F5 helps Joyent deliver cloud computing platform

BANGALORE, INDIA: F5 Networks Inc., a global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced that Joyent, a leading cloud computing vendor, has successfully deployed the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager solution in its Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) server virtualization architecture.

“Advanced Application Delivery Controllers can provide significant advantages for both providers and subscribers of cloud services,” said Joe Skorupa, Research Vice President at Gartner. “These devices can provide major efficiencies of 20 to 50 percent within the cloud provider data center by offloading network-related functions from the server. Beyond this, dynamic caching, compression, pre-fetching, and other related web-acceleration technologies integrated with Application Delivery Controllers can result in major performance improvements for end users, often exceeding 50 percent.”

Joyent’s primary cloud computing offering is a line of virtualized servers called Joyent Accelerators. Its customers use collections of Accelerators to power large-scale websites and web applications. One of its many thousands of customers is LinkedIn, which uses Joyent Accelerators to host its wildly successful Bumper Sticker application on Facebook. Within a few months of launch, the application grew to over one billion page views a month, making Bumper Sticker the largest Ruby-on-Rails application on record.

Joyent uses F5’s BIG-IP devices as the backbone to its cloud computing IaaS. The BIG-IP platform provides massive traffic handling (2–10 Gbps), while F5’s powerful yet easy-to-use iRules scripting language provides Joyent with flexible management and deployment of its cloud computing infrastructure.

“I’ve looked at the market and tried virtually everything, but there is nothing else like the F5 BIG-IP system,” said Jason Hoffman, co-founder and CTO of Joyent. “BIG-IP LTM is the only application switch capable of scaling to handle the thousands of back-end systems Joyent needs to thrive. Without it, we wouldn’t have a business, to be honest.”

Cloud computing makes it possible for developers to host and scale their applications without the pain of large capital outlays and long-term vendor contracts. At the same time, companies can accelerate innovation because they can scale faster and more economically, while lowering the risks associated with the large financial commitments to build a secure, reliable and flexible infrastructure. F5’s BIG-IP Application Delivery Controllers, in turn, enable cloud computing providers like Joyent to deliver IaaS by offloading huge amounts of traffic and optimizing performance of its customers’ hosted applications.

“Cloud computing is now a proven, highly scalable, and cost-effective way for companies to increase agility and accelerate innovation while limiting risk and cost,” said Jason Needham, Sr. Director of Product Management at F5. “However, the infrastructure required to provide cloud computing has to be capable of massive, unpredictable on-demand throughput. F5’s Application Delivery Controllers and iRules give customers unmatched flexibility to suit their particular environments.”

“Being able to deliver the power of F5 BIG-IPs coupled with flexibility of cloud computing has helped Joyent achieve tremendous growth. Joyent’s annualized revenue is up over 35 percent since August of this year,” said David Young, co-founder and CEO of Joyent.