F5 Joins NetApp Alliance Partner Program

F5 Networks, Inc. has joined the NetApp Alliance Partner Program as an Advantage Alliance Partner. F5 is collaborating with NetApp to provide customers with unified application and data delivery solutions to enable more agile and dynamic data centers.
 
Working together, F5 and NetApp will help customers bridge the gap from traditional to dynamic infrastructures by increasing the flexibility between users and resources. Agile IT environments allow enterprises to respond quickly to change – adding, removing, and changing application and data services on demand. The result is a powerful IT architecture – encompassing security, access, acceleration, availability, and data management—that adapts smoothly to an organization’s evolving IT requirements.
 
In addition to outlining a long-term strategy, F5 and NetApp are providing immediate benefits to their joint customers with initial solutions that leverage application delivery and file virtualization to unleash the power of data mobility today.
 
File Virtualization Delivers Transparent Data Mobility
With F5 ARX file virtualization solutions, NetApp customers will be able to automatically and transparently move data at will, dramatically reducing migration times and eliminating costly downtime.
 
F5’s ARX solutions virtualize the file storage environment, removing the static binding between clients and storage resources. Data can move freely – even during business hours – without affecting applications or users, and without requiring client reconfiguration. In addition, the ARX policy-based management capabilities allow IT organizations to create ‘set and forget’ policies to automate data movement, further simplifying management and reducing operational overhead.
 
“We’re delighted to become part of the Alliance Partner Program,” said Jim Ritchings, Vice President of Business Development at F5. “NetApp and F5 have a large shared customer base that is deriving tremendous value from our solutions, so this solution partnership makes a lot of sense. NetApp is a leader in the enterprise-class NAS market, and F5 has led the way in developing solutions like ARX that create a more dynamic infrastructure and have clear ROI. Our joint solution is very compelling, and by working together we will deliver even more value to customers.”
 
“The NetApp Alliance Partner Program brings like-minded solution providers together to provide cost-effective and validated solutions to our customers to help them simplify their data infrastructure,” said Patrick Rogers, Vice President, Solutions Marketing at NetApp. “By joining the NetApp Alliance Partner Program, F5 will provide a complementary solution to NetApp storage that will help customers eliminate the many problems typically associated with data migration. Together, we’ll help customers boost productivity and increase the agility of their infrastructure.”
 
“Growth of unstructured data continues to accelerate and data center administrators are tasked to optimize access, provide increased mobility, and deliver solid cost-containment benefits,” said Dave Russell, Research Vice President at Gartner, Inc. “Looking forward, vendors that can extend their solutions’ data management and virtualization capabilities through strong industry solution partnerships should rank highly on organizations’ wish lists."