F5 Networks, Inc.  today announced that its ‘ARX® Select’ program for North American channel partners has strengthened F5’s Data Solutions business. The goal of the ARX Select program, announced in July 2009, is to reward F5’s best ARX partners for driving incremental business. The program defines a new level of relationship designed to build business with channel partners who have the required skills, storage expertise, and desire to lead with ARX for file virtualization opportunities.

“F5’s ARX Select program has enhanced our partnership with F5 in several ways, allowing us to paint a more diverse and complete virtualization and consolidation picture for our customers, and go deeper into our existing and net new accounts,” said Paul Kerr, President, Scalar Decisions, Inc. “In addition, the program has helped to open new storage opportunities by providing an outside, agnostic solution that will simplify file storage environments regardless of past or future vendor choices. With enterprises challenged by rapidly growing storage expenditures—along with labor-intensive tasks and increasing data management costs—we continue to be bullish about the file virtualization market. Our expertise in unstructured and semi-structured data, combined with F5® ARX solutions, truly hit the sweet spot of the escalating storage problems that enterprises face today.”

“The ARX Select program underscores F5’s commitment to the file virtualization market and our channel partners who can add real value and help drive our Data Solutions line of business,” said Dean Darwin, VP of Worldwide Channel Sales at F5. “The program encourages deeper engagement surrounding ARX deployments and motivates partners to differentiate their services from other F5 partners selling ARX. Scalar is an excellent example of a partner who has met the ARX Select criteria and has clearly differentiated themselves as a key strategic storage partner for F5.”

To become an ARX Select partner in North America, a reseller must meet certain requirements as published by F5. Once these requirements are met, the partner automatically earns ‘ARX Select Tier’ status, which entitles the partner to increased profits when closing ARX business, and access to leads from F5 sales teams.

The market conditions are ripe for the value proposition that file virtualization offers, according to TheInfoPro. “The top key areas cited by Fortune 1000 organizations for triggering dynamic growth of networked storage include database servers and data warehouse, application data, new applications, file and multimedia, and email,” said Robert Stevenson, Managing Director of Storage Research for TheInfoPro. “This escalating growth of file-based data intensifies the need for organizations to manage it better. Storage professionals must think strategically, focusing on the areas of virtualization and automatic tiering, and look to technologies such as F5’s ARX as a solution to support these new trends.”

During F5’s FY 2009, the company’s ARX revenue grew each of the past three quarters, with recent FYQ4 results reflecting 13 percent year-over-year growth compared to FYQ4 2008. The ARX customer base has diversified significantly with growing customer deployments across the healthcare, construction/architecture, media, government, energy, manufacturing, retail, and pharmaceutical verticals.