F5 is a multicloud application delivery and security provider that helps organizations optimize and secure applications and application programming interfaces across on premises, cloud and edge environments. The company offers a broad portfolio of software, hardware and services that enable customers to deliver digital experiences while protecting against threats. Its solutions are available in perpetual, subscription and usage based models, as software as a service, managed services and as high performance systems. F5 serves customers worldwide from its headquarters in Seattle and operates through a global network of partners and distributors.

F5 generates revenue from the sale of packaged software in perpetual, subscription and usage based licenses, from software as a service offerings, from managed services contracts and from the sale of high performance hardware systems. In addition, the company earns fees from global services that include maintenance, consulting, training and technical support. Revenue is recognized when control of the product or service transfers to the customer, consistent with the terms of each arrangement. The company’s geographic sales are divided among the Americas, Europe Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific regions.

The company operates through the following segments.

• F5 Distributed Cloud Services: This segment provides a suite of software as a service and managed services that enable customers to secure, connect and run applications across public, private and edge clouds. It includes web application and API protection, distributed denial of service defense, bot mitigation, API security, multi cloud networking solutions such as network connect and app connect, domain name system services, content delivery network and a managed Kubernetes platform for application orchestration.

• F5 NGINX: This segment delivers lightweight application delivery and security solutions for modern container native and micro services applications and APIs. Offerings include NGINX Plus as a high performance load balancer, web server, content cache and API gateway, the NGINX One Console for centralized management, the NGINX Ingress Controller for Kubernetes traffic management and the WAF for NGINX to protect against layer 7 threats.

• F5 BIG IP: This segment offers feature rich application delivery and security solutions for legacy enterprise applications. It provides traffic management through local traffic manager, domain name system services, policy enforcement and automation tools, web application firewall capabilities, distributed denial of service defense, carrier grade network address translation and centralized management via BIG IQ.

F5 competes in the application delivery and security market against a broad set of rivals that include Citrix, Broadcom, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Envoy, HAProxy, Akamai, Cisco, Cloudflare, Fortinet, Juniper Networks, Palo Alto Networks, Radware, Thales Imperva and Aviatrix. The company’s competitive strengths stem from its ability to deliver and secure any application or API across any environment, its platform approach that unifies traffic management and security through the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform, and its extensive portfolio that spans legacy and modern workloads. F5 also invests in artificial intelligence to enhance threat detection, performance optimization and automation, which further differentiates its offerings from point solution providers.

F5 serves a diverse customer base that includes large enterprise businesses, public sector institutions, government agencies and service providers. These customers operate in industries such as finance, healthcare, retail, technology and telecommunications. The company’s global reach allows it to address the needs of organizations that require secure and reliable application delivery across hybrid and multicloud infrastructures.