F5's FirePass 4100 Product Earns Top Score in InfoWorld
Competitive Review of SSL VPN Solutions;
Achieves 'Excellent' Ranking and High Marks for Exceptional
Scalability and Overall Flexibility and Functionality
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 6, 2006--F5 Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq:FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced that its FirePass 4100 Controller Version 5.5 received the top score in a competitive review of SSL VPN solutions conducted by InfoWorld Media Group, a division of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research, and event company. The FirePass 4100 earned an 'Excellent' ranking and the review's best overall score of 9.1 out of 10.
FirePass received a perfect score in the review for the category of Scalability. According to the reviewer, FirePass 4100 "has all of the scalability an enterprise could want," while the competing solution "is a very capable performer that just doesn't quite scale like the 4100." The reviewer continues that FirePass "supports a wide range of remote access options. For added scalability, a FirePass, or even a cluster of FirePass devices, can offload SSL processing to a F5 BIG-IP system. Moving this CPU-intensive processing to a platform built for SSL tasks makes a lot of sense, and it allows the FirePass to serve a virtually unlimited number of users."
The reviewer also lauds the "overall flexibility and functionality" of the FirePass, stating that "there isn't any scenario that the FirePass can't handle," and calls it "an excellent all-around SSL VPN appliance." Giving the FirePass product high marks in the categories of Security, Interoperability and Value, the review highlights its 'Visual Policy Editor' capability that provides "powerful end-point control that allows administrators to create various security policies based on the 'who, what, and where' of the client", and to "not only create pre-log-on sequences but also post-log-on and remediation sequences."
"Winning a competitive review conducted by InfoWorld with its solid evaluation methodology and demanding criteria for excellence is an honor and a testament to the strength of our product offering," said Ameet Dhillon, Director of Product Management at F5 Networks. "This unbiased, independent review gives our customers added confidence that F5 truly delivers a superior product and the industry's best value. The results of the review validate that FirePass is a top performer when it comes to the criteria most critical to enterprises' buying decisions, with its outstanding performance, scalability, ease-of-use, security and interoperability
-- not to mention unsurpassed end-point security."
InfoWorld evaluates products in its Test Center based on criteria deemed most critical to the buying decision and assigns a weighted percentage to the criterion based on its importance. In the review process, tested products are assigned a score for each criterion on a scale of 1 to 10. InfoWorld calculates the total score by multiplying the assigned percentage of each criterion by its respective score, and then assigns a verbal ranking based on the score. Products receiving a total score of between 8.7 and 10 are ranked "Excellent". For the full review, go to infoworld.com
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About the FirePass SSL VPN Product
F5's award-winning FirePass product enables enterprises to provide secure remote access to network resources using any web-enabled device and over a range of access networks, regardless of location. With FirePass, organizations benefit from superior performance and scalability, easy management, and the most advanced application security. It also offers the industry's only open Application Programming Interface (API) and Software Developer's Kit (SDK) to reduce the total cost of ownership through increased automation. And, with a F5 solution, customers can be ensured of complete business continuity by deploying F5's global traffic management product with F5's SSL VPN solution. |
