F5 Networks Pays $ 670 Million to Acquire NGINX, a Web Server That Manages Much of the Internet – GeekWire

F5 Networks announced the acquisition of NGINX, one of the most popular web servers on the Internet, for $ 670 million.

The agreement is huge for F5, which focuses on cloud and security application services. The application application infrastructure is more important under the F5 banner as the Seattle-based company seeks to move from being a hardware manufacturer to a group focusing on software and services to build applications working with multiple cloud usage scenarios.

"We believe that every business can take advantage of the agility and flexibility offered by modern technologies without compromising security, manageability, and reliability," said François Locoh-Donou, F5's Chief Executive Officer. in a statement. "The merged company will offer every customer, from the application developer to the network engineer, to the security specialist, the tools they need to ensure the availability and security of their applications on the Internet. all platforms, from corporate datacenters to private and public clouds. "

If you have visited GeekWire or a number of sites today, most of this information is transmitted via NGINX. It is one of the best web servers and applications on the market, with services like Apache and Microsoft's IIS.

F5 indicates that the NGINX brand will remain after the closing of the acquisition. NGINX CEO Gus Robertson and founders Igor Sysoev and Maxim Konovalov will join F5 and continue to lead NGINX. Robertson will join the F5 leadership team under Locoh-Donou.

"NGINX and F5 share the same mission and vision. We both believe that applications are at the heart of digital transformation, "Robertson said in a statement. "And we both believe that an end-to-end application infrastructure, from code to client, is needed to deliver applications in a multi-cloud environment."

F5 executives said they were determined to keep NGINX's strategy open source. The company announced that it will integrate its security solutions and cloud innovations with NGINX's software load balancing technology, which will accelerate the development of services for F5's containerized applications. F5 will also benefit from its strong global sales force to step up its efforts to integrate NGINX into the business.

The F5 share rose 2.6% today. It expects the agreement to forecast revenue growth for software based on software revenues as a percentage of the company's total balance sheet in 2019 and 2020.