team continues to research application threats and publish findings every week. On May 3, 2017, F5 announced that it would move from its longtime headquarters on the waterfront near Seattle Center to a downtown Seattle skyscraper that will be called F5 Tower. The move occurred in early 2019. F5 employees include Igor Sysoev, the author of NGINX; Dahl-Nygaard laureate Gilad Bracha; Google click fraud czar Shuman Ghosemajumder; and Defense.Net founder Barrett Lyon. 48 of the Fortune 50 companies use F5 for load balancing, Layer 7 application security, fraud prevention, and API management. Product Offerings F5 BIG-IP F5's BIG-IP product family comprises hardware, modularized software, and virtual appliances that run the F5 TMOS operating system. Depending on the appliance selected, one or more BIG-IP product modules can be added. BIG-IP History On September 7, 2004, F5 Networks released version 9.0 of the BIG-IP software in addition to appliances to run the software. Version 9.0 also marked the introduction of the company's TMOS architecture, with enhancements including: Moved from BSD to Linux to handle system management functions (disks, logging, bootup, console access, etc.) Creation of a Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM) to directly talk to the networking hardware and handle all network activities. Creation of the standard full-proxy mode, which fully terminates network connections at the BIG-IP and establishes new connections between the BIG-IP and the member servers in a pool. This allows for optimum TCP stacks on both sides as well as the complete ability to modify traffic in either direction. In late 2021, F5 introduced the next-generation of their BIG-IP hardware platforms, the rSeries and VELOS chassis platform. These next-generation systems will replace the previous generation iSeries and VIPRION chassis system. F5 NGINX As a part of the NGINX, Inc. acquisition in 2019, F5 offers a premium, enterprise-level version of NGINX with advanced features, multiple support SLAs, and regular software updates. Hourly and annual subscription options are available with multiple levels of support, professional services, and training. F5 Distributed Cloud Services During F5 Agility 2022, F5 announced a new product offering being built on the platforms of BIG-IP, Shape Security, and Volterra. The first new product available to the market will be the SaaS-based Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) solution. F5 Distributed Cloud Services are SaaS-based security, networking, and application management services that enable customers to deploy, secure, and operate their applications in a cloud-native environment wherever needed–data center, multi-cloud,