The gear maker is in good shape after IT spending slump sparks strategy switch
Ask F5 Networks about its eight years in business, and you may discover that the company had to make a hop, skip and a jump to reach its present status.
When John McAdam joined F5 as its president and chief executive in July 2000, the Seattle-based networking gear maker and the rest of the global information technology sector were entering uncharted territory.
It was a time when the industry and its customers urgently needed to get a reality check and come to grips with the inevitable - the end of the dotcom boom.
F5 hopped on to the internet bandwagon and flourished during this period. It enjoyed technology leadership in a range of networking hardware and software products used by large enterprises and service providers to manage internet traffic and content.
These products were designed to monitor and manage local and geographically dispersed servers and devices, intelligently directing traffic to the server best able to handle a user's request. Major resellers included computer giants Hewlett-Packard and Dell. The company was also expanding rapidly into Asia, establishing sales offices in key markets such as Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.