• F5 pioneered clustering technology providing the de facto framework for clustering.

• F5 clusters scale linearly without third-party switches acting as traffic managers. NetScaler’s reliance on backplane switches causes performance degradation, prevents linear performance scaling and complicates deployment and troubleshooting.

• F5 clusters also route data using hardware, leaving CPU cycles free for L7 processing.

• NetScaler charges a premium for their clustering license, with F5, it’s included.

• F5 supports physical, virtual, and hybrid environments as well as all major hypervisors, including VMware.

• F5 provides a licensing program developed specifically for cloud providers to offer BIG-IP as a service.

• F5 virtual ADC solutions deliver what customers actually need and use. Citrix claims to support a wider range of configurations, yet most of them would never be used in production.

Responses to Citrix “9 Reasons” FUDResponses to Citrix “9 Reasons” FUD

Software-based virtual ADCs with 100% feature parity to hardware-based appliances

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4F5 Confidential 2012

PAYGrow is an arbitrary licensing model unrelated to hardware capacity.

F5’s adaptable virtualization architecture can address a wider range customer scenarios.

F5 provides the flexibility to truly scale up, virtualize, and scale out on demand in lieu of connecting 32 NetScaler boxes.

Citrix forces customers to buy all NetScaler modules even if they don’t want or need them. F5 customers only pay for what they need.

• Customers generally receive large discounts on the initial purchase, however future PAYGrow upgrades may cause sticker shock.

• In fact, PAYGrow cost per transaction can increase sharply at higher levels of application throughput.

• At L3, NetScaler and F5 both deliver price/performance, however F5 delivers superior price/performance for L7 processing - offering a better TCO.

• F5 is the only provider with a blade-based system that provides linear scale and plug-and-play simplicity.

Pay-As-You-Grow elasticity to increase ADC capacity on demand

ADC consolidation solutions with higher density and a more functional architecture

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2Clustering technology for expanding appliance capacity up to 32x

Citrix Claims

Use this quick response card to directly respond to Citrix’s 9 Reasons. You’ll find F5’s rebuttal statements with supporting proof points that illustrate how F5 competes against Citrix.

F5 Proof PointsF5 Facts

• NetScaler boasts more instances however the instances are inefficiently managed which in turn degrades performance.

• F5 delivers true multi-tenancy through 3 technologies: vCMP, partitions, and route domains that supports 100s of tenants on a single platform. NetScaler requires customers to manage an OS for each tenant.

• F5 supports 24 instances and 100s of partitions. NetScaler only supports 40 instances per box.

• Only F5’s chassis enables striping across blades for higher stability and redundancy

• Thanks to the flexibility and extensibility of the F5 platform, adding support for SQL statement balancing was as simple as writing an iRule. Citrix had to work hard to add this functionality to NetScaler.

• F5 partners with ScaleArc to support advanced SQL load balancing needs.

• And F5 solutions are also capable of monitoring SQL database health.

• F5 delivers vastly superior data and control plane programmability, plus the management plane which NetScaler lacks completely.

• 79% of F5 customers use iRules in production BIG-IP deployments

• Customers using F5 iApps deploy 84% faster with 90% first-time configuration accuracy

• F5 iControls provides over 5,500 management API calls

• F5 DevCentral provides 100s of easily leveraged iRules via CodeShare and thousands are available from other sources.

Responses to Citrix “9 Reasons” FUDResponses to Citrix “9 Reasons” FUD

Simple, highly intuitive policy engine that doesn’t require complex programming

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Citrix Claims

F5 does not limit customers to GRE VPN tunnels only. We offer a more complete solution that includes SSO and authentication without purchasing another box.

F5 has a long history of support for industry standards, giving customers total platform visibility with virtually unlimited choice of logging tools

We do SQL too, in addition to dozens of other enterprise apps. For F5, it was as simple as writing an iRule

Supported by an unmatched community of 105k developers in 191 countries, the extensibility and programmability of our framework is no secret

F5 Facts

• Customers already running BIG-IP will see substantial savings by licensing its built-in functionality that supports authentication and SSO instead of buying an additional box, i.e. Cloud Gateway. (CAPEX)

• Plus F5 offers unified management and simplified deployment - all you have to do is turn it on. (OPEX)

• F5 provides administrators the ability to utilize multiple encryption protocols and optimizations right out of the box, unlike NetScaler.

Innovative cloud bridging functionality for hybrid cloud environments

Open, standards based application visibility with AppFlow

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SQL-intelligent load balancing of database servers to scale out the data tier

92x faster 2048-bit SSL performance

It’s not the speed of connection (TPS) that matters, it’s what you can do with it that counts – and F5’s throughput performance is unmatched

• In today’s world, SSL connections tend to persist, making bulk SSL throughput a much more important metric.

• F5 delivers over 2x faster 2048-bit SSL performance.

• F5 integrates with industry-leading solutions for key protection and key management.

• VIPRION 4200 (single blade/loaded chassis) Max SSL TPS: 10,000/40,000/ Bulk crypto: 9 Gbps/36 Gbps

F5 Confidential 2012

F5 Proof Points

• F5 supports SysLog and integrates with leading logging platforms including Splunk, Solar Winds, HP ArcSight, RSA EnVision, and IBM/Q1 Labs.

• F5 iControls has been widely adopted throughout the industry.

• Citrix’s “App Flow Generator” is a proprietary solution that they decided to open and call a “standard”.

• F5 offers iApps analytics on-box which does not require 3rd party utilities for visibility.