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Web Server Load Balancing with NGINX Plus

From its founding, NGINX has focused on building software to help the next generation of digital businesses develop and deploy their applications with the utmost performance, reliability, security, and scale, and has done so with the support of a vast community of open source users. We are proud to announce that Gartner has recognized NGINX’s strengths in both its Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers1 and Gartner Critical Capabilities for Application Delivery Controllers2 Reports for 2016.

According to Gartner, “application delivery controllers are a key component within enterprise and cloud data centers to improve application availability, performance and security. However, the market is in a state of flux, with a growing divergence between the needs of traditional I&O and application‑centric personnel”. This is being driven further by an organization’s need to evolve its capabilities. “This change and bifurcation is a microcosm of what Gartner refers to as “bimodal” work style, which combines the conventional capabilities of IT alongside a capability to respond to the level of uncertainty and the need for agility required for a digital transformation.”

With over 170 million sites and applications using NGINX, we are at the forefront of this industry shift. Our users are moving away from hardware and traditional approaches toward flexible and scalable solutions for modern applications, many of which are deployed in the cloud or hybrid environments. Our experience helping the most innovative companies succeed in this ever‑changing environment has allowed us to create sophisticated and rapid‑to‑deploy software to best match the needs of the modern web. Our offering is developed with feedback from our community of millions of users and through direct feedback from hundreds of NGINX Plus customers. NGINX Plus further extends the NGINX Open Source capabilities with advanced features and award‑winning support for a truly enterprise‑ready solution.

In our first‑ever entry in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, we’re delighted to have received the highest scores in the Critical Capabilities report for the Mode 2 Application Development and Mode 1/Mode 2 Hybrid ADC use cases. We interpret “Mode 2” as innovative and fast‑changing applications which are often developer‑lead, whereas we refer to “Mode 1” for predictable, unchanging deployments such as off‑the‑shelf enterprise applications.

NGINX ranked as the top Application Delivery Controller vendor in both of the modern use cases in the Critical Capabilities report; Mode 2 Application Development, and Mode 1/Mode 2 Hybrid Application Delivery Controller

The growing shift towards modern Mode 2 application development is becoming mainstream in the enterprise as organizations are seizing the opportunity to transition to the modern web. This evolution in the development process inevitably favors companies that offer software‑based and application‑native load balancing tools like NGINX.

NGINX ranked as the top Application Delivery Controller vendor in both of the modern use cases in the Critical Capabilities report; Mode 2 Application Development, and Mode 1/Mode 2 Hybrid Application Delivery Controller

Furthermore, one of Gartner’s key findings in the Critical Capabilities Report indicates that “by 2019, the hybrid Mode 1/Mode 2 use case will become more important, as enterprises seek to bridge the requirements between these two work styles”. Open source vendors are playing a crucial role in driving the performance, reliability, security, and scale of modern‑day applications. The ADC market is another great example of open source gaining tremendous clout and market share by offering a more focused and lean solution to load‑balancing tooling. The ability to innovate faster and offer a more agile product is disrupting the ADC market, and helping it to grow alongside today’s digital businesses.

NGINX Plus matches the performance and most popular capabilities of hardware ADCs with cost savings of up to 75% over legacy competitors. By moving to NGINX Plus’ software‑based ADC, customers are also unlocking flexibility that hardware appliances can’t provide since NGINX can run anywhere: bare metal in your private data center, in public or private clouds, and in containers.

NGINX Plus customers recognize that this new approach is necessary to achieve the speed and agility required to bring new services to market. According to AJ Wilson, Vice President of Operations at IgnitionOne, “because we are dealing with a firehose of data from sources like Microsoft, Facebook, and Google, we needed to come up with a different solution in order to process that amount of traffic. Traditional hardware load balancers are expensive, and they lacked the flexibility and scale we needed. We selected NGINX Plus because it can scale enough to handle the load that we’re talking about, giving us confidence that we can deliver with the solution. With NGINX Plus, we’re able to process four to five times the volume that we were processing in the past with our hardware load balancers.”

We’re incredibly proud to be recognized as top vendor for the Mode 2 Application Development and Mode 1/Mode 2 Hybrid ADC use cases, and as a key player in the Magic Quadrant. We believe this puts us at the forefront of the growing application delivery trend toward flexible, high-performance load balancers for modern environments. We look forward to celebrating our continued success with our team, and with current and prospective NGINX users during this year’s annual user conference, nginx.conf 2016, which kicks off tomorrow, September 7, in Austin.


[1] Gartner “[Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers]” by [Andrew Lerner, Joe Skorupa, Danilo Ciscato], [August 29, 2016].

[2] Gartner “[Critical Capabilities for Application Delivery Controllers]” by [Mark Fabbi, Danilo Ciscato, Andrew Lerner], [August 29, 2016].

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from NGINX, Inc.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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About The Author

Headshot Gus Robertson CEO NGINX

Gus Robertson

Senior Vice President and General Manager of NGINX

Gus Robertson is Senior Vice President and General Manager of NGINX at F5.

Previously, he served as CEO of NGINX, Inc., which was acquired by F5 in 2019. Robertson joined NGINX as CEO in 2012 when the company had no commercial offerings or revenue and a staff of 8. Over the next 6 years, he grew NGINX to more than 250 employees and raised over $100 million in venture capital from such investors as Goldman Sachs and NEA.

Prior to joining NGINX, he worked at Red Hat for 10 years, first as Vice President of the Asia Pacific region and then leading Global Business Development from the US. Before joining Red Hat, Robertson ran the Asia Pacific region for Visio, prior to its acquisition by Microsoft in 2000.

Robertson studied Marketing at Charles Sturt University in Australia and completed the Advanced Management Program at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

About F5 NGINX

F5, Inc. is the company behind NGINX, the popular open source project. We offer a suite of technologies for developing and delivering modern applications. Together with F5, our combined solution bridges the gap between NetOps and DevOps, with multi-cloud application services that span from code to customer.

Learn more at nginx.com or join the conversation by following @nginx on Twitter.