F5 Unveils New DevCentral Community Site with Enhanced Social Collaboration Tools

F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced the fifth generation of its popular DevCentral™ community site. Combining social communication platforms—including wikis, video, podcasts, blogs, and discussion forums—with networking and application development tips, information, and code samples, DevCentral is the most comprehensive and active technical community for the Application Delivery Networking market.

This major update of the DevCentral site introduces new social features to increase peer-to-peer communication around specific topics of interest. Drawing its design directly from community feedback, the new interface dramatically simplifies the way F5 customers and partners can quickly locate technical documents, conveniently share ideas to help other users, and highlight solutions that optimize application and network integration.

“DevCentral provides F5 customers with the unique ability to draw from the experiences of other IT professionals to develop best practices that can benefit users across the IT industry,” said Cindy Borovick, Research Vice President, Datacenter Networks at IDC. “DevCentral, with a member count of over 60,000 strong, provides a powerful complement to F5’s flexible iRules^® programming language and iControl^® API, as the site helps illustrate the innovative ways these technologies are being used by IT organizations to address common challenges and optimize application delivery.”

DevCentral site enhancements include:

• New Social Features to Help Users Make Connections and Collaborate Effortlessly
  The latest version of DevCentral incorporates proven approaches to social networking so users can intuitively connect with peers and share ideas and insights. These features include the ability to join User Groups from around the world as well as Topic Groups that provide focused conversations around IT topics of interest to the community. Members are also able to ‘friend’ peers and follow their favorite contributors, post status updates to groups they belong to, and engage in group-specific discussions in continuously updated forums. These features and more make it easy for community members to connect with others that have similar interests and collaborate on the best ways to solve common IT challenges.
• Hot Topics Section to Help Customers Leverage the Latest Technologies from F5
  To help keep the community up to date on current F5 topics—such as the BIG-IP^® Local Traffic Manager™ Virtual Edition product, remote access via the BIG-IP Access Policy Manager™ solution, and the new TMSH command-line interface in BIG-IP software—new sections have been created to integrate the latest technical articles, documentation, samples, and related materials in one easy-to-find location.
• Improved Site Structure for Quick Navigation
  DevCentral’s site structure has been redesigned based on feedback gathered from the community. Optimized site navigation capabilities make it easier to find technical documentation, code samples, and tools to address today’s evolving IT challenges. The most requested topics have now been located within one click of the home page. With the new layout, it’s easier than ever to locate both technical and non-technical content on a variety of salient IT topics. In addition, the site’s new look and feel enables easy access to the information members want, and convenient browsing with the site’s new Quicklinks bar helps users explore new areas of interest.
• Faster Browsing of New and Existing Tutorials
  Based upon requests from the community, the Tutorial section has been completely redesigned to enable improved organization and easier access to video tutorials that show users how to do more with F5 iRules, iControl, and more. From a single page, community members can easily view the entire collection of DevCentral tutorials. Additionally, new tutorials have been created to help users learn how to get the most from the new DevCentral features, including User Groups and Topic Groups.
• Expanded Opportunities to Showcase Expertise and Share Knowledge
  As part of its ongoing mission for DevCentral, F5 is continually looking for ways to highlight community members that contribute their innovations for the common good. The new version of DevCentral makes it even easier for members to share solutions with the larger group. Furthermore, members that contribute regularly to the community through helpful forum answers, contributed articles and tutorials, and more will be highlighted as ‘Top Contributors.’ These new capabilities will help spotlight and track innovations and guidance from community thought leaders, helping to further identify future DevCentral MVPs—top contributors from the customer and partner community whose actions embody the spirit and values of the DevCentral community.

“The combination of a remarkable collaborative spirit and flexible F5 technology has helped DevCentral become a leading example for vibrant IT communities,” said Jeff Browning, Sr. Director of Product Management at F5. “With this major DevCentral update, we’ve focused on helping our 60,000-plus members worldwide find what they need more easily, build new skills more quickly, and connect with peers across a wider range of topics. Significant new capabilities and a refreshed site design will help frequent users and first-time visitors alike explore informative resources and quickly adapt custom solutions to best address the specific challenges their IT departments and businesses face. By giving the extended community of F5 users a platform to tap into the collective expertise of the entire group, DevCentral enables customers to maximize the value of their technology investments.”

Availability

DevCentral, including the new social communication features, is currently available at http://devcentral.f5.com/. Free registration is required to access discussion forums, sample applications, and technical documentation.

About DevCentral

Composed of more than 60,000 registered users worldwide, DevCentral leverages social web technologies to help enterprises, service providers, channel partners, and other community members get the most from their application delivery environments. DevCentral is the industry’s most active online community offering practical, real-world solutions that bridge the traditional gap between application developers and network professionals. Free of charge, DevCentral offers tools, techniques, and collaboration to help the F5 user community create and build solutions with a wide range of F5 integration tools and technologies.

About F5 Networks

F5 Networks is the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), focused on ensuring the secure, reliable, and fast delivery of applications. F5’s flexible architectural framework enables community-driven innovation that helps organizations enhance IT agility and dynamically deliver services that generate true business value. F5's vision of unified application and data delivery offers customers an unprecedented level of choice in how they deploy ADN solutions. It redefines the management of application, server, storage, and network resources, streamlining application delivery and reducing costs. Global enterprise organizations, service and cloud providers, and Web 2.0 content providers trust F5 to keep their business moving forward. For more information, go to www.f5.com.

F5, DevCentral, iRules, iControl, BIG-IP, Local Traffic Manager, and Access Policy Manager are trademarks or service marks of F5 Networks, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.