F5 Networks, Inc (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in application delivery networking, today announced that ooba, a leader in the South African financial services market, has deployed the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) solution to improve application performance levels for the Oracle solutions its business efforts depend on.
ooba uses BIG-IP LTM to perform load balancing, transparent failover, and optimisation (such as caching and compression) across its deployments of Oracle's E-Business Suite, Oracle Portal, the Oracle SOA Suite, and the Oracle Application Server.
“Without these applications, we don't have a business,” said Dominique dHotman, Manager of Enterprise Architecture at ooba. “Our core business of mortgage origination - as well as our new services such as insurance - requires fast, reliable, and secure communications with customers and business partners. F5 is a critical enabler of these services. The ease-of-use and reliability we gain with F5 allows us to deploy new solutions and modify existing configurations much quicker and in a far more predictable fashion than with other products we considered.”
ooba improves application performance, reliability, manageability with F5 and Oracle
Formerly known as MortgageSA, ooba began looking for an application delivery platform three years ago as it expanded beyond its core home financing business to also offer real estate listings, insurance, and other services. Because customers want to finalise their transactions quickly, application uptime and performance are critical. Similarly, application security is also a primary concern due to sensitive data such as income levels and credit history reports. As part of this evaluation process, ooba contacted F5's South Africa-based partner EnterWeb to discuss requirements and ultimately to conduct proof-of-concept testing.
As it rolled out Web-based applications to provide these services, ooba found the Linux-based load balancing solution it had developed internally was both difficult to scale and failed to deliver the required performance and reliability benchmarks. For example, the firm's search portal, which customers use to find homes and provides most of ooba's prospects, must operate 99.999% of the time, yet it and other key applications initially experienced downtime of 15-20% per month.
The company considered Web caching technology from one vendor that improved performance, but did not support the HTTPS protocol ooba needed for security. Other vendors required significant changes to the IT environment before solutions could be properly evaluated. By contrast, “Installation and deployment of F5's BIG-IP LTM was virtually effortless. We were up and running within a day, with no major changes in the network. And we experienced immediate and dramatic improvements in reliability, performance, and speed,” added dHotman.
EnterWeb handled the implementation, trained two ooba personnel on the F5 solution, and provides post-installation support.
BIG-IP LTM enables ooba to:
* Provide fast, reliable, and secure application access to customers and business partners
The F5 solution reduced server overhead by 20% and eliminated the 10-15% downtime ooba had been experiencing across its business-critical Web portals and applications.
* Simplify IT administrators' management of application services
The intuitive Web interface and pre-defined application templates provided by F5 allow IT administrators to make impactful changes across the application delivery environment. With the BIG-IP system, the time to implement updates has fallen from an average of three days to less than an hour.
* Implement a single application delivery platform that can be scaled to meet future needs
The scope and deployment flexibility of the F5 BIG-IP LTM allows it to be used across ooba's infrastructure of Oracle and Web-based applications in a service-oriented architecture model. In addition, because BIG-IP solutions operate on F5's unified TMOS architecture, new services and capabilities can be added as business priorities evolve.
“F5's working partnership with Oracle really helps us as a joint customer because there are many proven certified configurations that are available to us,” said dHotman. “This alleviates the need for trial and error on our end because we know that solution interoperability has been extensively tested and documented.”
F5/Oracle customers report higher scalability, improved performance
TechValidate, an independent research organisation, recently analysed data collected from customers that have deployed F5 BIG-IP and Oracle solutions in concert. Mirroring the results seen at ooba, TechValidate's research illustrated the value BIG-IP solutions bring to Oracle solution environments.
Recent survey results show:
* 71% of IT organisations consider the local load balancing methods of F5 BIG-IP solutions important to the performance, availability, and security of their Oracle deployment (Source: TechValidate. TVID: 3CC-4CD-5DE).
* 40% of IT organisations gained better end-user experience or improved application performance by deploying F5 BIG-IP solutions with Oracle (Source: TechValidate. TVID: 582-0FE-14D).
* 39% of IT organizations reduced OpEx by 10% or more for their Oracle environment using F5 BIG-IP solutions (Source: TechValidate. TVID: 47E-6D2-26A).
F5 Networks to exhibit at COLLABORATE 10 Oracle Community Conference
F5 will exhibit at COLLABORATE 10: Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community, taking place from 18 to 22 April at the Mandalay Bay Convention Centre in Las Vegas.
Visit F5 Networks at Booth #2141 and go to www.f5.com/news-press-events/events for additional information about F5's presence at Collaborate 10 and other industry events.
For more information about F5's BIG-IP solutions, please visit www.f5.com/products/big-ip/.
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