F5, Inc.

F5, Inc. is an American technology company specializing in application security, multi-cloud management, online fraud prevention, application delivery networking (ADN), application availability and performance, and network security, access, and authorization.

F5 originally offered application delivery controller (ADC) technology,^[2] but has since expanded into application layer, automation, multi-cloud, and security services. As ransomware, data leaks, DDoS, and other attacks on businesses of all sizes are arising, companies such as F5 have continued to reinvent themselves.^[3]

F5 is headquartered in Seattle, Washington in F5 Tower, with an additional 75 offices^[4] in 43 countries^[4] focusing on account management, global services support, product development, manufacturing, software engineering, and administrative jobs. Notable office locations include Spokane, Washington; New York, New York; Boulder, Colorado; London, England; San Jose, California; and San Francisco, California.^[4]

While the majority of F5's revenue continues to be attributed to its hardware products, such as the BIG-IP iSeries systems, the company has begun to offer additional modules on its proprietary operating system, TMOS (Traffic Management Operating System).^[5] These modules include Local Traffic Manager (LTM), Advanced Web Application Firewall (AWAF), DNS (previously named GTM), and Access Policy Manager (APM). These offer organizations that run BIG-IP systems the ability to deploy load balancing, Layer 7 application firewalls, single sign-on (for Azure AD, Active Directory, LDAP, and Okta), as well as enterprise-level VPNs. While the BIG-IP was traditionally a hardware product, F5 now offers it as a virtual machine, which it has branded as the BIG-IP Virtual Edition. The BIG-IP Virtual Edition is cloud-agnostic and can be deployed on-premises in a public and/or hybrid cloud environment.