F5 Networks Reports Highest Growth in
Fixed Switch Market
SEATTLE--Feb. 18, 2004--
Company Boosts Layer 4-7 Fixed Switch Market with Highest Gain in
Market Share and Triple the Revenue Growth of Nearest Competitor
F5 Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq:FFIV), the leading provider of Application Traffic Management products, today announced it has captured the largest market share growth and highest revenue gains in the Layer 4-7 (L4-7) Fixed Server Loading Balancing (SLB) switch market for the last quarter of 2003. F5 reported the highest quarterly growth in this market, with a 3.5-point increase from 24.6 percent to 28.1 percent, according to a report by the Dell'Oro Group(1).
In addition, the company's revenue growth of 28.1 percent, from $14.4 million to $18.4 million, represents 57 percent of all revenue growth in the Fixed SLB segment quarter-over-quarter and is three times that of F5's nearest competitor.
"F5's focus on delivering solutions that help businesses optimize application performance and protect their technology investments has eroded our competitors' market share," said Dan Matte, Vice-President of Product Management and Marketing at F5 Networks. "The market's increasing demand for our products reflects the trend of enterprises deploying our solutions in places beyond traditional Web-based applications. F5's advanced Application Switches and open iControl interface have proven to offer customers a unique value proposition for the successful and secure delivery of their business-critical applications."
The Dell'Oro L4-7 Ethernet Switch report does not count any revenue from F5's L4-7 SLB appliance-based products. Even without that revenue included, the Dell'Oro report states that just 4.2 percent market share separates the top two vendors.
The Dell'Oro Group defines Layer 4-7 Fixed SLB products as switches that are specially designed to switch network or Internet traffic optimally between a group of servers and must load balance traffic based on L4/L7 information (e.g. TCP port, URL, cookie). Load balancing functionality must be native to the switch.
(1) Source: Dell'Oro Q4 2003 Market Share Report (Layer 4-7) Ethernet Switch Report, February 2004. |
