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F5 Acquired NGINX For $670M (zdnet.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the over-half-a-billion dept.

Long-time Slashdot reader skdffff quotes ZDnet: F5 Networks on Monday announced that it will acquire NGINX, which provides popular open-source software of the same name, for $670 million. The deal advances F5's aim of capitalizing on the trend toward multi-cloud deployments.

F5 plans to enhance NGINX's current offerings with F5 security solutions and will integrate F5 cloud-native technology with NGINX's software load balancing technology. This should accelerate F5's time to market of application services for containerized applications. Meanwhile, NGINX will benefit from F5's global salesforce, channel infrastructure and partner ecosystem.

The acquisition adds "the power of NGINX's open source innovation to F5's ADC leadership and enterprise reach," NGINX CEO Gus Robertson said in a statement

38 comments

  1. Here's how much you should care by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Read this, straight from PR Newswire hell:

    "By bringing F5's world-class application security and rich application services portfolio for improving performance, availability, and management together with NGINX's leading software application delivery and API management solutions, unparalleled credibility and brand recognition in the DevOps community, and massive open source user base, we bridge the divide between NetOps and DevOps with consistent application services across an enterprise's multi-cloud environment,"

    That's quite a sizeable collection of buzzwords in one single sentence. The reality of course is, nobody knows who F5 is, and nobody cares about Nginx non-free offerings. So in short, nobody cares.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    1. Re: Here's how much you should care by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Canâ(TM)t speak to how much you care, but if you donâ(TM)t know who F5 is then you donâ(TM)t do anything with networks and this probably isnâ(TM)t relevant to you anyway.

    2. Re:Here's how much you should care by infolation · · Score: 4, Funny

      and will integrate F5 cloud-native blockchain technology with NGINX's deep learning software load balancing A.I. technology.

      ~ FTFY

    3. Re: Here's how much you should care by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      I love the F-5!

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    4. Re: Here's how much you should care by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Your failed apostrophes indicate you aren't using a real OS, so why should anyone listen to you?

    5. Re: Here's how much you should care by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well me too, but for $670M? It's a 60 year old aircraft now!

      I think you can pick 'em up on the used market for a couple mil, tops.

    6. Re: Here's how much you should care by Aethedor · · Score: 1

      I love the F-5!

      --
      It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
    7. Re: Here's how much you should care by Aethedor · · Score: 1

      I love the F-5!

      --
      It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
    8. Re: Here's how much you should care by Aethedor · · Score: 1

      I don't like the F-5...

      --
      It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
    9. Re:Here's how much you should care by grilled-cheese · · Score: 1

      ...The reality of course is, nobody knows who F5 is, and nobody cares about Nginx non-free offerings. So in short, nobody cares.

      F5 is most known for its hardware load balancer solutions. People care about those and have heard of F5 in that context most likely.

    10. Re:Here's how much you should care by tk77 · · Score: 1

      The reality of course is, nobody knows who F5 is

      While I agree with you on the PR-speak, many of us in IT that need a load balancing solution know who F5 is. Even if ultimately another solution was chosen. We originally went with the OSS version of NGINX before switching to HAProxy.

    11. Re:Here's how much you should care by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The reality of course is, nobody knows who F5 is, and nobody cares about Nginx non-free offerings. So in short, nobody cares.

      Famous last words. F5 Big IP Local Traffic Manager is used heavily in many large enterprise networks.

    12. Re: Here's how much you should care by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If you have never heard of F5, you have not been an IT professional very long, or you're a software developer? They make hardware load balancers.

    13. Re: Here's how much you should care by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's 2019, real software supports UTF.

    14. Re:Here's how much you should care by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 2

      The people who use Nginx commercially know _very well_ who F5 is, and we people who bring internal open source solutions to production environments know them both very well. Please believe me that we care, in much the same way we cared when Oracle bouught Sun and took over MySQL and Java copyrights and licenses.

    15. Re:Here's how much you should care by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that will go well with our devsecfinops driven development!

    16. Re: Here's how much you should care by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Move I just donâ(TM)t care enough to move to my computer to respond to an idiot on the Internet.

    17. Re:Here's how much you should care by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      F5 is a prologue play by Auden.

    18. Re: Here's how much you should care by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Theyâ(TM)ll buy docker next, once everyone has adopted serverless platforms.

  2. Boy are they gonna be pissed by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Funny

    when they find out they coulda just downloaded open source software for free.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re: Boy are they gonna be pissed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the world as we know is boiling down to two things: compute and code. everything else is derivative.

  3. Will they rename it? by ickleberry · · Score: 1

    I was never mad keen on the current name that I always pronounced as "nuh-ghinks"

    1. Re:Will they rename it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      They already do. I worked as a software engineer at F5 and the web server that delivers the BIG-IQ UI is called "webd"...which is a recompiled version of NGINX

    2. Re: Will they rename it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Try pronouncing it as "engine-X"

      But for me the first thing that comes to mind is "hijinks" with an "n"

    3. Re: Will they rename it? by _merlin · · Score: 1

      It was literally years before I found out it's supposed to be read as "Engine-X". I was pronouncing it "n'Jinx" (like "N'SYNC" I guess). Names are stupid if you need someone to explain how to say them. If they write it line N-gin-X or nGINx or something, it might be more intuitive. But I don't know anyone who worked it out without being told.

    4. Re:Will they rename it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually you didn't because there is no such thing as a "software engineer". A software developer, yes, but not an engineer as that is a term reserved for those who have completed a formal degree in an established physics-based discipline.

    5. Re:Will they rename it? by godefroi · · Score: 1

      Not here, it isn't.

      --
      Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
  4. 2 dinosaurs walk in to a bar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and cloud cloud cloud cloud. Because cloud. At least it is an exit for nginx.

  5. Congrats on an F5-powered first post by tepples · · Score: 5, Funny

    The reality of course is, nobody knows who F5 is

    Last I checked, F5 was the key you press to reload Slashdot's front page to see if there's a new article where you can get first post. Congratulations.

  6. DUPE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dupe story. Slow news day huh.

  7. nginx is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    apache is dead. big monolithic webservers are dead.

    Our block-based SV startup spins up an AWS instance, turns on the docker, and runs:

    while true ; do node ./app ; done

    We're a unicorn and our CEO is a thought leader.

    1. Re:nginx is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, well that instance of ELB that you put in at tier 1 in front of your AWS instances is nginx rebranded. Ha.

    2. Re:nginx is dead by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

      Is it web scale?

      --
      Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  8. Worth it to see lawyers try to pronounce the names by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "In this proceeding we will be negotiating terms for a merger between ff..fffff..effive and nu..ngun...nn...nngi...unginix...eugenics...egnix...unnn.."

  9. Lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sold out like that? wtf.

    A) nginx shouldnt have sold out
    B) didnt F5 know they could download and fork it for free! Remind me of the early 2000s when I consulted for large corporations and they refused to use anything they couldnt pay for. I had to find someone who would sell them stuff like Perl.

    1. Re: Lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unless...their plan is to take the code proprietary and shut out the competition from any further code from their tree. Sure, folks can fork the project, but those most familiar with the code base may very well be shut out from contributing.

    2. Re: Lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The price would be even better if it had a third party module that parsed all traffic and sent anything from a Facebook server to /dev/null.

  10. Twitch.tv is a huge user of this software by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nginx is also used by Amazon for its Twitch.tv platform.