ZDNet Asia Top Tech 50 F5 Networks www.f5.com

Best known for its server load balancers, F5 Networks pioneered the traffic management market. Its load-balancing switches, working behind the scenes, ensure traffic loads are evenly distributed across Web servers.

Last year, the company introduced Big-IP, its Internet traffic management switch designed to help businesses get better performance from their networks. Today, F5 addresses three main areas of application delivery networking: application security, application optimization and application availability.

Over the years, the company has made several strategic acquisitions to strengthen its technology portfolio. In 2003, it bought uRoam which develops products that connect remote computers to corporate networks using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption, and a year later, F5 paid US$29 million for MagniFire, an application firewall startup.

In its most recent acquisition, F5 announced in September 2005 the purchase of application accelerator provider Swan Labs for US$43 million. The acquisition was completed on Oct. 4.

The Seattle-based company reported healthy financials for its third fiscal quarter ended Sep. 30, 2005. Compared to the same quarter a year ago, revenues were up 65 percent to US$73.1 million from US$44.2 million, while net income was US$14.0 million compared to US$7.4 million.

This company is listed in Security.

Financials

Fiscal year-end Sept	FY05	FY04	FY03	FY02	FY01
Global full-year revenue (US$millions)	—	171.2	115.9	108.3	107.4
Global full-year net income (US$millions)	—	32.9	4.1	-8.6	-30.8

Average year-on-year revenue growth over 4 years	18.6 %
Average year-on-year net income growth over 4 years	307.4 %
Percentage of revenue from Asia	—
Percentage of Asian revenues from channel	—

Operations:

Founded	United States/1998
First Asian office	Singapore/1999
Global employees	790
Employees in Asia	—
Asian countries: Total 7	China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand
Notes	Data correct as at September 2005. Information was compiled by ZDNet Asia from sources such as official reports, corporate Web sites, and Hoover's. ZDNet Asia strived to get the latest information but does not guarantee the correctness or completeness of the data. The information provided on this site is for general informational purposes only and is not an offer to buy or sell any securities.

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