:37:27 GMT

Rick Gillett, who just joined F5 when we completed our acquisition of Acopia last week, was recently filmed giving an overview of file virtualization. It's hosted on the Network World site and is a great overview of what the technology can do. Here's a link to the webcast.

Jumping off buildings

Dan Matte — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:44:48 GMT

Last week I was in Australia and New Zealand for a Quarterly Business Review of our APAC region, customer and partner meetings, the grand opening of our new office in Sydney as well as media interviews.

While I was there, an industry Analyst firm published an interesting report on their take of why F5 intends to acquire Acopia Networks. If you read through it, I believe you'll find that the acquisition makes a lot of sense for us and the market.

If you want to see something that requires an actual leap of faith, check out this crazy activity that a few of us did while in New Zealand.

Where have you used an SSL VPN?

Dan Matte — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:24:18 GMT

Earlier this week I rode in a car from JFK airport in New York to Manhattan and synchronized about 20MB worth of email on the way. For some reason I thought this was more novel than using FirePass from an airplane.

The car was a Toyota Prius run by a company called Ozocar. The car was equipped with satellite Internet access. I'm not sure which service they used - the driver didn't know. They had a Linksys wireless router connected to the sattelite access so I was able to fire up my laptop and jump on the nework while rolling through traffic. They also had a standard 110V power strip at the bottom of the back seat in case your battery was low. One quick double click on my handy dandy FirePass VPN Tray Client and I was connected to the mother ship and synchronizing all my mail from the flight! The setup worked like a champ until we got into the high rises in the city and the satellite service was spotty.

I thought it was a pretty neat set up.

Second Life or Get a Life?

Dan Matte — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 20:16:41 GMT

Every now and then one of our employees will ask me if we plan on marketing F5 within the Second Life world. Our research has shown us that there is a fair overlap between gamers and people who administer our devices as part of their real life jobs. And while Second life is thriving and you see the occasional press release from companies that have "hung out a shingle" in the virtual world trying to draft off its success, I'm not sure that it would be a wise investment for us at this time.

Today I saw this news tidbit where Second Life has its first law suit between avatars over selling beds that allow other avatars to have sex.   I think I will continue to watch from the sidelines for a while because I don't think our products or technology are at the top of peoples' list while they are interacting in the virtual world.

Ticker symbol	Company	Location of Headquarters	Market Cap (billions)	Rank
MSFT	Microsoft Corp.	Redmond, Washington	$ 233.9	1
AMZN	Amazon.com Inc	Seattle, Washington	$ 78.8	2
COST	Costco Co.	Issaquah, Washington	$ 30.8	3
SBUX	Starbucks Corp.	Seattle, Washington	$ 24.2	4
PCAR	PACCAR Inc.	Bellevue, Washington	$ 20.7	5
EXPD	Expeditors Int'l	Seattle, Washington	$ 11.9	6
FFIV	F5 Networks	Seattle, Washington	$ 11.6	7
WY	Weyerhaeuser Corp.	Federal Way, Washington	$ 9.5	8
JWN	Nordstrom	Seattle, Washington	$ 9.2	9
EXPE	Expedia Inc.	Bellevue, Washington	$ 7.8	10
PCL	Plum Creek Timber Co.	Seattle, Washington	$ 5.4	11