F5 Networks today emphasised the importance of digital transformation as the Middle East region continues to adapt to unprecedented change.
Speaking at a virtual press conference hosted in Dubai, Mohammed Abukhater, F5’s RVP for RVP for the Middle East and Africa, described how a convergence of trends, including COVID-19, is prompting organisations to review application delivery strategies and scale associated business continuity infrastructures.
“As the global workforce self-isolates, technology becomes a bridge that keeps us all connected, with code becoming a language that transcends borders and unites us all,” said Abukhater. “But it isn’t just about digital code. It is also about our human code and how we strive to support each other and our wider communities.”
Europe, Middle East and Africa in a strong position
Pointing to new figures from F5’s flagship State of Application Services (SOAS) report, Abukhater explained how the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region finds itself a strong position to adapt to intensifying imperatives for change and take its digital transformation ambitions to the next level.
“Today we’re seeing organizations in the Middle East – irrespective of industry or function – becoming more application-centric to boost innovation, move faster, and adapt to increasingly nuanced user demands.”
“We’re starting to see many moving beyond the first phase of digital transformation —business process automation — and start to scale their digital footprint with purposeful technology as it relates to cloud, automation, and containers.”
The new face of F5
Abukhater explained how F5 is now in its best position yet to help organizations break down restrictive operational silos and fully harness the power of digital transformation.
“No matter where our customers deploy their apps, our goal remains the same: more agile application deployment and management, without giving up security or performance,” he said. “We intend to reach every app, anywhere, with services that span from the inception of code to application delivery.”
F5’s ability to do just that has been boosted by two recent acquisitions.
The acquisition of NGINX was finalized in May 2019, which significantly enhanced F5’s ability to deliver enterprise-grade services for all applications – traditional and modern – wherever built or deployed.
In January 2020, F5 also completed the acquisition of Shape Security, a leader in online fraud and abuse prevention, adding protection from automated attacks, botnets, and targeted fraud to F5’s portfolio of application services.
The union offers organizations comprehensive, end-to-end application security, potentially saving billions of dollars lost to fraud, reputational damage and costly disruptions to critical online services.
“We now have the most comprehensive set of capabilities of any solution provider along the application data path and, importantly, these exist in a variety of consumption and deployment models,” added Abukhater.
Helping enterprises, governments and communities
The reconfigured F5 means it is well-positioned to help organisations during, and beyond, the Coronavirus pandemic.
In addition to helping clients in key sectors such as healthcare, government and finance adapt to new ways of working, additional efforts have been made to support those that need it most.
Among other initiatives, technology grants are now available to support non-profits with technology infrastructure responses to COVID-19, and an employer-matched relief fund is aiding eight international non-profits around the world.
F5 is also offering a range of free software solutions to assist the healthcare, non-profit and educational sectors with escalating remote access, web traffic and security-related challenges. This includes a free year of NGINX Plus – a powerful software load balancer, web server, and content cache built on top of open source NGINX – to handle web traffic surges.
