F5 vs Ankr

About

F5, Inc. is a Seattle, Washington-based application security and delivery technology company — publicly traded on NASDAQ (NASDAQ: FFIV) as an S&P 500 Information Technology component — providing application delivery controllers, multi-cloud application security, load balancing, and distributed cloud security services to enterprise customers managing applications across on-premises data centers, private clouds, and public cloud environments (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) through approximately 6,000 employees worldwide. F5's product portfolio spans hardware BIG-IP appliances (application delivery controllers providing load balancing, SSL offloading, web application firewall, and traffic management in on-premises data centers), software BIG-IP Virtual Edition (the same application delivery functionality running as virtual machines in private clouds), NGINX (the open-source web server and reverse proxy acquired in 2019 for $670M, with NGINX Plus as the commercial offering), and F5 Distributed Cloud Services (multi-cloud networking, bot defense, API security, and DDoS mitigation delivered as-a-service). F5 launched the Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP) Partner Program with inaugural technology partners including AppViewX, CrowdStrike, DigiCert, Kasm Technologies, Keyfactor, MazeBolt, and OPSWAT — integrating certificate lifecycle management, endpoint detection, DDoS protection, and application security testing into a unified platform. CEO François Locoh-Donou leads F5's multi-year transition from a hardware-dominant business (where BIG-IP physical appliances generated 60%+ of revenue at peak) toward a software and SaaS-led model that grows recurring revenue as enterprises migrate applications to cloud environments. In fiscal year 2024, F5 reported revenue of approximately $2.8 billion.