Big Job Cuts at F5 Networks, But Company Promises New Hires

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F5 Networks is laying off hundreds of employees, but plans to fill hundreds of other positions as it continues to evolve to a multicloud application services company.

François Locoh-Donou, F5’s president and CEO, spoke briefing about the job cuts during the company’s third-quarter earnings call. Both its revenue and profit increased compared to the year-ago quarter.

F5 spokesman Nathan Misner tells Chanel Partners the company has “eliminated approximately 230 positions, primarily in our IT, services, product development, sales support, and marketing organizations in the U.S. However, we are accelerating our hiring to support our multicloud application services strategy, with over 300 open positions worldwide in geographic sales expansion, new go-to-market motions, multicloud software development and digital transformation initiatives.”

In a securities filing, F5 said it also plans to close its Lowell, Massachusetts, office and reduce leased office space.

Locoh-Donou said his company is “taking steps to notify some employees that their roles are under consideration or will be eliminated.”

“Our objective with these decisions is to further align our workforce with a long-term strategy and accelerate the transformation that we outlined in our analyst & investor meeting earlier this year,” he said. “The long-term first vision set forth is seeing significant traction with continued momentum in software and security sales. Customers continue to view our solutions as mission-critical in hybrid environments as they deploy incremental workloads dynamically, both on premise[s] and in cloud environments. The expansion of our software-asset portfolio and standalone security products positions us as the leader in multi-cloud application services.

There is “legacy spend” that is less relevant for the future than it has been for the past, and “we are shifting our focus to the growth areas of F5,” Locoh-Donou said.

Earlier this week, we reported a high-ranking member of CenturyLink‘s networking team has joined F5 as general manager of service providers. The company’s Unity Partner Program includes VARs, and hosted and managed service providers.