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What are the new trends and technologies that have emerged within the data
center space?
With growing virtualization, there's efficiency in the underlying hardware
requirements. You need less hardware to do the same work. This is one of the
major factors that would be driving the evolution of data centers. Virtualizing
servers not only realize tremendous cost savings, but also have a better
architecture for availability and ongoing maintenance. The next two years will
bring significant change within the context of the data center.
What are the key challenges businesses face today while managing and
securing their data?
The various challenges companies face today can be categorized under six
areas:
- Application security and data integrity
- Business continuity and disaster recovery
- User experience and application performance
- Storage growth
- Unified security enforcement and access control
- Managing scale and consolidation
Do you educate customers about new technologies?
Because F5 products can handle such a wide variety of environments, we offer
varoius training and support options to fit the particular situation. With
on-site training and multiple facilities across five continents, we provide
customers with practical experience, so that they can be self-sufficient in
their own network environment.
How well trained are your partners to sell new technologies and solutions
within the data center space?
We have certification programs that are designed to help F5 partner
resellers and their customers. The F5 certification will assure that one has the
technical know-how to recommend, specify, configure, and install F5 products.
The certification programs help individuals and partners provide effective
pre-sales assistance as well as installation and support services. These
programs include coursework, examinations, and performance objectives designed
to give participants a solid technical understanding of the concepts required
for design and implementation.
How do you plan to handle the competition?
We have developed a product/solution portfolio whose functions require an
adaptive internal architecture that is unique to F5 and based on our modular
TMOS, iRules, iControl API, and specialized hardware designs. This internal
architecture enables us to provide the necessary means of integration and rapid
time to market for new application networking solutions. Unlike the vast
majority of our product competitors who are startups, F5 has a solid business
model and balance sheet that, because we're a completely transparent public
company.
What is F5's strategy for the coming months?
Today we have extended our virtualization benefits in the network. Storage
is an adjacent, high-growth market to application delivery driven by the
explosive growth in IT storage capacity as well as escalating management costs.
New methods are needed to allow growth while maintaining control, as the storage
infrastructure is being bombarded and the growth of these same applications in
the enterprise are expected to continue growing for some time.
SUBBALAKSHMI BM
subbalakshmibm@cybermedia.co.in Page(s) 1
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