How does LTM differentiates from other brands, head-on?
Dear all,
sometimes it's difficult to convince customers by just showing the strength of the LTM such as SSL Offloading, their algorithms to do in-depth health checks, the fact that LTM runs on full-proxy TMOS architecture, etc...
Customers will want a head-on comparison with other brands such as KEMP because they are experiencing marketing-fatigue.
Other than price points, are there strong factors we can use to compare with other brands head-on? Are there researches on such comparisons like performance and reliability tests? For example, I read somewhere F5 appliances are built to last for 7 years.
There are also user-communities giving their feedback on load balancers. Do you think curated reviews will work too? https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/f5-big-ip_vs_kemp-loadmaster
Here's my perspective
(Not a beneficiary sales guy or affiliate, just an independent technical freelancer)There's no serious competition to F5 at this point, unless all you need are the basic LTM features.
With that said, if you only need basic LB/ADC, you can find solutions from other vendors that do the same at a lower purchase price. Most companies that end up going down that route will eventually migrate to F5 once the basic features are no longer enough. A common reason for migration is a lack of advanced security features. The main problem with budget competitors, although some are great, is that they sell a product that covers 75% of what LTM can do, and nothing else. F5 is a top tier player in many niches, including LB/ADC, SSL VPN & Access and WAF. If you ever need a product for more than one, you can win in long-term operational costs and quality. Engineers that manage the infrastructure can then afford to be familiar with less vendor-specifics, and be more specialized. This generally results in better use of infrastructure assets and less human errors.
You can use Gartner's quadrant as one measure (link below). Any other comparisons/evaluations created by reputable 3rd parties will do. If you want a fair heads-up, do not take into account anything stated on official web-sites or forums of beneficiaries (this means you should also ignore DevCentral).
Gartner 2016 report: https://interact.f5.com/2016Q1EGartner2015ADCsEMEAOCT07.html
