Who is F5?

F5 Networks is the Industry leader (see Gartner Group Magic Quadrant) in Application Traffic Management, enabling enterprises and service providers to optimize any mission-critical application or web service, providing secure and predictable delivery of application traffic in an unpredictable environment. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and has offices throughout North America, Europe Japan and Asia Pacific. FY '02 revenues for F5 were $108 million and the company employs roughly 500 people. F5 Networks is located on the web at www.f5.com. Back to Questions

What is BIG-IP?

BIG-IP is a local area application traffic management solution (load balancing, high availability and SSL processing). BIG-IP provides the benefits of traffic management, traditionally reserved for Web-only applications, to all IP based applications and Web services. BIG-IP products also include SSL acceleration to offload this processing-intensive function from the application servers themselves, increasing application performance. Back to Questions

What other products does F5 offer?

In addition to BIG-IP, F5 offers 3-DNS which is the wide area network management solution, ensuring high availability, reliability, security and scalability for Web applications, BIG-IP Link Controller which offers high availability and intelligent routing for multi-homed networks, BIG-IP Blade Controller which provides high availability, scale, security and performance for blade servers and applications. All of F5 products have an open API called iControl that is based on SOAP/XML or Corba. iControl allows applications and Web services to interact with the network automatically — ensuring fast, secure, reliable delivery. Back to Questions

Why are Sanctum and F5 working together? What is our partnership?

F5 and Sanctum have entered into a joint development and co-marketing agreement to deliver integrated application level traffic management and security to customers. We are working together to provide our customers with the expertise and solutions required to address customer application security and traffic management requirements. As the leader in Web application security it makes sense that we have chosen to partner with F5 who is the leading provider of Internet Traffic Management solutions for enterprises. Based on F5's SOAP/XML API iControl, we have developed the BIG-IP Link for AppShield. Back to Questions

What solution are we offering jointly?

F5 and Sanctum are offering our individual products with the BIG-IP Link for AppShield. F5 and Sanctum offer complementary products and services, which are purchased through each company's normal sales channels. F5 and Sanctum are working together to offer a solution that helps clients improve their level of application performance and availability while leveraging the rich web-application security features of AppShield. Back to Questions

What does the integrated solution do?

Sanctum has written software that implements 3 important functions: Automates the installation and configuration of AppShield and F5 parameters in a common environment Implements 'multimedia bypass rules' that redirects static web traffic (e.g., gif, jpeg, wav, mp3 files) away from AppShield and sends it directly to the web servers Provides advanced health checking for AppShield farms Back to Questions

Where does this software reside and how is it used?

Sanctum has developed a utility called BIG-IP Link for AppShield. This utility runs external to the current AppShield management console on any Win2k or Solaris machine. The BIG-IP Link utility walks the user through a couple questions and then automatically configures the associated parameters on the BIG-IP. BIG-IP Link uses F5's iControl API to communicate with the BIG-IP. Back to Questions

How do current Sanctum customers obtain the BIP-IP Link for AppShield software?

This software is available for free and can be downloaded from Sanctum's AppShield Extranet site. This site is available to all licensed AppShield customers. Back to Questions

What are the key benefits/selling points for customers?

Lower Implementation Cost with Rapid Deployment Automatic configuration of AppShield and the BIG-IP system in a common environment Ability to auto-configure for sites using the BIG-IP system to balance across more than one site/service Only changes configuration of relevant sites and services Human error eliminated due to one time configuration Faster time to production - more time to spend on strategic projects Higher Performance with lower hardware cost: Through traffic management, each AppShield node will handle at least 2-3 times the traffic For every two AppShield nodes required, only one is needed with the BIG-IP system Robust fail-over / high availability solution Advanced 'Health Checking' in solution improves performance under heavy loads Greater Customer Satisfaction through Combined Solution Increased site performance Lower cost of administration Secure customer data Investment protection BIG-IP gains new security enforcement features AppShield gains enhanced configuration, performance and availability Back to Questions