F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced the general availability of its F5^® Acopia^™ FreedomFabric^™ Network Operating System Software Version 3.0. In addition, the company today announced a new product, the F5 Acopia FreedomFabric Network Manager, delivering the industry's first independent management platform for intelligent file virtualization networks. Together, they help customers better manage the growth, complexity, and escalating expense of their file data storage. The F5 Acopia family of products extends Application Delivery Networking to include automated management of the data storage layer, and today's announcement is another milestone in F5's continued execution of this strategy.

"IT professionals are really starting to see the benefits of infrastructure virtualization at every level. With the addition of F5's Acopia File Virtualization services, IT professionals finally have the ability to really harness all the power of virtualization-from servers to data. Adding Acopia has made F5's network virtualization service offerings among the most complete in the entire industry," said Mark Bowker, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group.

Highlights of the new F5 Acopia offerings include:

Virtual Snapshots - FreedomFabric Network Operating System v3.0 offers an enterprise-class implementation of heterogeneous virtual snapshots. Snapshots are replicas of data as it existed at a specific point in time. Using this new functionality, administrators instantly can create snapshots spanning many heterogeneous filers. Users and applications then have direct access to these federated snapshots for many uses including backup, replication, and recovery of accidentally deleted or modified files or directories. The process of creating the virtual snapshot is transparent to end-user workflow. Without this functionality, snapshots cannot span multiple heterogeneous filers. This forces administrators to follow complex, often manual and disruptive, processes to protect their large file infrastructures, restricting them to single vendor implementations.

Independent Management Platform - FreedomFabric Network Manager is the industry's first independent management software platform for file virtualization. Running on an industry standard server, FreedomFabric Network Manager provides the foundation for managing policies across multiple distributed file virtualization systems in large enterprises, greatly simplifying deployment and operations, reducing errors, and lowering operational costs.

"Once in production, it became obvious to us that we should leverage F5 Acopia virtualization across our entire datacenter environment," said Stephen R. O'Neill, Vice President of Technology, Oversee Domain Services. "For Oversee, the F5 Acopia solution has simplified data management and helped keep our budget in check. This new functionality means we won't have to manage separate filers and individual snapshots. I will now have unified access across all my systems-making life that much easier."

"Forward-thinking customers around the world are adopting F5 Acopia file storage virtualization solutions because they appreciate the tremendous benefits of this technology," said Christopher Lynch, Senior Vice President of Data Solutions at F5. "Today, IT executives realize that F5 Acopia is no longer just an alternative; it's an imperative. With this release, we are making it easier than ever for our customers to put intelligence to work managing their data storage assets."