F5 Bridges The Gap With BIG-IP 3900 Platform

Application Delivery Networking vendor F5 Networks announced their latest hardware platform, the BIGIP 3900. Designed with the mid-sized enterprise in mind, the BIG-IP 3900 offers many of the performance enhancements and capabilities of the larger appliances, while still maintaining the 1U form factor of the entry-level F5 platforms. With an MSRP of $39,995, the new appliance is expected to be available in August 2009.

The BIG-IP 3900 is the first 1U appliance from F5 Networks capable of loading multiple software modules, enabling the 3900 to run a combination of local, global, and web traffic management. Previously, an SME looking for a mix of synchronous and asynchronous application delivery services was forced to choose between either multiple smaller appliances such as F5's BIG-IP 1600 series or F5's high-end appliances, such as the BIG-IP 6900.  With the 3900 platform, these customers can better match the platform to meet their performance and availability needs.

The mid-sized enterprise customer is possibly the hardest nut to crack for networking vendors. The needs of the mid-tier enterprise always exceed those of small businesses, but they lack the budget and the IT staff of the large-scale enterprises. The mid-sized customer is is forced to chose between less functionality in small business solutions or overbuying into large enterprise-class products. In either case, this ultimately costs, either in having to replace the SMB equipment as the company outgrows them or in having to pay a higher capital expenditure and ongoing support costs for solutions that are much larger than the company actually needs.  

The BIG-IP 3900 platform provides a compromise for the mid-tier enterprise, offering a happy medium between the performance needed to run multiple modules while scaling back on the high availability features found in F5's high-end platform.