F5 ARN product will support Microsoft Integrated Communication Software

In Seattle, November 6, F5 Networks Inc., a global application Delivery Network provider, announced that its ARNApplication Delivery Network for Microsoft was further extended to support Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. F5 application ready Network (ARN) will bring high availability, scalability and excellent performance to the Unified Communication Environment of all Microsoft customers.

Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president of Yankee Group's enterprise research department, said: "to realize the dream of 'enterprise applications everywhere ', Unified Communication is a key support technology. In the process of achieving Unified Communication, Office Communications Server 2007 is an important building module. We hope this product can become the core component of business process transformation. F5 is using the ARN extension to Support Office Communications Server 2007, promoting and optimizing this transformation ."

F5 application readiness Network (ARN) is an integrated application network architecture and infrastructure. It is specially designed for enterprise applications such as Office Communications Server 2007 Microsoft integrated communication Server components. By using F5's BIG-IP local traffic manager (LTM) device, ARN intelligently directs network traffic between servers when running Office Communications Server 2007 on a computer, to achieve high availability and scalability. In addition, the use of BIG-IP LTM equipment can reduce potential network and infrastructure problems, to ensure that users experience the best performance and reliability when using communication tools. In large enterprise-level deployments, BIG-IP LTM devices can help the IT department expand server clusters horizontally to allocate users between multiple front-end devices, greatly improving system processing capabilities. In addition, with a series of improvements to the Transport Control Protocol (TCP) stack, the BIG-IP LTM can also shorten latency and optimize bandwidth and client-to-server connections to improve overall network performance. In addition, to maximize the potential of F5 products, F5 also produced detailed best practices documentation to help users deploy F5 BIG-IP LTM, in order to enhance the Office Communications Server 2007 application environment.

With BIG-IP LTM devices, Microsoft customers will be able to take advantage of robust and reliable hardware Load balancer, which is exactly what is needed for deploying Office Communications Server 2007 Enterprise Edition with Multiple front-end servers. To ensure secure and fast delivery of BIG-IP LTM devices to Office Communications Server 2007, F5 conducted a comprehensive test at its F5 test lab and Microsoft test lab in Redmond, Washington. This series of tests is exactly what F5 has always supported the Microsoft Unified Communication product series. One of the tests is a comprehensive test, which simulates the real environment of using F5 full-line application delivery network products to deliver previous-generation products of Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 Office Communications Server 2007.

"Microsoft is pleased to work with F5 to provide our customers with an optimized communication experience," said Yancey Smith, product manager of the Unified Communications Division of Microsoft. It is gratifying that F5 has been working for years to test the BIG-IP LTM delivery of Microsoft's Live Communications Server 2005 and Office Communications Server 2007 in its own labs and Microsoft labs in Redmond, provides Hardware load balancing for scalable communication solutions."

Jim Ritchings, vice president of F5 business expansion, said: "through close cooperation with Microsoft, we have been able to leverage our rich experience in high availability and application optimization, bring the advantages of the application ready network ARN to those enterprises that use Office Communications Server 2007."

Related Articles]

• F5 FirePass SSL VPN
  

• F5 was listed in Fortune's "100 fastest growing companies" list
  

• Both F5 and Citrix released new products for application switch acceleration