F5 Networks agreed to acquire privately-held NGINX for approximately $670 million.
NGINX, which is based in San Francisco, offers an open source, web server that can be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The solution is widely deployed on websites. The first version of NGINX was released in 2004. Investors in NGINX include e.ventures, Goldman Sachs, Index Ventures, MSD Capital, NEA, Runa Capital and Telstra.
F5 plans to enhance NGINX’s current offerings with F5 security solutions and will integrate F5 cloud-native innovations with NGINX’s software load balancing technology, accelerating F5’s time to market of application services for modern, containerized applications. F5 will also leverage its global sales force, channel infrastructure, and partner ecosystem to scale NGINX selling opportunities to the enterprise.
F5 intends to maintain the NGINX brand. F5 also said open source is a core part of its’s multi-cloud strategy.
“F5’s acquisition of NGINX strengthens our growth trajectory by accelerating our software and multi-cloud transformation,” said François Locoh-Donou, President & CEO of F5. “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.”
“NGINX and F5 share the same mission and vision. We both believe applications are at the heart of driving digital transformation. And we both believe that an end-to-end application infrastructure—one that spans from code to customer—is needed to deliver apps across a multi-cloud environment,” said Gus Robertson, CEO of NGINX, Inc. “I’m excited to continue this journey by adding the power of NGINX’s open source innovation to F5’s ADC leadership and enterprise reach. F5 gains depth with solutions designed for DevOps, while NGINX gains breadth with access to tens of thousands of customers and partners.”
