F5 Networks Closes $670 Million NGINX Acquisition

F5 Networks just closed its NGINX deal which will help the company on its evolution away from hardware in favor of software and services.

F5 Networks on Thursday closed its deal to buy one of its largest competitors, NGINX, for $670 million.

The deal comes as F5 continues to evolve from a hardware company to a more services-focused firm. The acquisition, according to F5, will help the company accelerate its "software and multi-cloud transformation."

Seattle, Wash.-based F5 first announced its intent to acquire the company on March 11.

[Related: F5 Networks Channel Chief: 'Channel Attitude' Will See Firm Through Digital Transformation ]

NGINX specializes in open source, software-based application delivery. The company's software powers more than 375 million websites, including for some well-known brands such as Netflix, Starbucks, and McDonald’s, according to NGINX. The startup first announced a channel program earlier this year.

Together, F5 and NGINX will give customers multi-cloud application delivery services across all of their IT environments and flexibility for developers will also offering the scale, security, and reliability that network operations teams need, the two companies said in a statement.

F5 said in March that the two product lines will be integrated, with

F5 security adding protection to NGINX products, and NGINX load balancing software supporting F5's cloud-native solutions.

NGINX said it will continue to support the open source community.

Via the terms of the deal, F5 will keep the Nginx brand alive.

NGINX CEO Gus Robertson, along with the company's founders, Igor Sysoev and Maxim Konovalov and their team will join F5 to run the NGINX business from its headquarters in San Francisco. NGINX has about 250 employees today.