Nokia and F5 Refine Alliance to Address Broader Range of Customer Needs

Mountain View, Calif. and Seattle, Wash. - (April 23, 2003) - Nokia (NYSE: NOK), the world leader in mobile communications and F5 Networks (NASDAQ: FFIV), the leading provider of Application Traffic Management solutions, today announced a new reseller agreement enhancing their relationship to more effectively compete in an evolving marketplace, better differentiate their respective product offerings, offer new bundled solutions to wireless customers, and minimize costs. Under the terms of the agreement, all of Nokia's business divisions will have access to F5's full suite of Application Traffic Management products for resale in bundling and integration opportunities. The new agreement will become effective in the third quarter of calendar 2003.

 

Intelligent traffic management continues to play an increasingly important role in enterprise security, reliability and overall business performance and we're pleased to continue our partnership with F5," said Scott Blaine, Nokia's general manager of the F5 Networks relationship. "This refocused way of working together will allow us to easily bundle F5's traffic management products with Nokia's security products for a highly optimized solution. Customers will benefit through this broader reseller agreement, which will give us the ability to easily incorporate F5 products into solutions from any Nokia division, allowing customers to turn to Nokia as their one-stop solutions provider."

 

As part of the agreement, F5 intends to complete custom development work by mid-year on its traffic management products to support integration with Nokia's NetAct, a solution for monitoring, measuring and configuring the wireless network. The integration between F5 products and NetAct will help simplify and streamline the deployment of the Nokia-F5 solution bundles for wireless carriers. 

 

"Nokia Networks is bundling F5's BIG-IP® products for Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) load balancing to build increased high availability, security and scalability into our wireless customers' networks," said Olavi Mertanen, director of Product Business Management for Nokia IP Mobility Networks. "Additionally, the integration between F5 products and NetAct will complement the new reseller agreement and benefit our wireless carrier customers by ensuring that our solutions work seamlessly together."

 

"We're excited about our new agreement with Nokia, which better represents and supports our companies' respective strengths in the market," said Jeff Pancottine, senior vice president of Marketing and Business Development at F5 Networks. "The revised alliance enhances our partnership with Nokia, expands our reach into the wireless market, and benefits customers by offering more flexibility in how we offer our core solutions and services."

 

Nokia and F5 Networks initiated their global alliance in June 2001, with NIC signing a two-year OEM license and reseller agreement for F5's full suite of traffic management products. The agreement announced today will supercede the existing agreement. Under the terms of the new agreement, the Nokia-F5 relationship is broadened through specified integration with Nokia products for solution bundles sold to wireless carriers.

 

Nokia Internet Communications, headquartered in Mountain View, California, provides world class Network Security, Virtual Private Network and Internet Traffic Management solutions that ensure the security and reliability of corporate enterprise and managed service provider networks. Nokia is committed to enhancing the end user experience by bringing a new level of security and reliability to the network, enabling an Internet transaction that is personal and trusted -- each and every time. For more information, please visit http://www.nokia.com and click on Secure Network Solutions.

 

About Nokia
Nokia is the world leader in mobile communications. Backed by its experience, innovation, user-friendliness and secure solutions, the company has become the leading supplier of mobile phones and a leading supplier of mobile, fixed broadband and IP networks. By adding mobility to the Internet Nokia creates new opportunities for companies and further enriches the daily lives of people. Nokia is a broadly held company with listings on six major exchanges.

 

About F5

F5 Networks, headquartered in Seattle, Washington, is the industry leader in Application Traffic Management, enabling enterprises and service providers to optimize any mission-critical application or web service, providing secure and predictable delivery of application traffic in an unpredictable environment. Through F5's unique open iControl(TM) API, third party applications and network devices can take an active role in shaping network traffic, delivering application aware networks that allow customers to direct traffic based on their exact business requirements. Our solutions optimize the availability, security and speed of mission-critical servers and applications, including enterprise applications, web services, mobile IP applications, web publishing, content delivery, e-commerce, caching, firewalls and more. F5's solutions are widely deployed in large enterprises, the top service providers, financial institutions, government agencies, healthcare, and portals throughout the world. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and has offices throughout North America, Europe, Japan and Asia Pacific. F5 Networks is located on the web at www.f5.com.

 

 

Nokia Internet Communications:
Michael Cabot (California based)

(650) 625 2941 or michael.cabot@nokia.com

EMEA (UK based)
Claire Backhurst
Tel. +44 7788 145460 or claire.backhurst@nokia.com

APAC (Singapore based)
Bonnie Datta
Tel. +6597389743 or bonnie.datta@nokia.com

 

Alane Moran (Seattle based)
Tel. + 1 206 272 6850 or a.moran@f5.com