A letter from CEO François Locoh-Donou regarding F5's response to COVID-19

For additional background on how F5 is responding to COVID-19, I wanted to share a copy of the email I sent to our customers worldwide.

From: F5 Networks (and signed by François)
To: All F5, NGINX, Shape customers
Date: March 16
Subject: Update from F5 CEO on our COVID-19 Actions and Resources

To our community of valued F5, NGINX and Shape customers,

Based on the ongoing developments related to COVID-19, there is no doubt a great deal on your mind as you consider its potential impact on your organization. We want to let you know how F5 is prioritizing the responsibility we have to protect the health and safety of our employees, customers, partners, shareholders, and community during this global pandemic.

The safety of our community comes first

We are adapting and adjusting our response to COVID-19 in coordination with government authorities as the situation evolves. To date, we have prohibited all non-essential international and domestic business travel for F5 and continue to restrict all employee travel to and from the ‘Warning Level 1-3’ countries. In an abundance of caution in high-risk areas in Asia, Europe, and the United States, we temporarily closed some F5 sites for additional sanitization. We are encouraging employees to take advantage of F5’s work from home guidelines, as well as Employee Assistance Programs and new training materials on stress management and virtual work best practices.

To limit exposure among our employees, customers, partners and community, we postponed our annual global user event, Agility 2020, and our annual customer event, Aspire 2020. We have also added a 14-day self-quarantine requirement for all employees who attend large-scale industry events and withdrawn F5’s participation from large-scale industry events until further notice.

Further, we are extending F5 resources to non-profit organizations as they adapt to supporting a remote workforce and we proudly match our employee donations through a COVID-19 response fund.

Delivering performance, security and business continuity for our customers

To minimize the impact of COVID-19 on F5’s products and services for our customers, we operate with a validated and tested Business Continuity Response plan for emergencies and disasters. This is supported by teams and high-availability technology, including redundant systems, to maintain both business continuity and remote and secure access for 24x7 customer support and engineering worldwide.  As always, should you need support with your current configuration, please reach out and we’d be happy to assist.

I can also report that F5 customer order fulfillment and Returns Material Authorization (RMA) services are unaffected by COVID-19 at this time. We are encouraged by the resumption of manufacturing activity in China, and other parts of Asia, that are a source of raw materials.

Providing guidance and best practices for customers’ business continuity

As the global pandemic evolves, many organizations are adjusting to the dramatic increase in remote workers. This puts an acute strain on systems required to deliver reliable and secure access to applications.

We have assembled a number of recommendations for how to respond to your organization's shifting demands on remote work access due to COVID-19. This includes guidance on how to ensure availability of system capacity, including network and remote access resources.

If you are concerned about remote access capacity and service availability to ensure your business continues to run smoothly, please get in touch with us – we will be happy to talk through best practices and options that meet your situation.

Thank you for your trust in our business. We wish you and all those affected good health and continued safety.

François Locoh-Donou
President & CEO, F5 Networks