Case Study: Softcat achieves rapid business agility and 30% reduced email downtime with F5 Networks' Application Delivery Platform

Softcat Improves Its Business Agility with the F5 Application Delivery Platform

Softcat, a leading UK reseller and managed IT services provider, needed greater flexibility and scalability to grow its managed services and respond quickly to changing customer requirements. To strengthen load balancing and improve application availability, Softcat chose F5 Networks and deployed F5 Application Delivery Controllers, including VIPRION and BIG‑IP (LTM and GTM) platforms, integrated into its virtualised VMware environment.

With support from COMPUTERLINKS, Softcat implemented four F5 VIPRION units and two BIG‑IP 1600 units across its two data centres, creating a single, scalable application delivery platform. The F5 Networks solution now supports 60 physical blade servers (around 3,000 virtual servers) serving 75+ customers and up to 100,000 users, cut email downtime by about 30%, improved overall service availability, offloaded processor‑intensive tasks to free server capacity, and enables rapid, cost‑effective growth by adding blades and using F5 iRules to reconfigure services.

Softcat

Nick Barron

Pre Sales Manager